Stigma Podcast - Mental Health: Recent Episodes

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What is the future of legal cannabis from a retail / e-commerce perspective? Today's guest, Socrates Rosenfeld, Co-Founder and CEO of Jane Technologies explains. Jane is an e-commerce solution for the Cannabis space that supports nearly 3,000 dispensaries and handles more than 20% of the legal Cannabis transactions in the U.S. each year.

Prior to founding Jane, Soc was a consultant at McKinsey and Company. Before that, he served in the US Army as an Apache Helicopter Pilot from 2004-2011. Soc earned an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management and his undergrad degree my alma mater, West Point.

Soc has a very personal reason for building Jane, that he’s going to share with us in a few minutes. He’s one of the most impressive founders I’ve ever met and we at What If Ventures have had the chance to get to know him in 2021 as we were a small part of their most recent funding round and have been able to witness first-hand what an amazing operator he is.

You can connect with Soc here: LinkedIn

What If Fellowship: https://whatif.vc/fellowship

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. Soc shares his journey from the Army to eventually founding a Canmnabis retail tech platform beacuase of his own personal experience struggling with mental heatlh after the Army.
2. We discuss Jane’s platform and how Jane is not only revolutionizing the Cannabis retail world, but how Jane's novel approach to e-commerce will transform broader e-commerce which hasn't seen real disruption since the creation of decades old platforms like Amazon.
3. Soc shares what it was like to face the stigma around Cannabis and the challenges/benefits that came with creating a company in this space.
4. We discuss the legistlative environment around Cannabis, false information about the plant (and industry) that has been spread over the years, and the effect it has had on people finding and using this solution.
5. Soc talks about what Jane is focused on today while they await legislative changes and a more broad based acceptance of cannabis usage in the U.S.
6. Soc tells us about the biggest challenges that come with being an entrepreneur and the importance of believing in yourself.
7. We discuss tips for entrepreneurs who are wanting to get into the Cannabis space and what advice Soc wishes he would have received when he first started.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: What If Fellowship, Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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Alyson Watson is CEO and co-founder of Modern Health, a mental health unicorn! Modern Health is a global mental health benefits solution for employers that covers the spectrum of mental wellbeing needs from tech enabled solutions to professional support solutions on one platform.

You can connect with Alyson here: LinkedIn

What If Fellowship: https://whatif.vc/fellowship

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. Alyson shares her background with mental health, her education, and how it led her to the mental health space. She also shares about Modern Health and what their mission is.
2. Alyson talks about Y Combinator, what the process looks like as a startup who applies, the benefits from it and the difference it made for her when starting up Modern Health.
3. We discuss the stigma and lack of access that used to surround mental health support from employers and how Modern Health is helping to solve these issues.
4. We talk about how mental health problems limit productivity and how this is a societal problem, not only in the workplace but in personal lives as well.
5. Alyson shares what more she thinks companies can do to promote mental wellness with their employees.
6. We discuss the vision for Modern Health and where she sees the company going in the future.
7. Alyson shares her advice for those who are wishing to start up their own company and what she wishes she knew when she started.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: What If Fellowship, Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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April Koh is the youngest female founder to ever take a startup from just an idea to unicorn status. We are so excited that she’s accomplished this in the mental health space, and we are excited for you to meet her and learn more about her Company, Spring Health! For those who may not be familiar, Spring Health is a provider of mental health benefits to employers for their employees, and their employees’ families.

Spring Health’s product is a "precision mental healthcare" platform that matches a company’s employees to the most effective care for each employee. These care solutions that employees are matched to include (but are not limited to) mindfulness and meditation applications, care navigation tools, access to coaching services, therapy, and medication management.

To date, Spring Health has raised $300mm of capital and April and her team are truly pioneers in the mental health benefits space. Their recent funding round valued the company at $2 billion and April herself, is now the youngest female founder to lead a unicorn startup! She’s truly amazing and I’m excited to share our conversation!

You can connect with April on LinkedIn: April’s LinkedIn Page Spring Health Website: https://www.springhealth.com/ What If Fellowship: https://whatif.vc/fellowship

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. April shares the founding story of Spring Health with us. She explains how she came up with the idea and tells the impressive story about how she put a minimum viable product (MVP) together in short order, impressed her soon to be co-founder to join her team, and brought a business to life at lighting speed.
2. April is the youngest female founder to grow a startup to unicorn status, EVER! We talked with her about what this accomplishment means for her, for female founders and for the mental health space in general.
3. April shares about her journey to realize there was a problem worth solving in this space, coming up with an idea, deciding to start a business and the path that she and the business took in the early days.
4. April talks with us about what Spring Health looked like in those early days including how she recruited her co-founder, which is quite an interesting and inspiring story.
5. We talked further about exactly what Spring Health is from a business point of view, how they win customers, what exactly they provide, and how they get paid.
6. April shared her vision for the future of the business and more broadly, the future of the mental health care landscape.
7. We always love to ask pioneers in the mental health space where they view the biggest opportunities in our space (of course, outside of what they are currently building) and April’s answers there were certainly insightful for anyone looking to build a mental health startup.
8. Finally, April provides advice and “lessons learned” that she wished she had known in the early days. I found her answers to be so helpful I believe every founder in this space could learn from April.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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Dr. Amit Etkin is pioneering a revolution in the way mental health medications are designed, developed, prescribed, and brought to market. Precision psychiatry is the future of mental health treatment and Dr. Etkin is leading the way with his drug development platform, Alto Neuroscience. In this episode, Dr. Etkin explains why psychiatric drugs have failed, what he is doing about it and why it will work.

Prior to Alto Neuroscience, Dr. Etkin was a tenured professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University and a member of the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute. Dr. Etkin has received multiple awards, most notably the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award in 2017. He is trained as both a psychiatrist and neuroscientist.

The overarching aim of his work in this field for the last 10 years is to understand the neural basis of emotional disorders and their treatment, and to leverage this knowledge to better understand how the brain works and to develop novel treatment interventions. In support of this goal, Dr. Etkin also collaborates with neuroscientists, engineers, psychologists, physicians, and others to establish a new intellectual, scientific, and clinical paradigm for understanding and manipulating human brain circuits in healthy individuals and for treating psychiatric disease.

You can connect with Amit here: LinkedIn

Alto Neuroscience Website: https://www.altoneuroscience.com/

What If Fellowship: https://whatif.vc/fellowship

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. Etkin shares his background, why he got into the field of neuroscience, and why he is building Alto Neuroscience.
2. We discuss the biggest needs in the clinical psychology world is and how Alto Neuroscience will solve some of the greatest needs in the mental health space.
3. We talk about measurement & testing, as well as biomarkers in the mental health space at large and why we are so far behind other healthcare verticals when it comes to measurement and testing in the mental health space.
4. Etkin explains that one of the primary reasons bio-pharma companies haven’t focused as much as they should on Central Nervous System (CNS) drug development in the last couple of decades is because we can’t effectively measure how the drugs are working. All of that has changed now with the creation of Alto Neuroscience.
5. Amit talks about the concept of “precision psychiatry”, how precision is utilized in other fields of medicine, and the importance of using it in the mental health space to improve treatment options.
6. We discuss how the combination of measurement and precision psychiatry can change psychiatry, drug development, and treatment of mental health disorders both broadly on a macro level and specifically with respect to his work at Alto Neuroscience.
7. Amit shares about what Alto Neuroscience is currently working on, the drugs they currently developing, and their vision for the future of psychiatric medication.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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Amanda Eilian, Founding Partner of _able Partners joins us to talk all things mental health startup investing. _able Partners is an early-stage VC firm supporting visionary founders in the positive living space. Their investments focus on companies that improve the daily lives of people, making them healthier, happier, and making their lives more meaningful. Some specific investment areas include mental health, addiction, women’s health, sexual wellness, wellness broadly, coaching and continued learning, child care, and self-expression. Amanda has led incredible early stage investments in companies like Spring Health, Compass Pathways, ATAI Life Sciences, Alma, Alto Neuroscience, and many others.

You can connect with Amanda here: _able Partners Website, LinkedIn

What If Fellowship: https://whatif.vc/fellowship

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. Amanda shares her background that led her to venture investing, creating _able Partners, and the focus of _able Partners.
2. We discuss the areas and companies where _able has focused on which have been stigmatized in the past including mental health and addiction.
3. Amanda shares about her team, how they are non-traditional, and what that looks like in terms of their professional interactions as a company.
4. We discuss current themes in the mental health space and where investors should be looking to get involved in this space including accessibility, personalized care, and measurement and monitoring.
5. Amanda shares what type of funding _able is interested in, their focus in early stage investing, and what criteria they look for when choosing who to work with.
6. We talk about why stigma is starting to decrease and the possible causes for this wave of de-stigmatization.
7. We discuss the lack of access, the shortage of psychiatrists across the country, and more issues surrounding mental health care and Amanda shares her ideas for what needs to happen to address these issues.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: What If Fellowship, Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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Today’s guest is John Donoghue. He is well known for his groundbreaking work developing Brain Computer Interfaces (BCIs) to restore movement for people with paralysis, known as ‘BrainGate’. BrainGate was the original BCI system created by a company called Cyberkinetics, of which John was a co-founder.

In this episode, John gives us a primer on BCIs. What are they? How do they work? When will they be widely adopted? Are they safe? How do we know? We cover these questions and much more.

Many people consider John to be the founder of the entire discipline of neuroprosthetics which is the combination of neuroscience and biomedical engineering. He was a member of the U.S. B.R.A.I.N. initiative’s first NIH Working Group and is a fellow of the National Academy of Medicine, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as several other academies. His awards include the German Zülch Prize (2007), the Roche-Nature Medicine Prize (2010), the Schrödinger Prize (Germany, 2012), and the first Israeli Brain Technology Prize in 2013.

Links Mentioned: BrainGate Website, John’s email

What If Fellowship: https://whatif.vc/fellowship

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. John shares his background in biology, his fascination with the way our brains control and plan movement which ultmiately led him to explore how we can use computers to restore that functionality via Brain Computer Interfaces (BCIs) one day.
2. John has spent more than 30 years focused on the potential of using BCIs to solve some of the most debilitating physical ailments that humans face.
3. In this conversation, John gives an in-depth explanation of what a BCI is, how it works, the different types that are available, and the variety of uses that can come from each type.
4. We discuss where BCIs started in the early 2000’s in human trials, the advancement of the technology since then and where we are today.
5. John shares how he sees this technology being used on a larger scale, what is currently holding it back, and what it will take to get it to be used in more humans in the coming years.
6. John shares where he thinks the opportunities are for entrepreneurs in this space and how to get involved in this technology and transform it for more uses.
7. We discuss the ethical considerations around reading brain signals and using computers to send signals back to the brain telling it how to move the body and eventually, adjusting how people think and feel.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: What If Fellowship, Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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Today’s guest is Elyse Cohen, VP of Social Impact and Inclusion at Rare Beauty by Selena Gomez and a mental health advocate. Elyse is an expert on purpose driven brands, social impact, and has been hand selected by Selena Gomez to lead the impact efforts at Rare Beauty and the Rare Impact Fund addressing mental health. Previously Elyse has worked at the White House for First Lady Michelle Obama as Deputy Director of the former first lady’s legacy Let’s Move initiative, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, and various marketing agencies leading social impact initiatives and leveraging business and celebrity assets to create change on critical issues.

You can connect with Elyse here: LinkedIn

Links mentioned in the show: GoFundMe, Rare Beauty Website

What If Fellowship: https://whatif.vc/fellowship

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. We talk about Rare Beauty as a purpose driven brand, The Rare Impact Fund which addresses access and gaps in mental health, and the growth of the brand over time. We also discuss ways for people to get involved with the growth of the Rare Impact Fund.
2. Elyse shares her background, both personal and professional, and why mental health is so personally important to her and her family.
3. As part of her work, Elyse has mapped out who is doing what, and who is being impactful in the mental health space for the purpose of knowing where to deploy Rare Impact Fund capital. Elyse shares some of the insights she gained by doing that work including which companies are doing great work in the mental health space and where she wants to see capital deployed.
4. We discuss barriers to mental health care including stigma, cost of care and access in our current system, and what we need to do to address the issue of stigma around mental health.
5. Elyse shares about what the Rare Impact Fund plans to do with the capital that is raised and what benefits will come from these actions.
6. We discuss the lack of practitioners, why there is such a deficit in this field, and what changes could be made to fill the gap.
7. Elyse talks about the white space that still exists in mental health especially in education and technology, and why filling these spaces with more support will be beneficial in the long term.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email, What If Fellowship

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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You can’t fix what you don’t measure. Measurement and testing of our mental health lags the same capabilities in physical health care. Dr. Nick Allen, our guest today, is building a mental health measurement solution for clinical use. Today we talk to him about the challenges, and opportunity for his startup, Ksana Health.

Nick is leveraging the tools and technologies that he developed as the Director of University of Oregon’s Center for Digital Mental Health into products and services that are transforming mental health care.

Nick is a clinical psychologist and social neuroscientist who investigates the interaction between biological, psychological, and environmental risk factors during adolescent development and measures these factors to focus on prevention of mental health problems.

You can connect with Nick here on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-allen-42256218a/

Ksana Health website: https://ksanahealth.com/

What If Fellowship: https://whatif.vc/fellowship

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. Nick shares his background in psychology, his focus on adolescent mental health, and about his decision to build Ksana Health starting in 2019.
2. We talk in depth about Ksana Health, how the technology effectively measures mental wellbeing on a continuous basis, and where they are with the platform today.
3. Nick talks about the type of data that is being collected through Ksana Health, what this data is indicative of in terms of mental health, and what clinicians can do with this data to further treat their patients.
4. We talk about what is coming next for Ksana Health post fundraising, two big projects that they are currently pursuing, and what benefits will come from these expansions to the company.
5. Nick shares about which groups they are most interested in working with, why these groups fit with their current business model, and how it will lead to less crisis in mental health overall.
6. We discuss the previous attempts at digital phenotyping, why it did not work as well in the past, and how Ksana Health is doing it more efficiently.
7. Nick gives advice for those who are just starting to explore this space as investors and entrepreneurs, and what other opportunities are out there for people to get involved in who are interested in this space.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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Dr. Anthony Hassan, President and CEO of the Cohen Veterans Network (CVN) joins us today. CVN is a network of 25 non-profit mental health clinics providing care to veterans and their families. The facilities are located in or around historically dense veteran and active duty military communities.

Dr. Hassan is a veteran of the United States Army and Air Force with 30 years of experience in military behavioral health. He holds a Doctorate in Higher Education Administration from the University of South Florida and is an alumnus of the Harvard Business School.

You can connect with Anthony here: Cohen Veterans Network, Email

What If Fellowship: https://whatif.vc/fellowship

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. Anthony Hassan talks about his 30 years of experience in the military, focusing on the mental health of active-duty service members. We discuss the unique problems military members and veterans face regarding mental health and why finding help isn’t easy.
2. We discussed the stigma around mental health specifically in the military and veteran communities and why it seems to be worse at times than in other communities.
3. Anthony explained what mental health care services are in place for veterans, and where the gaps exist today and how the Cohen Veteran Network was created to fill those gaps.
4. We talk about the workforce inside the clinics, the shortage of mental health workers in America, and how the Cohen Veterans Network fosters their network of clinicians on staff.
5. The Cohen Veterans Network is continually experimenting with new technological advances and cutting-edge treatments that they believe can help veterans with their mental health. The CVN platform has become an incubator or pilot partner of choice for many up-and-coming technologies serving the mental health space.
6. Anthony shares what the long-term goals are for the clinics and what is needed in terms of support to make those goals a reality.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: What If Fellowship, Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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Today’s guest is Jon Kostakopoulos who was the first study participant in the NYU Psilocybin clinical trial. After years of struggling with alcoholism and after trying other options including in-patient programs, out-patient programs, AA, and pharmaceutical treatments, nothing was working for him. Finally, at age 25, Jon joined the clinical trial and underwent three different Psilocybin treatment sessions and has not craved alcohol since his first treatment session.

Jon has been interviewed on 60 minutes by Anderson Cooper regarding his Psilocybin treatments and since then has launched the Apollo Pact which is a non-profit funding medical research for mental health.

You can connect with Jon here: Email, Apollo Pact Website

What If Fellowship: https://whatif.vc/fellowship

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. Jon shares about his struggles with alcoholism, early signs that showed his irregular relationship with alcohol, and how addiction impacted his life.
2. We discuss the time put into his recovery and all the different options he attempted to get sober from ages 16-25.
3. Jon shares how he learned of the clinical trial at NYU, the screening process, time leading up to the beginning of the trial and what the user experience was like for him.
4. Jon goes into depth about the process of the clinical trial, what therapy was like before and after each Psilocybin experience, and what the aftermath was like during his year in the trial.
5. We discuss the effectiveness of psilocybin in treating mental health issues and how it works by getting to the root of the problem with a wide variety of mental and behavioral health disorders.
6. Jon shares about the work he is doing in the mental health space with Apollo Pact and how to get involved with this program.
7. We talk about reasons why we think the government is not providing more support to these solutions when the efficacy is high, what needs to happen to finally get that support, and the unseen benefits for the government.
8. We discuss the potential timeline for psilocybin to be more of a mainstream treatment with Oregon leading the way.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: What If Fellowship, Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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Today’s guest is Dan Housman. He’s the co-founder and CTO of Courage Therapeutics. We met Dan when he came through our first cohort of the What If Fellowship Program. His startup is a biopharma drug development business focused on eating disorders (anorexia nervosa specifically).

You can connect with Dan here: LinkedIn, Courage Therapeutics Website

Links mentioned in the show: NEDA, Feast, Daniel Le Grange Research

What If Fellowship Program: https://whatif.vc/

HERE ARE SOME THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT

1. Dan tells us about the history of Courage Therapeutics and why his personal experience surrounding eating disorders inspired him to use his background in molecular biology to find a solution to this problem.
2. We discuss the state of the market and current solutions available for eating disorders. Dan shares some of the reasons that he believes these current treatments only do so much.
3. We discuss the drug that he has been working on developing, the effects that it is meant to have on those who struggle with anorexia, and Dan shares his hope that it can help to reduce the need for more severe treatment options.
4. We talk about where Courage Therapeutics is at in the drug development timeline and what the next steps are to make sure that this drug will work and that it will be available as soon as safely possible.
5. We discuss the statistics around eating disorders, specifically anorexia nervosa, and what this problem looks like in the United States, but also globally. Dan also shares that it’s not about how big the numbers are that necessarily make a product successful. There are many contributing factors.
6. Dan shares about the stigma that surrounds eating disorders and why people are feeling unable to talk about them more.
7. Dan shares resources for those who are interested in knowing more about eating disorders, who want to find resources to help themselves or a loved one who may be struggling with anorexia, and for general research papers around the topic itself.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: What If Fellowship, Patreon, Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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Today’s guest is Ali Abramovitz. She is the co-founder of Chorus Meditation and she is here to talk about the work she is doing to make meditation a group activity. In this episode, we will talk about why group meditation is beneficial, how to do it, and what exactly the benefits are.

You can connect with Ali here: Linked In, Chorus Website, Facebook, Instagram

What If Fellowship: https://whatif.vc/fellowship

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. Ali shares about her background in business and as an investor, and how her own personal journey with meditation led her to create Chorus Meditation.
2. We discuss the stigma around meditation, what roadblocks exist for traditional meditation, and how Chorus is finding ways around these roadblocks.
3. Ali shares the ideas behind making meditation a group activity, the story of their development of Chorus, and how making meditation a shared experience benefits an individual.
4. We discuss the power of shared experiences and how it changes the mindset of the individuals involved, and the resulting relationships that can form from this.
5. Ali shares that the main problem they’re helping with is stress and how stress can affect your life and relationships.
6. We discuss how the group dynamic has changed since the pandemic, the changes that were made to Chorus, what changes had to occur to continue to bring these benefits to people, and what the user interface looks like post-pandemic.
7. We discuss where Ali sees Chorus going in the long run and what goals they have for the company.
8. Finally, Ali shares her final thoughts on consistency being the key to real change and how Chorus can help everyone.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: What If Fellowship, Patreon, Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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Sean McBride, VP Partnerships at Lyra Health joins us in this episode to talk about Lyra, behavioral health care broadly, and he experience working to reform the healthcare system throughout his career. Sean was the first employee at Lyra Health and shares with us about how the Company has scaled into a unicorn over the last 6 years. Lyra Health is focused on making behavioral health care more accessible and easier to find. Prior to Lyra, Sean worked at Castlight Health, The White House’s National Economic Council, and The Brookings Institution’s Health Care Reform Center among other positions.

You can connect with Sean here: LinkedIn

What If Fellowship: https://whatif.vc/fellowship

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. Sean shares his background in the healthcare industry, how it led him to Lyra Health, and his personal struggles with mental health.
2. We discuss what Sean thinks is the thing keeping employees from using the tools that their employer provides and what an employer can do to create a supportive culture in the workplace.
3. We talk about value-based care, what it is, and if we are moving in that direction in our system.
4. We discuss the need to get our society to focus on our mental health and make it more of a priority like our physical health.
5. Sean shares about Lyra Health, who they are, what they do for companies that they work with, and what benefits the employees get from an employer who works with Lyra.
6. We discuss what Lyra Health looked like in the early days and how the objective of the company remains the same since then.
7. Sean shares what he thinks is the ideal partner or customer for Lyra and what their marketing strategy looks like to reach this ideal audience.
8. Finally, Sean gives his opinion on where he sees the most opportunity for aspiring entrepreneurs who are just starting out in this space and where the problems that need to be fixed are.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: What If Fellowship, Patreon, Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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In this episode, we are talking about entrepreneur mental health. Our guest, Matthew Cooper, stepped down from his role as CEO of EarnUp after growing the business successfully for 7 years after creating it. When he stepped down, he cited mental health as the primary driver and wrote an incredibly authentic, vulnerable and amazing blog post about his decision on December 18, 2020.

You can connect with Matthew here: Blog, Twitter, Linked In

What If Fellowship: https://whatif.vc/fellowship

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. Matthew shares his story about his history of mental illness and how it led him to the place that he is at today in both his personal life and his career.
2. We talk about the stressors that come with starting a business and how certain beliefs can lead to a feeling of isolation while being successful at the same time.
3. We discuss what options are available for real support to entrepreneurs and founders of companies to prevent a mental health emergency or burnout.
4. Matthew shares what tools he has tried and what worked for him, his experiences with in-patient treatments, and his mental health cycles that he has gone through.
5. We discuss how mental health is not a linear journey for many people and how worth it it is to keep trying to find the right solution to your problem.
6. We talk about what we can be doing to better support entrepreneurs as an ecosystem of founders and investors, but also as friends or family members of entrepreneurs.
7. Finally, Matthew shares that human connection with safe people is a huge factor in keeping your mental health in a positive space as well as just sharing your story and being open with where you’re at mentally.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: What If Fellowship, Patreon, Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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In this episode we chat with long time healthcare startup investor, Esther Dyson. Esther has been very influential in the healthcare investing space for quite some time. It’s very hard to run into anyone doing anything meaningful in the broader healthcare space and not find a connection to Esther in some way.

She’s the executive founder of Way to Wellville, a non-profit dedicated to demonstrating the value of investing in health, including how the benefits of investing in health accrue over time and not always to the investors directly. Esther spends her time investing in startups, a lot of them in the health space, and she is a board member at a bunch of companies such as 23&Me, Meetup, Yandez, as well as being an early investor in Square and many others.

You can connect with Esther here: LinkedIn, Twitter, Wellville Website

What If Fellowship Program: https://whatif.vc/fellowship

HERE ARE SOME THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. Esther shares how she found her way into the mental health space as an investor and as an advocate encouraging more people to invest in the space.
2. We talk about the difference between short-term and long-term thinking regarding health solutions and how society needs to decide to invest in better health overall rather than focusing on only the individual.
3. Esther shared her opinion on what is actually beneficial to making a healthier society. It’s not what is being focused on now because we are too busy focusing on the short-term solutions.
4. There’s a disconnect between the number of people who want to fix the healthcare problems and the money that is actually being put towards the solutions. Esther shares why she thinks there is a disconnect and what can be done about it.
5. We discuss the wide range of the meaning of the word addiction and how it is not a moral failing, but rather a learned behavior.
6. Esther shares what early investors should be looking for when choosing which companies to invest in to avoid investing in predatory companies and how to evaluate your investing opportunities to find the right one for you.
7. We talk about what is the most important problem to focus on in the health space and how your personal mission affects your opinion on which problems are the main priority.
8. We talk about the effect that the poor educational system is having on our country and how fixing the health issues around kids in school will hopefully lead to a better future with a healthier society with better access to care.

Connect with the What If Ventures and the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: What If Fellowship, Patreon, Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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In this episode we speak with Dr. Errol De Souza, PhD, Executive Chairman of the Board of Directors at Bionomics. Bionomics just raised nearly $16mm to conduct clinical trials on their revolutionary drug to treat PTSD. Dr. De Souza is one of the premier entrepreneurs in the biotech space with a special focus on development of therapeutics for treatment of Central Nervous System disorders. During his career as an entrepreneur, Dr. De Souza has raised several hundred million dollars in capital in both private and public markets and has taken companies public (Neurocrine Biosciences IPO) and sold companies (Synaptic sale to Lundbeck).

Over Dr. De Souza's career, he has served in a number of high-ranking R&D roles, including SVP and U.S. head of Aventis (1998-2002), co-founder and EVP of R&D at Neurocrine (1992-1998) and Head of CNS at DuPont Merck (1990-1992).

Dr. De Souza is currently a Director of several public and private companies and currently serves as a member of the board of directors of Catalyst Biosciences (CBIO). He has previously served on the board of directors of several public companies including IDEXX Laboratories (IDXX), Neurocrine Biosciences (NBIX), Palatin Technologies (PTN) and Synaptic Pharmaceuticals (SNAP).

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. De Souza shares his background and how it led him to the biopharmaceutical industry.
2. We discuss what goes into the process of developing a drug for the Central Nervous System and ways that this process is the same and different from the development of other pharmaceuticals.
3. De Souza discusses the two categories of disorders that come from the Central Nervous System, psychiatric and neurological, and the drug development history of the two dating back to the 50’s.
4. We talk about the story behind Bionomics, their new compound BNC210 which is used for the treatment of PTSD which received a “Fast Track” designation from the FDA.
5. De Souza helps us break down exactly what is PTSD, how it occurs, what’s going on in the brain and talks about how we can use that knowledge to develop biopharmaceutical treatments for PTSD (which is what Bionomics is leading the way on right now). He talks about current PTSD treatments and their shortcomings as well.
6. We talk about the Bionomics collaboration with Merck which uses similar compounds in the clinical treatment of cognitive deficits in Alzheimer’s disease and why there are similarities between Alzheimer’s and PTSD based on the neurochemistry of the brain.
7. Finally, Dr. De Souza gives some advice for entrepreneurs who are starting out early in their career and investors that are coming into this space who lack the background knowledge.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: Patreon, Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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In this episode, we chat with Doug Drysdale, CEO of Cybin. Cybin, is a life sciences company advancing mushroom based psychedelic pharmaceuticals and non-psychedelic nutraceutical products as potential therapies for psychiatric and neurological conditions. Cybin is developing technologies and delivery systems aimed at improving bioavailability to achieve the desired effects of psychedelics at low dosage levels.

Doug is an extremely accomplished and experienced CEO who has chaired a NASDAQ-listed company and has built and turned around 3 different pharmaceutical companies over the last 12 years. He has more than 30 years of experience in the healthcare sector broadly and brings a level of expertise to the psychedelics space that is truly incredible.

You can connect with Doug here: LinkedIn, Doug’s website, Cybin website

Links mentioned in the show:Press Release: Cybin Completes Reverse Take-Over Transaction
Benzinga Article: Cybin Corp: Canada’s Largest Go-Public Financing in the Psychedelics Sector
Forbes Article: Pharmaceutical Startup Developing Sublingual Psilocybin Raises $34 Million to Fund Clinical Trials

What If Fellowship Program: https://whatif.vc/fellowship

HERE ARE SOME THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT

1. Doug tells us about his 30 years of experience in the healthcare field and how it led him most recently to the psychedelics space.
2. Doug shares that his experience working in a hospital lab gave him the motivation to begin work in the mental health field. In his time in the ER, he shares that he saw many teenage suicide attempts and drug overdoses. Like so many of us, his personal connection to depression and addiction is another contributing factor to wanting to work in this space.
3. We discuss how the pandemic has affected the psychedelic space and how mental health issues have been elevated through recent events.
4. We talk about the speed at which psychedelics are growing as a treatment for mental health differences and whether or not it this growth, and the ensuring hype are sustainable or not.
5. Doug explains that while it may seem that psychedelics are this “new solution” that these treatments have been around for more than 50 years, but they are just now coming into the light.
6. Doug explains that the decriminalization in Oregon is a potential “pilot” of sorts, for the rest of the United States.
7. Doug talks about the data that has been collected on psychedelic treatments lately and what we are learning about how these drugs work in ways we never even knew before including by opening up new connections and networks so that the brain is essence, healing itself.
8. We discuss the comparison of the psychedelic space to the cannabis space and how they are quite the opposite of each other. Doug explains the long history of scientific research supporting the use of psychedelics spanning 4-5 decades.
9. Doug shares his hope that we will see a strong network of compassionate use programs or palliative care centers being developed in the future. People at the end of their life have anxiety and depression, so they could benefit greatly from the use of psychedelics during this particular journey.
10. Finally, we discuss how the future of psychedelics look as investors. Doug advises to start looking beyond just psilocybin as the only molecule that can help people. There could be better compounds out there that we haven’t discovered yet because politics has dampened the growth in this space.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: What If Fellowship, Patreon, Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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In this mental health market update episode, we are covering valuation trends, investor sentiment, and our 9 key takeaways from the mental health startup market heading into 2021.

We cover public and private market valuation trends impacting mental health startups, and we dig into results from a 150-investor survey we recently conducted on valuation expectations and market sentiment. We also share our 9 key takeaways on the mental health startup market going into 2021 based on our 2020 experience investing $5.4mm dollars into 9 startups in the space at What If Ventures.

Links Mentioned:
Blog: Mental Health Investor Sentiment Survey: Extreme Optimism Going Into 2021

What If Fellowship: https://whatif.vc/fellowship

Connect with the What If Ventures and the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: What If Fellowship, Patreon, Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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Steve Gatena is the founder of Pray.com, the word’s #1 app for daily prayer and faith-based audio content. Prior to becoming an American Entrepreneur, Steve was an NCAA Champion. He played football for the University of Southern California where he won a Rose Bowl Championship as well as UC Davis where he won a Great West Conference Championship.

As a young entrepreneur, Steve started his first company at 22 which was a video agency. In 2012, he launched his 2nd company which quickly grew. In 2014, Steven was honored as an “Entrepreneur of the Year” at the United Nations. In 2016, after the loss of his close friend and mentor, Steve started Pray.com.

You can connect with Steve here: LinkedIn, Pray.com

What If Fellowship Program: https://whatif.vc/

HERE ARE SOME THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT

1. Steve tells us his story of personal loss and how it led him to the creation of Pray.com.
2. We discuss how Covid has had a huge impact on the popularity of Pray.com and their services, both free and premium.
3. Steve shares how Pray.com has experienced stigma and pushback but that there has been a lot of positive feedback and support. He shares about how stigma doesn’t hold him back and how his faith gives him the strength to continue forward.
4. Steve discusses what the future of digital faith looks like and what his vision for his company is moving forward in the next couple of years.
5. We discuss tips for entrepreneurs who want to grow in the religion and faith space, and how to follow your calling.
6. We finish by talking about how the group of people you choose to work with and the dynamic between these people has a huge impact on your entrepreneurial success

Connect with the What If Ventures and the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: What If Fellowship, Patreon, Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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Tom Insel is the mental health “czar” of the State of California, he’s a co-founder of Mindstrong Health, and formerly Director of the NIMH. Tom is someone I look up to greatly as a trailblazer in the mental health space around what can be done, what is being done and what could be done to improve access to high quality care.

Tom has a rare combination of skills as a highly experienced neuroscientist, founder, entrepreneur, and investor in mental health startups. His advice and thought leadership help lead policy initiatives around the country on the topic of access to high quality, evidence based mental health care.

This episode is an excerpt from a Zoom call between Tom and the first cohort of founders from the What If Fellowship. The audio quality isn’t perfect as it was not originally intended to be a “podcast”, but the insights from decades of experience trying to solve for better access to care are priceless and I am excited to share these insights with you. If you are a founder building in this space, you will want to consider what Tom has to share from his experience.

Links: Tom’s LinkedIn, Humanest Website, Tom’s Ted Talk: Can Smartphones Solve the Mental Health Crisis?

What If Fellowship Program (Mental Health Accelerator): https://whatif.vc/fellowship

HERE ARE SOME THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT

1. Tom talks about his experience in the mental health space, about his book that will be released next year, and he reflects on how 2020 has changed the mental health landscape.
2. We discuss the huge shift in the need for telehealth resources in 2020 due to the pandemic and how there will be a huge market for it even after the pandemic is finished.
3. Tom shares what he calls the three P’s for mental health and addiction recovery: 1) People, 2) Place, and 3) Purpose, and how long-term solutions need to take these three things into consideration.
4. Tom shares what he thinks is the recipe for a good startup company in this space and tips for how to build and grow in this space.
5. We talk about how the current system is broken for patients and their families when insurers and companies are the ones footing the bill and at the same time, trying to reduce costs for het sake of profit.
6. We discuss how we could tear down the whole system and build something new!
7. Tom shares his idea for what hasn’t been done yet for the mental health space but that could be a true game changer he would like to see by 2030.
8. Finally, Tom weighs in on the use of psychedelics in the treatment of mental disorders.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: What If Fellowship, Patreon, Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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Today’s guest is Megan Bell, Chief Strategy and Science Officer at Headspace where she directs a team focused on global corporate strategy, technology strategy, and new ventures including Headspace’s digital therapeutics subsidiary, Headspace Health.

She also oversees medical and clinical affairs, behavioral science and clinical research, and design research including implementation of a human-centered design process in product and content development.

Prior to Headspace, she was chief science officer and scientific founder at digital mental health startup, Lantern, whose core IP went on to become part of Omada Health, Ginger, and others.

As part of her incredible, pioneering digital health research, she developed and validated over 20 digital health interventions. Megan is an adjunct clinical assistant professor at Stanford as well.

You can connect with Megan here: Megan on LinkedIn, Headspace Website

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. Megan Bell joins us to talk about her background in the behavioral health world as a family member and daughter of someone who experienced severe mental health issues chronically. Additionally, as someone who has recovered from her own mental health disorders.
2. Megan shares how her past experiences led her to be an advocate for others who faced similar struggles and how she was determined to change the culture around mental health. Specifically, she wanted to focus primarily on prevention strategies.
3. When asked about her role in Headspace, Megan shares that she has been there for four years and how the company has evolved from a startup since she has been there. She shares that while she has had the title of many different roles over her time with the company that the passion remains the same: to make preventative mental health care more accessible to people.
4. We asked Megan about evidence-based care and why it’s so important. She shares that it requires commitment from all involved and holds them accountable for the help they are wanting to provide to members. Not only are they focused on solutions to the problem that your customers are having, but you are focused on the effectiveness of your solutions when you have evidence-based care.
5. How does Headspace measure to determine their effectiveness? Megan explains that Headspace is focused on resilience to stress and reduction of stress and that there is great evidence that mindfulness-based interventions can improve these areas.
6. Megan talks about entrepreneurs who are interested in innovating in the mental health space. She gives advice to those interested to pay close attention to who your target audience is, how you can sustain your company, and how many different things you want to introduce to the market at once when you are just starting out.
7. We discuss development teams and how it takes more than just passion to make changes in the mental health space. You need expertise in order to make a product that is beneficial to the consumer.
8. Megan shares about the importance of changing the culture
   around mental health and addressing mental health when one is healthy, not just when it becomes a disorder.
9. Finally, Megan discusses the ethics behind supporting a company that works in the mental health space and making sure you are choosing to invest in something that has processes in place for risk management, quality assurance, and overall choosing to support something that is making the world a better place.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: Patreon, Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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Michael Acton Smith, co-Founder of Calm joins us to talk about building the #1 app for sleep, meditation and relaxation, with over 75 million downloads and over 700,000 5-star reviews.

Michael tells us about how the idea was born from his own personal discovery of the power of meditation. In our conversation he tells the Calm founding story, and talks about the journey to making medication accessible to tens of millions of people while taking on stigma around meditation and mental health long before the recent surge in interest around the space.

In addition to being the co-founder of Calm, Michael also was the founder of Mind Candy and creator of Moshi Monsters, the online world for children that grew to 80 million registered users and expanded offline into books, toys, games, magazines, music and movies. Michael is also the founder of Firebox.com, Ping Pong Fight Club, and Berwickstock music festival. In 2014, he was awarded an Order of the British Empire for his service to the creative industries.

You can connect with Michael here: LinkedIn, Twitter, Calm Website

What If Fellowship: https://whatif.vc/fellowship

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. Michael Acton Smith joins us to talk about how he came to find meditation as a resource for himself in his personal life. Michael shares the story of how his experience in the entertainment industry left him feeling burnt out and how meditation is the most valuable skill he has learned in his lifetime.
2. Calm origin story: With his co-founder Alex Tew, Michael wanted to bring meditation to people through something that was accessible, relatable, and simple. The app creation was their idea to achieve all of these goals in their attempt to change the world of mental health for the better.
3. Michael talks about how meditation is so much more than just sitting quietly and breathing. It is a neuroscience that helps to rewire your brain to get out of the fight or flight mindset and how to help your prefrontal cortex frequencies to be normalized.
4. How has Covid-19 and the pandemic affected Calm?

Isolation mixed with anxiety surrounding the pandemic has caused mental health to be on the forefront of everyone’s minds. Michael talks about how his business was growing before this but now it has grown dramatically. He tells about his sense of responsibility to react to this current situation and to provide more content for subscribers. 5. Michael shares how calm has extended its reach to not only individuals but to companies as well. Calm is being used in businesses to learn how to manage stress, how to connect with colleagues, and how to increase emotional intelligence within the workplace.

Not only is this an affordable and life-changing choice for companies, but he states that it is a no brainer. If companies offer gym memberships to increase physical wellness, they should be offering calm memberships to increase mental wellness too. 6. How do you see the business of Calm evolving over the next few years?

Michael talks with us about the breadth of growth opportunities in front of the business in the coming years. He compares it to the scale of Netflix or Spotify subscriptions. In addition to that growth, he would like to see Calm being offered on a global scale in multiple languages.

Michael discusses expanding calm into a lifestyle brand featuring clothing, hotels, even a resort on an island of Calm! When asked about what a Calm island would look like, he described it as a week or two getaway to focus on recentering yourself with healthy food, exercise, and meditation services. 7. Advice for mental health founders:

We talked about what founders in the mental health space could do if they are just starting to splash around in this space. Michael recommends above all else, patience. He says to not go after the first idea that pops into your head. He gives other tips to get yourself into the right mindset to find the big opportunities.

To expand on this, we discussed Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that are most important to pay attention to early on as a founder. Michael shares that finances are so key to tracking as well as being incredibly mindful with hiring and workspace.

Additionally, Michael shares that in order to keep retention up of your customers, you need to create new content and how you want to keep your business on the front of your customers' minds. 8. Michael talks about the importance of teaching meditation to younger generations. He shares his excitement surrounding how we are seeing mindfulness education in schools. He raises the question, “what is more important than teaching the next generation how to improve their emotional intelligence?” 9. Finally, Michael shares how meditation is a skill that you can learn, and that means you have to be taught how to utilize it. Not only that, but you need to practice using it in your daily life in order to get better at it. We are starting to move in a direction where more and more people are using these skills in their life and being more open about mental health. Michael shares how he feels privileged to be able to be a part of this movement.

Connect with the What If Ventures and the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: What If Fellowship, Patreon, Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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Ronan Levy is co-founder and the Executive Chairman of Field Trip Health, a psychedelic assisted treatment business. Ronan joins us to talk about how psychedelic treatments work, what all the hype is about, where we are by way of regulation in the industry and the future use cases of psychedelic treatments.

Prior to Field Trip, he was an early pioneer in the medical cannabis industry which gave him a unique perspective on launching the world’s first integrated company in legal psychedelics. Field Trip currently has operations in North America, the Caribbean and Europe where their goal is to become to leader in medical and therapeutic applications of psychedelics.

Links mentioned in the show: Ronan Levy on LinkedIn, https://www.fieldtriphealth.com/

MAPS Research Results (MDMA used for PTSD treatment)

David Nutt: Psychedelic Psychiatry’s Brave New World (Cell 2020)

NYU End of Life Psychedelic Study (long term positive impact of psychedelics)

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. Ronan talked about how he found his way into the Psychedelic space by way of the legal cannabis industry from 2013 through 2018.
2. Ronan told the founding story of Field Trip Health and talked about what exactly they do, and their mission which is to “heal the sick, and better the well, through psychedelic medicine and therapies.” We talked about how psychedelic treatments have been used to cure mental health problems that so far, through other treatments, have only been mitigated, not cured.

Ronan talked about what Field Trip Health does as a company. In addition to covering the obvious stuff around running psychedelic assisted psychotherapy clinics, he explains other components of their business including content creation, and their efforts around drug development. 3. How do psychedelics work? Ronan took time to explain how psychedelic treatments work by breaking them down into three primary effects:

Psychedelics provide a rather immediate natural anti-depressant effect. Most people report incredibly significant improvement in mood after using psychedelics.

When on a trip, people report re-living or experiencing emotions or events with some degree of objectivity or detachment allowing that person to go back into feelings and emotions from their past and start to process those feelings and embrace emotional healing from those instances.

Following a trip, people experience a period of neural plasticity where the circuitry of your brain is more adept and responsive to change and the influence of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.

Between the dynamics of the mood improvement, the emotional processing, and the CBT that can accelerate the emotional processing that lead to fundamental changes in our neurology. This is why psychedelics can be so effective.

Some of the clinical trials, such as the trial at MAPS using MDMA to treat PTSD are showing total resolution of all symptoms of PTSD in 70% of people with chronic, severe PTSD. This is fundamentally different than any other treatment for mental health differences on the market today. 4. We talked about the neuroscience around how psychedelics impact the brain. We discussed how psychedelic treatments impact the “Default Mode Network” (or the “operating system) of the brain). Ronan explains that during a trip, the Default Mode Network is quieted. This is the part of the brain where our “ego” lives.

Our ego is what holds our self-identity and when you can reduce or remove that barrier then you are able to dig into the machinery of how you define yourself and fundamentally address who you are, and address past trauma and pain in a way that leads to real changes. 5. We talked about the regulatory landscape as well. Ronan explained that he is 100% convinced that psilocybin and MDMA will be removed from schedule 1. The only question is around timing and it could be anywhere from 6 months to 5 years from now depending on who you ask and how things unfold politically.

We talked about how far along MAPS is with their phase 3 study using MDMA for treatment of PTSD and how MAPS has spoken publicly about expecting approval by 2022 or 2023 for their use of MDMA for treating PTSD. We also talked about how synthetic psilocybin developers such as Compass Pathways have indicated progress toward approvals that would lead to widespread use by 2025. 6. We talked at length about where people can read more to get smart on the psychedelic space. Many of those resources are linked above in the “links” section. 7. I asked Ronan why now the time for the psychedelic renaissance. He explains that as a society we are going through a mental health and wellbeing revolution. Additionally, research has picked up in earnest at Johns Hopkins, NYU, Imperial College and others on the medical use of psychedelics. At the same time, MAPS has made such enormous progress in showing the effect of MDMA on treating things like PTSD that it is hard to ignore the healing potential. Also, the broader changing attitudes toward cannabis are helping people revisit stigmatized medicines more broadly. And finally, the Opioid crisis has done a lot to destroy trust in big pharma / industrial medical complex which is fueling a desire to find more alternative treatments. 8. We talked about the differences between the early cannabis industry and the early psychedelic industry as well. The biggest differences that that the renaissance around psychedelics is driven by academic and clinical research. The evidence around psychedelics is much more persuasive than it ever had been for cannabis. There are endless volumes of research pointing to the clinical effectiveness of psychedelics. Some of this is linked above in the “links” section of these show notes.

We also talked about how the industry around psychedelic medicine has emerged versus how the cannabis industry emerged. Cannabis is more of a product focused market where consumer purchase cannabis and use it alone, at home privately. In the psychedelic space, its different. Psychedelic drug delivery is more of a service-based approach. It is not just the drug that matters. It’s the set and setting and the protocols around the trip that matter. It’s not something you can just do at home as easily as you can with cannabis. 9. Where do we go from here? What is the future of psychedelics? What can it be used to treat?Ronan explained that mental health use-cases are really the low hanging fruit of psychedelic use-cases. He believes that we can use the anti-inflammatory nature of the drugs to treat things such as wounds, other injuries, and really any condition that includes inflammation . Ronan talked about work currently being done around treating Alzheimer’s patients and how there is also a growing body of evidence around the expansive properties of psychedelic medicines to enhance creativity, empathy, and general wellbeing.

Ronan explains that psychedelic treatments will revolutionize psychiatry to the point where in 20-30 years we will look back on psychiatric practices before psychedelics as barbaric.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: Patreon, Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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Aimee-Louisse Carton, founder of KeepAppy, shares her story with us which includes getting cornered in a bathroom by an investor at a startup event, where the investor called her “suicide girl.” This investor continued to tell Aimee she would never be able to raise money because of her past suicide attempt.

In this episode, Aimee talks to us about her struggles with mental health and how they did lead her to an attempt on her own life and how that moment has ultimately led her to build something to help many people who have experienced similar pain.

Aimee describes herself as a social entrepreneur, leveraging tech-for-good to destigmatize mental unwellness and to empower people with the tools they need to regain control over their well-being. She is on a mission to create the most comprehensive and engaging wellness app out there, aiming to create something that can be used and made accessible for all!

Her startup, KeepAppy is a mission-driven social enterprise. They are actively seeking partnerships with emergency helplines, student unions and corporate wellness officers across the globe.

Connected with Aimee and KeepAppy: www.keepappy.com, Aimee-Louise Carton on LinkedIn,
Aimee’s Email: alcarton@keepappy.com

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. We spoke with Aimee about her own mental health journey. She shared about a time when she made an attempt to take her own life at the culmination of mental health, and physical health struggles she had and how that led her to pursue mental health and wellness and ultimately to create her own startup in the space.
2. We talked about proactive and positive techniques she learned to use to take control of her mental health from a preventative perspective (journaling, goal setting, meditation, and more).
3. Aimee created Keepappy, just over 1 year ago which has reached over 25,000 people in over 100 countries – we talked about how her journey, and her pain has been turned into a resource to help people all over the world.
4. Aimee told us about how she has been discriminated against by rather influential investors in her local startup ecosystem because of her mental health past. After a startup event in Ireland, she was cornered in the restroom by an investor who told her that mental health was just a fad, and that she would be forever known as “that suicide girl” and nobody would ever invest in her because they couldn’t trust her.
5. Aimee talks about how that incident cut her to her core. She felt reduced to one moment in her life and that one moment was going to define her to some people. Many people who struggle with mental health differences feel like they will be defined by that one moment if they come forward and ask for help. This is stigma, and this is what we exist to combat. We are so grateful that people like Aimee are willing to come forward and tell their stories. This is the only way we will ever overcome stigma as a society and encourage people to take care of their mental health broadly.
6. Thankfully, Aimee and her team were able to overcome that moment and raise their pre-seed round.
7. I shared with Aimee about a time when I was fundraising when an investor told me I could not raise money because of my past. In the coming weeks, I plan to share more about times when I’ve been singled out and discriminated against because of my past with addiction and bipolar disorder as well.
8. Aimee and I talked about needing to change the conversation around mental health so that people who need help managing stress, or anxiety etc. feel comfortable coming forward to get help before their problems turn into a major mental health issue that could lead them to where Aimee was with her struggles. Aimee talks about how we spend a lot of time building solutions for the 1 in 4 people who struggle with mental illness, but we also need solutions to help the 3 in 4 who do not technically have an illness, but who do need to proactively manage their mental health just like they manage their physical health on a daily basis.
9. We also talked about reducing stigma in order to foster more mental health startup creation. Aimee talked about the high concentrations of occurrences of mental health differences within the entrepreneurial ecosystem and how entrepreneurship attracts people with these differences to it, like moths to a flame she said. We’ve talked about this and the numbers that support this claim in past episodes with Dr. Michael Free man and others as well (see episode #2).

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: Patreon, Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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Today’s guest is Johnny Chen, founder, and CEO of Sail. Sail is a coaching community that empowers men to be more vulnerable. The focus of their platform is the “Peloton of the mind” specifically for men.

Sail currently offers several 4-week coaching programs designed specifically for men. These programs are comprised of four, 90-minute sessions on specific topics such as leadership, relationships, emotional intelligence, etc. The groups are comprised of 10 like-minded men who are seeking self-improvement. These programs are a mix of teaching, coaching, and coach-led practice around certain skill sets. It’s a safe space for men to open up learn to share and be vulnerable.

Johnny talks to us in this episode about how they help men learn to focus on training their mental and emotional muscles with a focus on active learning backed by the guidance of a coach and a community of like-minded peers.

Links mentioned in the show: Sail Website, Johnny on LinkedIn, Johnny on Twitter, Sail on Twitter,

Join the Sail Men’s Slack Community Here

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. Johnny shares his personal story about why and how he found his way into the mental health space as an entrepreneur. Johnny set out to build a platform that helps men that changes the narrative around men’s mental health.
2. We talked about how in America, men have been conditioned to suppress their feelings, “boys don’t cry” and we need to “man up.” The result is that men are 4x more likely to commit suicide, 3x more likely to abuse alcohol and drugs, and 99% of school shooters are men.
3. We compared the physical fitness revolution to the brewing mental health revolution. We talked about how people spend time working on their physical health, even in the absence of a physical health diagnosis. We need to get men to the place where they seek to work on their mental health, in the absence of a diagnosis.
4. Johnny talks about who his typical customer is. The profile he described is a male, between 25 and 54 who are hyper focused on improving their lives already. Johnny calls these people “self-optimizers”. They are likely already doing some kind of meditation or yoga, and they may participate in CrossFit or run marathons or some other personal performance challenge activity.
5. We talked about how we get people who either do not want help, or don’t know that they need help to self-optimize around their mental health. We talked about societal pressures, behavioral norms and how we are conditioned as men to think we can do everything ourselves and we do not need help. Sail is positioning itself to help men get comfortable asking for help even when they are already doing “well.”

6. Sail products / services:

   1. Coaching Programs – Currently offer several 4-week coaching programs. These programs are comprised of four, 90-minute sessions on specific topics such as leadership, relationships, emotional intelligence, etc. The groups are comprised of 10 like-minded men who are seeking self-improvement. These programs are a mix of teaching, coaching, and coach-led practice around certain skill sets. It’s a safe space for men to open up learn to share and be vulnerable.
   2. Sail Community – A free community where men can come to connect with other men and talk about challenges they are facing around life, career, productivity hacks, relationships, or anything that’s on their mind.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: Patreon, Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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Dr. Adam Gazzaley, founder of Akili Interactive joins us to talk about the intersection of molecular and experiential treatments for mental health conditions. Akili is the maker of the first ever video game to be approved by the FDA as a digital therapeutic treatment for a clinical condition. We talked about how Adam and his team figured out how to use video games in this manner, how they got approval to do so and the science that proves a video game can help improve cognitive function.

We dig into the future interactions of molecular and experiential medicine and where his revolutionary treatments can take us as we learn to leverage technology to help us get better when it comes to mental health, not tear us down or make us worse which is often how people think of technology these days.

In addition to his role as Founder of Akili Interactive, Adam is a co-founder of Jazz Venture Partners, and a professor of Neurology, Psychiatry and Physiology at UCSF. Dr. Adam Gazzaley obtained an M.D. and Ph.D. in Neuroscience at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, completed Neurology residency at the University of Pennsylvania, and postdoctoral training at University of California, Berkeley.

Links mentioned in the show: Adam on LinkedIn, https://www.akiliinteractive.com/

Adam’s book: “The Distracted Mind: Ancient Brains in a High-Tech World”

Neuroscape at UCSF, Sensync: The Future of Wellness

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. Adam Gazzaley joins us to talk about his work in neuroscience and neurology and how he found his way to the startup world and ultimately building the first video game, ever approved by the FDA as a therapeutic treatment (Akili Interactive).
2. Adam talks about what drew him into the startup world and explains how he really did it out of necessity. The solutions his research was pointing to had not been built and he felt compelled to create what he felt the world needed.
3. Adam tells the founding story of Akili Interactive, a therapeutic closed-loop video game company. Akili recently obtained FDA approval for their prescription video game for treating mental health differences. EndeavorRx is the name of the gaming platform that was approved by the FDA in June of 2020. Cleared by the FDA as a class 2 medical device to treat children with ADHD.
4. How can a video game be a therapeutic?
   Adam explains how experiences have been used to change our brain for thousands of years and how video games are just another experience. Because video game experiences are highly adaptable, and because we now have technology that allows us to measure how the brain is reacting to experiences, we can craft experiences in real time to target different cognitive functions.

Designing and developing a video game as medicine is an entire process that involves understanding all the complexities of game mechanics, art, music, the story, etc. and combine that with the targeting of specific neural systems. Then there’s the Long slow validation process that takes a lot of time, people, money, etc. This took a decade to accomplish. 5. Is this the first time the FDA has approved a video game as digital therapeutics?
Yes, this is the first video game of any kind to be approved for clinical treatment by the FDA. 6. Adam explained how a video game actually helps an individual improve their attention and focus. It works by challenging an individual to focus their attention on a goal, then rapidly move their attention to other goals. Adam and his team found this leads to benefits that could be quantified and later proved that some of those improvements were in abilities not even directly challenged in the game. 7. We talked about the future, and where this technology can go. Adam explains that he is incredibly optimistic about a future where our technology is not tearing us down or being used to make us lazy or offload us of things that are natural to us, but to really enhance us. 8. Adam is currently doing research on the intersection of molecular and experiential treatments with a specific focus on psychedelics. He is studying ways to measure the impact of the experience (the set and setting) in which psychedelic treatments are administered. He is using multi-modal biosensing during treatment sessions to understand the impact of the treatment and further develop more personalized and precise treatment plans for individuals.

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Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures

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Jessica recently published a book called “Wired This Way” on finding mental, emotional, physical and spiritual well-being as an entrepreneur. The book has been called “the essential user’s manual for the entrepreneurial spirit.” I got so much out of this conversation personally, and I am truly humbled and honored that we get to share it with you. I hope you will get as much out of it as I did.

Jessica Carson is the Director of Innovation at the American Psychological Association where she leads the organization’s effort to innovation and product strategy. She has such an incredible and diverse set of experience from her role at the APA to being an expert in residence at Georgetown University, she was formerly a Neuroscience & Psychology Research Fellow at the National Institute of Health (NIH), and a Director at NextGen Venture Partners.

Connect with Jessica: Jessica’s website, Jessica on LinkedIn

Check Out Her Book: Wired This Way

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. Jessica Carson, author of “Wired this Way” joins us and talk about her own personal journey and how she was drawn to the mental health space by her own desire to understand herself. She talks about how she has struggled in the past with her own mental health, and physical health and how some of her greatest, brightest and most productive strengths started to backfire on her because she was doing everything to the extreme.
2. She talks about how early in her career she found herself fascinated by the duality of traits she saw in creators and entrepreneurs. She talks about the “light” qualities such as ambition, productivity, intuitive, charismatic, open to experiences, etc. and how those light qualities seemed to always be paired with “dark” qualities such as depression, addiction, arrogance, distractibility, and others. She observed that creators are this complex set of “opposites.”
3. We talked about her book, “Wired this Way”, and how she came to write it based on her own experiences light and dark qualities, what those qualities mean and how we can harness them for good as entrepreneurs.
4. One of my favorite parts of this talk is when she explains how entrepreneurs can turn their focus toward understanding themselves in order to learn to leverage their light and dark qualities for positive outcomes even after making mistakes along the way.
5. Jessica explains that a lot of our struggles and strengths are one in the same. This sounds really simple, on the surface, but it’s far more complex than I originally thought. Jessica and I spent time unpacking what that means and how entrepreneurs can leverage knowing this and using it to know themselves better.
6. We talked about how the “dark” components of entrepreneur mental health have “light” components to them that are an asset to the entrepreneur. Jessica explains this in the context of potential energy, or the difference between north and south poles, or the power differential that exists between positive and negative like with protons and electrons. This differential, or potential energy is a lot of what drives entrepreneurs to great success but if unmanaged, and unchecked can also be the downfall of many great entrepreneurs. We talked about why, and how entrepreneurs can learn to avoid the downsides of their light/dark qualities while maximizing the upsides.
7. We talked about traits like charisma. Charisma is an essential quality of the entrepreneurial spirit. We discussed how important this trait is for things like fundraising, etc. However, there is also a dark side to charisma. The dark side can include inauthenticity, manipulation, suppressing your feelings, or pretending to be someone else. The stronger the light, one could argue, the stronger the dark side (fake it ‘til you make it, etc.).
8. We discussed the idea of vulnerability and how we can foster an environment in the startup ecosystem where founders, entrepreneurs, investors, and others can be vulnerable together and how that vulnerability could (and likely will) drive better outcomes for all stakeholders including investors in the long run because creating that space for the entrepreneurs to be well, is what allows them to create, and drive maximum value.
9. Jessica helped me catalyze this thought that’s been swimming around in my head that my role as an investor is to show up in a way that creates space mentally, emotionally, and physically for my founders to maximize their creativity. This creates maximum value in the long run for everyone. It took me years of self-discovery and people like Jessica to help me realize this.
10. We talked about why entrepreneurs are blown up by the press and cast aside when they make a mistake. We do not seem to give entrepreneurs room to make mistakes, and improve, and do better. We crucify people who make mistakes and write them off which is perpetuates the negative dynamics in the ecosystem in a way that paying for therapy (by VCs, for founders) is not going to fix.
11. We discussed how we can do better as investors, entrepreneurs, and an ecosystem when it comes to allowing entrepreneurs to create, win, fail, evolve, improve, and learn themselves, so they can improve and do more, better, faster, further next time. Jessica explains that at the end of the day, the degree of a creator’s self-understanding really drives their ability to leverage their complexity, and the duality of their spirit. This energy to do well exists already, the entrepreneur just needs to be given space to create and leverage that potential energy.
12. I asked Jessica for advice on how to learn more about myself and get to this place of harnessing the light and the dark qualities of ourselves. She said she encourages us to leverage creative outlets, outside of our primary business pursuits that let our minds explore, think, learn, and digest.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: Patreon, Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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Charlie Hartwell and his wife, Maureen Pelton, MSSW, join us this week to talk about their experiences in the mental health space.

Charlie is the Managing Partner at Bridge Builders Collaborative, the most active investor in the mental health startup space over the last decade by far and co-founder of the ShiftIt Institute. Maureen is a Co-Founder of the ShiftIt Institute, is a pioneer in the field of embodiment - aligning our true nature, attuning our highest potential, and holding space for divinity.

I view Charlie as a mentor and trailblazer in the mental health startup investment domain. In this episode I asked him for some advice on the space, how to be a better investor, and what responsibility we have as investors in this space broadly.

Links mentioned in the show:

Maureen on Twitter, Charlie on Twitter, Maureen’s Course In Conscious Breathing on Insight Timer, https://www.shiftit.com

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. Bridge Builders Collaborative is one of the most active, if not the most active, investor in the mental health startup space. I talked to Charlie about how they found their way into investing in this space, how they view the space and how Bridge Builders Collaborative operates as an investing group.
2. We talked and traded ideas about the white space in the mental health startup space and what we are both seeing by way of investment opportunity including what we’ve focused on lately, and where we want to be focused in the near future.
3. Maureen recently launched a conscious breathing course on the Insight Timer app. She talked to me about what conscious breathing is, her course, and explained the impacts of conscious breathing on us as people and why it’s important. She explains what proper breathing is, what sciences tells us about breathing, and the simplicity of breathing as a tool to regulate ourselves.
4. I spent some time asking Charlie and Maureen for some personal mentorship and advice on being an investor in the mental health space. We also talked about what responsibilities investors in this space have not only to make good investments, but more broadly, when it comes to the greater well being of not just founders, but society at large.
5. I asked Charlie and Maureen for advice on how we can “do no harm” as investors in this space and avoid funding things that don’t work, or could hurt people because we are not doctors or experts in the science of clinical effectiveness. They gave me some excellent insights.

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Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures

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We are trying something new. We want to leverage our platform to tell the story of those entrepreneurs who are building in the mental health space that do not get the air time they deserve.

In this new segment, you will hear from a handful of mental health startup founders. Each of these entrepreneurs has been given 3 minutes, uninterrupted, un-edited, to tell their story. They will explain why they are working in this space, what are they building, and how far along are they.

We intend to publish founder spotlights a couple times a month.

This is not a fundraising pitch. In fact, some of these entrepreneurs are not building what you would consider a venture-backed business (however, some are). This is not intended to be "shark tank."

Featured in this episode:

1. Resurgo - https://www.resurgo.co/
2. MiResource - https://www.miresource.com
3. Listening Inn - http://www.listeninginn.com/
4. Bipolar Documentary - https://www.bipolardocumentary.com/
5. ARC Fitness Ltd - http://www.arcfitness.co.uk/

Other Links Mentioned:

Mental Health Startup Slack Community

Stigma Podcast Patreon Page

The purpose of this new segment is to leverage our platform for a few things:

1. Provide visibility for entrepreneurs building mental health solutions. You aren't going to be hearing from the high flying, big names in the space like Ginger, Mindstrong, and others here. This is a place to learn about the founders who receive less fanfare, and less attention.
2. Connect entrepreneurs to people who may be able to help them.
3. Give our audience a sense of what ideas are being built which may encourage more people to get involved in the space and maybe even help match talent, resource, and capital with entrepreneurs.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: Patreon, Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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Today’s guest is Richard Skaife. Richard is Founder of the Conscious Fund which invests in early stage startups pioneering plant powered medicine with a focus on psychedelics. To date, they have invested in startups such as ATAI Life Sciences, Bexson Biomedical, Cybin, Gilgamesh, Hive, Microdose, Numinus and more.

Richard talks about how he found his way into VC, and gives a great summary of the psychedelic startup ecosystem including an overview of the current regulatory environment.

Connect with Richard: Richard on Twitter, Conscious Fund on Twitter, Richard on LinkedIn

Other Links Mentioned: 1961 U.N. Drug Convention, https://maps.org/, Psychedelic Industry Job Board

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. Richard talks about his path to VC and how he ended up starting a plant-based medicine focused venture fund (the Conscious Fund). We talked about why he is drawn to the mental health space and specifically the psychedelics space.
2. The Conscious Fund likes to invest in the earliest stages and looks for founders who have a true alignment with the psychedelic medicine space. They also participate all the way up to series-B as well.
3. We walked through the regulatory landscape around psychedelics, why they are illegal, and we went all the way back to the 1961 U.N. Drug Convention. We talked about how we got to where we are legally, and where we are going from a regulatory perspective in this space.
4. The amount of information around efficacy and safety is extensive and we’ve had a lot of that information for many decades and is now being resurfaced.
5. We talked about the size of the startup market in the psychedelic medicine space. There are probably 140 to 160 companies in the space and there are more entering every day. WE talked about ancillary business opportunities outside of the compounds themselves as well.
6. Richard explained where the white space in the industry is today. He talked about medical conditions that are not being serviced by other psychedelic medicine companies in areas such as joint pain or specific addictions, etc. He also talked about how wide the ancillary services market is for tech creation.
7. The Conscious Fund launched a jobs board for the entire psychedelic space as well. Link here: https://theconscious.fund/psychedelic-industry-jobs/
8. We talked about the efficacy levels of psychedelics versus other treatments for things like mental health differences and addiction.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: Patreon, Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures, Mental Health Rolling Fund, Rolling Fund FAQ

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Mental Health Market Update: 8/5/2020 – Teladoc Acquisition of Livongo

Big news today, August 5th, in the world of disruptive healthcare companies, Teladoc is acquiring Livongo for a valuation of approximately $18.5 billion dollars. In this episode we do a little bit of analysis of the deal then talk about what it means to entrepreneurs in the digital health space.

Links mentioned in the show:

What If Ventures rolling fund: https://angel.co/v/back/what-if-ventures/

Join webinar with What If Ventures and AngelList on 8/14: https://forms.gle/PSCiSiVS8mHk1gf8A

Mental Health Startup Slack Community: Slack Community Link Here

TDOC’s management presentation on the M&A deal: Deck Link Here

You can support Stigma Podcast and get deeper insights and white papers here on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/stigmapodcast

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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How we breathe can have a profound impact on our mental health and wellness. Humans are one of only a few species that can proactively manipulate our breathing patterns and those patterns are associated with various emotional states of being. In today’s episode we learn about the physiological and psychological impacts of breathing

Max Gomez and Addie Conner, created their early stage startup, Breathwrk, to help people consciously improve their breathing in order to achieve health and wellness. In this episode we dig into how breathing impacts us, why it does and the formation story of this startup looking to revolutionize the way we breathe.

You can connect with Max and Addie here: Max on LinkedIn, Addie on LinkedIn,

Links mentioned in the show: https://www.breathwrk.com/

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. We talked about why breathwork is worthy of its own category separate of meditation. We talked about the differences between meditation and breathwork as well as how they are similar.
2. Max, a neuroscientist by education, explains the science of breathing and meditation.
3. Max explains that a lot of people try meditation and feel like they fail when they are not able to focus or stay on task in their first few sessions. So, they give up. Breathing is easier to start and have success with.
4. They explain how the Breathwrk app was built intentionally to be different than the meditation apps such as Calm and Headspace.
5. Max is from a small town in New Jersey. Studied Neuroscience at USC. He talks about falling in love with how the body and brain works. He realized med school wasn’t for him, picked up a minor in entrepreneurship and found a passion for applying neuroscience to business.
6. Max talks about going through some tough personal challenges. He found himself in a very anxious state and it led him to depression that found him spending an entire month in bed. He started looking for a solution that could help him get out of this anxious state.
7. Max talks about going to a coach and being exposed to simple breathing exercises. He talks about how within 15-30 seconds he already felt better. He realized this is the solution.
8. The vertical of breathwork is quite diverse from waking up in the morning, to high performance athletes, Navy SEALs, sleep improvement, and may more applications.
9. There is a physiological and psychological reaction that takes place during breathing exercises.
10. Max looked in the app store to see if there was a breathwork app and could not find anything dedicated to breathing. So, he decided to spend a couple weeks building a prototype of an idea, mainly for his personal use, to help him with his own breathwork.
11. Max and Addie met through a mutual friend. And immediately hit it off and realized they were passionate about this at the same time independent of one another. The universe brought them together and they began to work on this product together.
12. Addie talks about her immense experience in online advertising. She had early access to Facebook ad APIs. Eventually built a huge Facebook ad agency.
13. Later Addie went to Mexico to live in a nudist commune for 3 months. She met a shaman, then went to the Amazon jungle and was working with Shamans while being on a journey to find herself. Along that journey she reconnected with an old mentor of hers who is an expert on flow states (neuro semantics of high performance). He made her aware of breathwork.
14. Breath became her favorite modality. She talks about trying to get into meditation, but it never working for her. She realized that breathwork was far more powerful in her life and it was easier for her to develop a daily habit around.
15. They tell the founding story of Breathwrk and how they decided to build a business and how that’s gone so far.

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Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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Today’s guest is Nicki Tessler (Psy.D, MBA) the Divisional Vice President for Behavioral Health at Universal Health Services (UHS) where she provides senior-level leadership for multiple hospitals across multiple stages for UHS. She joins us to talk about innovation in the behavioral health space and how UHS is leading the way with their “Innovation Hub” that supports behavioral health entrepreneurship.

Nicki is an extremely accomplished, and experienced Behavioral Health Executive with an impressive 20-year career in the space that began in Jackson Behavioral Health Hospital, leading to Hospital Corporation of America and now Universal Health Services.

At UHS, Nicki has led the charge on innovation within the Behavioral Health Division by developing the “Innovation Hub” internally which promotes entrepreneurship in order to drive growth within the UHS business through innovation, speed, and urgency.

Nicki has stellar academic credentials which include her Psy.D. in Psychology from the University of Denver; Executive M.B.A. in Health Sector Management & Policy from the University of Miami; and M.A. in Psychology from Pepperdine University. She’s also earned designations as a Licensed Psychologist and Six Sigma Champion.

You can connect with Nicki here: LinkedIn, Nicoletta.Tessler@uhsinc.com

Stigma Podcast Patreon Page: Stigma Patreon Page

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. Nicki gave us an overview of UHS with some facts about the business including:

-Founded in 1979, now a Fortune 500 (ranked 281)
-2019 Revenue $11.4 billion
-90,000 employees
-Headquarters: King of Prussia, PA
-26 acute care hospitals
-328 behavioral health hospitals
-42 outpatient facilities
-Operates in 37 states, DC, Puerto Rico, and the United Kingdom
-In 2019, they served 3.5mm patients across acute and behavioral health

2. How does UHS think about innovation in the behavioral space?

UHS realizes a need for innovation in the behavioral space and is in a very unique position because of the data, experience, knowledge, and exposure they have as one of the largest operators of inpatient psychiatric facilities in the world. UHS is focused on fostering innovation in the space and has built and “Innovation Hub” to encourage entrepreneurs to build in the space, to interact with UHS and approach UHS about partnership.

3. How do we innovate in behavioral health without hurting people, but still going fast?

Nicki talks about how a methodical systematic approach is needed that is sensitive to the fragile nature of healthcare. At UHS, they look at innovation in a very systematic way which Nicki highlights in our conversation. UHS focuses on innovations that can drive major shifts in one of these areas:

• Business model shifts
• Platform shifts
• Customer experience shifts

4. What is the “Innovation Hub”?
In August they launched the Innovation Hub, which is an innovation ecosystem where UHS supports a culture of innovation balanced with discipline to develop test and grow new solutions outside of the traditional internal UHS processes. The hub has 3 primary goals which include operating within the behavioral health division, growing the business, and promoting entrepreneurship while attracting talent.

5. How does it work?
Entrepreneurs approach UHS and present an idea for innovation. They are paired with a UHS facility to run a 90 day pilot / beta. At the end of the pilot, outcomes are assessed and if the metrics are good, then UHS begins to scale the solution across more locations. Success is determined by a proprietary internal ROI calculator.

6. What makes it through the filter into the program?
Nicki explains the three areas of innovation that are most exciting to the team at UHS. These are:

• Configuration – This is where focusing on the innermost working of the business systems, networks, processes, technologies, channels, brands can improve the business.
• Offerings – Core services. How do services connect or bundle with UHS’ current offerings? How can we improve interoperability, and connection between offerings?
• Experiences – This is anything touching the customer facing elements of the behavioral health world. This can include service innovations and often includes ways to make the increasingly impersonal electronic and remote service offices feel more personal and drive better engagement. Anything that drives a compelling engagement for the patient that leads to more patient engagement would fall into this area.

7. What would you build if you could build anything to help humans with mental health?
Nicki talks about how her dream solution would be an “Imperfection Lab” where people are encouraged and allowed to feel vulnerable and where imperfections could be celebrated.

8. How does an entrepreneur get in touch with UHS?
Reach out to Nicki and brainstorm what a pilot could look like internally.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: Patreon, Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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Martin Schappell spent 15 years as a leader at Universal Health Services (the largest inpatient psychiatric hospital operator in the United States) as a Senior Vice President in the Behavioral segment. He joins us to talk about the behavioral health care industry, how care has evolved over the last 30 years, and the impacts of our current climate on the mental health of the seniors in our population.

In this episode we talked at length about why behavioral healthcare has changed so much, what is good about those changes as well as what is bad. We also discussed where the opportunity is for entrepreneurs in this space.

Martin now serves as president and CEO of Shell Point Retirement Community where he has been for the last 4 years. Shell Point is the second largest single site senior living community in the United States with 2,500 residents and 1,200 employees in Florida. Martin’s behavioral health care industry experience and his firsthand knowledge from operating Shell Point give him unique insights into the mounting mental health differences

Links mentioned in the show: Universal Health Services, Shell Point Retirement Community

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. Martin shares observations from his career which began as a licensed marriage counselor, and eventually led him to behavioral health care hospital management and into senior management at one of the largest providers in the country.
2. Martin talks about how he believes he was really wired for “business” versus being a “clinician” but that his clinical training made him a great leader. He told me that learning about people, their motivation, understanding mental illness, etc. has influenced his leadership style.
3. As Martin transitioned from the non-profit clinical world to Charter Behavioral Health, he transitioned into a business management role. Eventually, Charter failed, and sold hospitals to UHS in bankruptcy during 2000. That led Martin to land at UHS where he served as a Senior Vice President in the Behavioral segment.
4. The delivery of behavioral health care has evolved greatly over the last 30 years. Delivery has become more efficient. 30 years ago, it was very common for people to be hospitalized for 3 months at a time for acute mental health problems. Now it’s more common to be hospitalized for 3 days or less at a time. The industry has prioritized efficiency over individualized care as the reimbursement model has shifted over the years and while here are positive consequences on system capacity, there are negative consequences on the quality of individualized care as well.
5. We talked about the natural evolution that a person goes through during treatment and how this process takes time. It’s a very personal and individual process that is different for everyone. So at some point, standardization is not in the best interest of the people this system is trying to help. Everyone’s pace may be a bit different. But to accelerate that beyond someone’s ability to gain insight is rushing the process.

What drove this duration change?Some of this is because of the cost of treatment – we reduced length to reduce cost. We are automating, and standardizing treatment when it is a very individual thing. Therapy is by design, a very inefficient process so it is not going to be possible to standardize it for everyone. 6. We talked about the Art versus the Science of recovery and treatment. We got into the balance between the two concepts and how getting that balance right leads to a highly individualized level of care which the modern-day system is leaning away from. 7. Where is the greatest opportunity for entrepreneurs in the mental health startup landscape? We talked at length about this. Martin was clear that his top priority is around testing and measurement. He explains that we need to find solutions that standardize the assessment, diagnosis, and validation of diagnosis in the early days of treatment. Often times, due to a lack of accurate testing, we misdiagnose and then establish a treatment plan that does not work leading to years of bad experiences and an unhealthy human. 8. We spent time talking about senior mental health care and how seniors are disproportionately being driven into self-isolation and loneliness during this time of COVID. There are consequences to that isolation and withdrawal. Ove the next 6-12 months we will likely see an escalation of mental health issues in seniors as a result and we talked about what we can be doing about it since we know we can predict it.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: Patreon Page, Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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Mental Health Market Update: 7/17/2020 – 2Q 2020 Disruptive Healthcare Earnings Preview –

With 2nd Quarter 2020 earnings announcements just around the corner, I thought it would make sense to take stock of where our disruptive healthcare peers are trading, how they have performed so far this year and what to expect and watch out for as their release earnings in the coming weeks.

In today’s episode we are focused on a subset of our “Disruptive Healthcare” peers which as a group broadly, includes Teladoc, Livongo, One Medical, Health Equity, Progyny, Health Catalyst, Phreesia, Ontrak (which was Catasys prior to this week but they changed their name as you’re aware).

In this episode we digest what startups and their investors in the digital health space should be focused on, what those bits of information mean and what we can take away from how these companies are performing as well as what they report by way of Q2 earnings.

LINKS REFERENCED IN THE SHOW:

1. Livongo earnings call details: 8/6, Dial-in 270-215-9499; ID: Livongo
2. One Medical earnings call details: Date: TBD; Dial-in: TBD
3. Teladoc earnings call details: 7/29 at 4:30pm ET, 833-968-2101
4. Mental Health Startup Community Slack: Link Here

You can support Stigma Podcast and get deeper insights and white papers here on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/stigmapodcast

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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Eric Dresdale joins me to talk about building startups in the mental health and addiction space. Eric was one of the earliest entrepreneurs to build a startup in this space called “Next Step” which he sold to True Link Financial back in 2016.

He now spends a lot of time advising startups in the mental health space and has some unique insights into care models, care delivery, addiction treatment, and where entrepreneurs can find opportunity to innovate today.
Links: Eric on LinkedIn, KNWN Technologies

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. Eric was one of the earliest entrepreneurs to build a business in the mental health and addiction recovery startup space. Eric came up with an idea based on his experience in early recovery called, “Next Step.” Next Step was a reloadable prepaid MasterCard / debit card program that allowed families and behavioral healthcare providers to be able to fund cardholder's accounts and set customizable spending parameters in real time.
2. Sold the Company to True Link Financial and has focused on advising startups in the behavioral health space in recent years.
3. In this conversation, Eric shares his story of addiction to pain killers and how he led him to crash and burn from his high paying job working for the chairman of Cushman and Wakefield in NYC as a real estate broker.
4. He shared about his initial experiences going to 12-step meetings to get help and how he didn’t feel like he fit in. Eric shared that he quickly gave up on those meetings because he felt like he didn’t find anyone else in those meetings that seemed to be like him.
5. After getting fired from his job, he had a night of binging on drugs that should have killed him. Then, he finally asked for help and found his way to rehab in October of 2010.
6. Eric was one of the earliest innovators in the mental health space and has been advising a lot of startups in the space. He gives a number of insights on startups in the space, business models, care models and more.
7. Eric does a great job of breaking down the treatment center industry and categorizing the types of treatments centers.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: Patreon, Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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Mental Health Market Update: 6/26/2020 – Teladoc Overview: Teladoc (Ticker: TDOC) provides integrated healthcare services including telehealth, mental health, expert medical services remotely.

In today’s market update, we dig into the company’s primary business units, its growth, valuation, M&A history, growth prospects and what we in the behavioral health startup ecosystem can learn from digging into the numbers around Teladoc.

SOME OF WHAT WE COVER IN THIS EPISODE:

1. What exactly Teledoc does, how they have grown via relationships with UnitedHealth, CVS, Medicare/Medicaid and through an aggressive M&A strategy.
2. We highlight their M&A history and what they paid for a lot of their key acquisitions.
3. We dig into their current stock price, valuation levels, peer group, and how the Company has traded versus its peers lately, and in recent years. We make note that the Company started to out-pace its peers in terms of valuation long before COVID happened.
4. We question whether the Company should trade at 20x revenue or 200x EBITDA and what it means that they are trading at those levels as of today.
5. What is the stock worth? Should it be trading at $200 a share?
6. Finally, we give two key takeaways that founders of behavioral health or really any digital health startup should take into consideration based on the performance of Teladoc and how they position their business.

LINKS REFERENCED IN THE SHOW:

Teladoc March 2020 Investor Deck: https://s21.q4cdn.com/672268105/files/doc_presentations/2020/03/InvestorDay2020.pdf

Q1 2020 earnings press release: https://s21.q4cdn.com/672268105/files/doc_financials/2020/q1/Teladoc-Health-1Q20-Earnings-Web.pdf

Mental health startup slack community: https://join.slack.com/t/mhealthstartups/shared_invite/zt-cfi5utx3-iE4pHU58NjCEXXMpaOiVxQ

You can support Stigma Podcast and get deeper insights and white papers here on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/stigmapodcast

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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Mental Health Market Update: 6/19/2020 – Universal Health Services Overview – Universal Health Services (Ticker: UHS) is the largest inpatient psychiatric hospital operator in the United States.

In this episode, we give an overview of the business, scale, the differences between their acute care and behavioral segment and talk about how much better performance has been through the downturn within their behavioral segment than the acute segment. We discuss what all of this means for those of us building or investing in mental health startups.

You can support Stigma Podcast and get deeper insights and white papers here on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/stigmapodcast

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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How can we use technology to stop suicide? How can we leverage technology to encourage vulnerability and connectivity to help people deal with difficult times? We dig in to these ideas today with Be A Looper Founder and CEO, Amanda Johnstone. Amanda and I met during a mental health tech conference (Transformative Tech Conference) in Palo Alto during November 2019. We had such a great conversation about suicide prevention, mental health, tech, and other stuff that I just had to ask her to come on and share her insights with our friends.

Amanda is from Australia. She is a social impact technologist, an inventor, an investor, a speaker an entrepreneur and has been recognized globally for her efforts around suicide prevention. Recently, she was awarded Time Magazine’s Next Generation Leader award for 2019. Past winners of this award include Greta Thunberg, Ariana Grande, The Weeknd and others.

In this conversation we talk at length about the power of vulnerability, connecting with others, and how we can do a better job showing up in the world in a way where we encourage and promote others to be vulnerable and open in order to both live well, and manage through difficult times in their lives.

There are a number of ways to connect with Amanda including on social media which will be linked in the show notes.

You can connect with Amanda here: Personal Website, Be A Looper Website, Transhuman Website, LinkedIn

Mentioned: The Power of Vulnerability with Brene Brown (Ted Talk)

Download Be A Looper here: https://www.bealooper.com/downloadlooper

Time Magazine: Interview with Amanda Johnstone on Innovating to Stop Suicide

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. How can we use our mobile phone, the thing that is in our hand every day, to bring us closer together? This is the question that drove Amanda to build a social support platform to encourage vulnerability and connectivity, called, Be A Looper.
2. Be A Looper is a circle of friends who care about you and check in, in a vulnerable way on a daily basis. As someone struggles with their well-being, or starts to feel distressed, then your circle is notified to provide support.
3. Amanda talks about how she has struggled to be authentic and how she struggles to present herself in the media and in business one way, but that in reality she feels another. She talks about how she was sleeping on her friend’s couch, and her life was falling apart, and at the same time she was presenting herself as a successful entrepreneur. She needed to be real. She needed to be authentic. She needed to check in with herself and with others and she needed a way to do that. Her solution, Be A Looper, provides a way for her to be real, even if just briefly each day, in a way that helps her check in with herself, and evaluate the narrative she’s putting out there and how that’s impacting the ability of others to be authentic with her as well.
4. The science of how Be A Looper works is very interesting. See below… (these descriptions can be found on the Be A Looper website here):

Social Support - Be A Looper is driven by social support, with the emphasis on reducing isolation by providing a sense of safety and community. We know from Self-Determination Theory that the concept of relatedness as a powerful need and driver of behavior has been proven out in many settings. Allied to this concept is the need to support autonomy and competence, related to self-efficacy, all part of ways to prevent the onset of helplessness, which is a driver of suicidal ideation.

Chain Diffusion - We also know that when someone close has suicided, the barrier to suicide of persons close to them weakens. Individual behaviors such as this can spread across groups and cultures through a process called chain diffusion. This occurs when an individual first learns a behavior by experiencing someone else doing this, and this then serves as a model through which they and others learn the behavior, and so on. Relatedness in this way backfires, so modelling a more positive approach to dealing with despair is crucial.

Self-efficacy - Outcomes in behavior change to healthier options, as with all intrinsic drivers depend on a sense of effectance, competence, self-efficacy, concepts all related to Allbert Badura’s concept that the way we approach life’s challenges is heavily influenced by our sense that the actions we are about to undertake will achieve the desired outcome, the opposite in a way to the sense of helplessness and hopelessness that may accompany suicidal ideation. Scaffolding a sense of efficacy, a sense that one swipe will alter the outcome, or similar low-threshold action will change the present in favor of a more definite future, has underpinned our Be A Looper approach. Choosing a behavior in the here and now that will have the best outcome over the temporal future, valuing this future over the now, is key to our desire to save lives one trusted contact at a time.

Role Modelling Vulnerability - Observational learning theory suggests that an individual’s environment, cognition and related behavior all integrate and ultimately determine how that individual functions, and ultimately determine how that individual will function. Based on the above, learning to express distress in a non-confronting way that supports rescuing actions by others, can lower the barriers to communicating distress by modelling it for others in a process of chain diffusion. 5. The science of how Be A Looper works is very interesting. See below… (these descriptions can be found on the Be A Looper website here). 6. They are coming out with a version that allows a provider or employer to provide this to their populations. 7. They have several years of anonymized data that shows how helpful this intervention has been with people who were in distress. 8. We spent a lot of time talking about vulnerability and how important it is in reducing stigma, helping ourselves, helping others, and creating connectivity.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: Patreon Page, Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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Mental Health Market Update: 6/12/2020 – Acadia Healthcare Overview – One of the largest providers of behavioral healthcare services in the world reports some of the best data on demand, market dynamics, payment trends, and other macro insights that can be extremely insightful for startups building within the mental health space.

In this episode, we give an overview of the business, their geographic footprint, growth and margins across segments, trading levels, demand data, recent management commentary and we talk about their valuation, leverage and attempted sale of their underperforming UK based business.

You can support Stigma Podcast and get deeper insights and white papers here on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/stigmapodcast

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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Jay Stringer joins us to talk about unwanted sexual behavior (pornography, buying sex, affairs, etc.). Jay is a licensed mental health counselor, ordained minister, author, and speaker on the subject – his research revolutionized my view of this topic. His research shows a strong tie between past experiences, and sexual behavior and what we can learn from that connection.

He’s spent the last decade helping men and women gain find freedom from unwanted sexual behavior by helping them identify the unique reasons that bring them to this behavior in the first place. Jay talks to us about his book, “Unwanted: How Sexual Brokenness Reveals Our Way to Healing” and the research he conducted on over 3,800 people living with unwanted sexual behavior.

We explore how the standard response by many people to the topic of sexual brokenness looks a lot like what we call “lust management.” This approach seems to work temporarily with some people, but ultimately it fails to bring people to lasting freedom. Jay explains that by listening to our lust, we can reveal the unaddressed and unresolved stories of our life in order to find true healing.

You can connect with Jay here: Jay’s Website, Jay on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Email

Book: Unwanted: How Sexual Brokenness Reveals Our Way to Healing (link here is to Amazon, but the book is also available on Audible)

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. What is sexual brokenness? In this conversation we define the topic, what the behaviors look like, how to know if you need help, and where to get help. We talk about how our understanding of sexual brokenness has evolved over time and what the latest research tells us about this behavior.
2. Where does sexual brokenness come from? Can we predict it based on childhood and life experiences? Jay’s research says, YES, and explains why.
3. “Unwanted sexual behavior” vs. “sex addiction” – Jay and I explore the language of unwanted sexual behavior, how we talk about this behavior, how society has labeled it and why these words matter based on his decade of research on the topic.
4. What does the science say? We talked about the neuroscience of sexual addiction / unwanted sexual behavior and why these behaviors exist, when they are learned / formed, and what we can do about them.
5. The main thesis of Jays’ book is that our involvement with unwanted sexual behaviors / sexually compulsive ideas is not random. These behaviors are often driven by some key childhood drivers (family system, sexual abuse, etc.) and "unconscious" arousal which should be explored, and understood, not ignored and punished in order to seek freedom.
6. We talked about his research on this topic and what Jay found including that how our porn or sex fantasies could be predicted, based on the parts of our story we have not engaged with. Knowing this, makes our treatment efforts far more effective than ever before. Jay explains in his book, and this podcast.
7. We talked about the role the church, and faith communities in addressing sexual brokenness and how stigma plays a part in people getting help, especially at church.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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Steve Schlafman is a friend, mentor, a sponsor of sorts to me, and a very experienced Venture Capitalist who also has 5-years of sobriety under his belt as of today, June 5th, 2020.

After 1 year of sobriety, Steve wrote a blog post under a pen name (which you can find here) explaining his experience getting sober and what it meant to him. Today, he’s sharing that blog post under his own name, for the first time. Steve talks to me about how important it is to share openly because that’s what gives others the strength to get help and open up as well.

Steve explains that sobriety is a superpower. He talks about how his life has been radically transformed by sobriety as well as what life was life before, what changed and what life is like now.
You can connect with Steve here: Twitter, LinkedIn, Website, Instagram, High Output (coaching practice), Steve’s Personal Blog

Items mentioned during our chat:

Original 1-year blog post: https://medium.com/@todd.s.bauers/healing-through-openness-8cc280eb182b

Books: The Power of Now, Integral Recovery, May Cause Miracles

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. Steve talks about when he first became aware that he should consider whether or not he was using substances too much. A therapist started to ask him questions about the frequency of his use, and eventually recommended that Steve try to stop using by attending a 28-day intensive out-patient program after work. He explains what this experience was like in our chat.
2. Steve ended up getting 6 months of sobriety under his belt after this out-patient program, but he recounts, that he was not really “ready” to go all in. He talks about how his spiritual condition was not where it needed to be to really stay sober. It would be 10 years before he got to the point where he was ready to really take that step.
3. Steve talks about how his life wasn’t in shambles, he didn’t leave a wake of carnage, he didn’t hit a “rock bottom” – he talks about how he figure out that he needed help without having to have that stereotypical rock bottom moment.
4. Steve started to realize that he was reaching outside of himself for things like validation, and love and that at the end of the day, he was never going to achieve those things if he kept seeking it externally.
5. Steve talks about how he embraced transcendental meditation and how that practice shed a light on how he really felt about many things in life, including his use of substances.
6. Steve knew he was not well. He appeared fine on the outside, and he knew it, but inside he knew he needed help. He was sick of living that way and just did not want to live that way anymore.
7. It just came down to wanting a better life and wanting to feel amazing and wanting to perform.
8. Steve tells the story of going to his first AA meeting, how he found his way there, what it was like, what happened and how he felt during it.
9. Steve talks about the first year of sobriety and how he handled it. He talks about what was hard, what wasn’t, and how he managed to get through those early cravings in the first few months of sobriety.
10. Steve talks about the blog post he wrote about getting sober and why he is talking about it so openly today.
11. Steve feels a responsibility to use his platform to share his story so that it can provide strength to others who may need help or to share their story. This is directly aligned with our mission here at the Stigma Podcast. He also talks to us about how substance abuse has not been widely discussed in the tech community the way mental health has been and he wants to help change that.
12. We talked about addiction as an epidemic, why Steve calls it that and how prevalent it is.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: Patreon page, Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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Kevin Dedner is co-founder and CEO of Henry Health. Henry Health is a digital community that provides self-care support and culturally sensitive teletherapy. Henry Health's initial target audience is black men who have the lowest life expectancy of any population. In fact, the stated goal of Henry Health is to increase the life expectancy of black men by ten years within the next twenty-five years.

Kevin has over 15 years of experience in public health (he also has a Masters in Public Health degree) - He’s worked on a variety of issues including childhood obesity, HIV/AIDS, and tobacco control. He has worked with numerous public health entities including the nation’s largest public health foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

You can connect with Kevin here: LinkedIn, Henry Health Website, Henry Health on Twitter, Kevin on Twitter

Links mentioned in the show: Kevin’s Blog Post: Bernard Tyson was our leader, Why do Black Men die so soon?

Dr. James Sherman’s 1994 Report: John Henryism and The Health of African-Americans

Kevin’s Blog: We All Deserve to Have Our Culture Honored, Especially in Therapy

Startup Health: Meet the Health Transformer Addressing Racial Disparities in COVID-19

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. Kevin Dedner is an expert in public health and has been a public health advocate for many years. He has worked on all of the major public health issues over the last decade from HIV to childhood obesity and tobacco control.
2. Kevin shares his own experience with mental health. He talks about how mental exhaustion led to depression and a search for help via therapy.
3. He worked closely with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to address health disparities. In that space Kevin became keenly aware of black men having the lowest life expectancy of any population. He talks about how in all of his career he never heard anyone talking about this even though the data has existed for quite a while. The deeper he looked he found a correlation between mental health and un-managed stress.
4. Untreated mental health is a driver for chronic disease and premature death.
5. After dealing with his own depression and realizing it was stress that really drove him into that depression, he wanted to do something about it and found his way to helping found Henry Health to help black men with their mental health.
6. We talked extensively about how we get more black men to focus on their mental health, and how we get society to focus on this problem. Kevin talks about how we need to teach people how to use tools like meditation, breathing techniques, etc. to manage our stress and mental health.
7. Kevin talks about Dr. Sherman’s research that shows that black men are living life at a higher sense of awareness. Many times, people are unconscious of this. This causes blood to move through our veins faster, strains organs, weakens immune systems and more. This is why we must solve the mental health issue in order to extend the life expectancy of black men.
8. We talked about how we can get more black men to become aware of their need for help with their mental health, increase their access to care, and providing access to services and content that help black men improve their mental well-being.
9. Kevin explains that while mental health products are exploding on the market, there are very few, if any, culturally sensitive offerings for populations such as black men, or the LGBTQ community.
10. Kevin talks about where Henry Health is in their business life cycle as a seed stage startup, what traction they have had so far, and their strategy for bringing their solution to market.
11. Kevin explains that a lot of people seek culturally competent solutions for mental health regardless of being apart of a certain population or not.
12. For something to become a public health issue, we have to have the political leadership pointing government resources at the problem. We believe that mental health will be the public health issue of the next decade. We do need to see political will and change though, for this to happen.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: Patreon account, Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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In this episode I spoke with Jesse Stern, founder of KoreVoices.

KoreVoices is a community of over 200,000 people overcoming mental health issues by sharing stories and offering support. The mission of KoreVoices is to build a movement that allows people to find solutions to their mental health issues, while also helping others. Here at the Stigma Podcast we feel their mission aligns very closely with ours!

Jesse built KoreVoices after spending nearly 10 years producing issue driven documentaries all over the world for National Geographic and the Discovery Channel. KoreVoices has an incredible reach and helps untold numbers of people with the mental health, and with connectivity.

You can connect with Jesse and KoreVoices on their website and these Instagram accounts: KoreVoices Website, IG: MyDateMyStory, IG: ThisLifeHappens, IG: Courageousmoments, Contact Form

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. Jesse talks about his time going to remarkably interesting, often dangerous places, to give voice to people that did not have a voice. He was making films for National Geographic and Discovery Channel telling stories that the world needed to hear.
2. Jesse started an Instagram account that allowed people to anonymously submit stories of dating experiences. At first, he thought it would be a bunch of funny tinder date stories. However, it did not take long for the stories to get serious and focus on long term relationships, stuff they were going through after years of dating, or marriage even. People started submitting very real stuff and asking questions and asking for advice. This led to an incredibly positive and powerful community.
3. We talked about how this community evolved into a discussion of feelings and eventually mental health. We talked about how important this community has become for users and how the users migrate between the various accounts, and platforms associated with KoreVoices.
4. Jesse and I both shared about being authentic, sharing, vulnerability and how we’ve both experienced these things in our lives.
5. We talked about how people come up with the courage to share their stories and ask for help. The timing and process is different for everyone and we all come to a place of seeking vulnerability and connectivity in different ways and at different times.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: Patreon account, Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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Mental Health Market Update: 5/29/2020 – Who is Investing in Mental Health Startups? Investors have placed over $850mm into mental health startups in the first 5 months of 2020. This far outpaces 2019 mental health startup funding for the entire year.

1. Q1 2020 Mental Health Funding Article is here: https://whatif.vc/blog/explosion-of-mental-health-startup-funding-in-q1%C2%A02020
2. Link to the investor list is located on our Patreon site: https://www.patreon.com/stigmapodcast
3. Original blog post from early 2020 on the mental health startup investor landscape: https://whatif.vc/blog/top-100-mental-health-startup-investors

You can support Stigma Podcast here on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/stigmapodcast

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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Jason Finucan and I both live with type-1 bipolar disorder.

We have had vastly different experiences with the illness. In this episode, we explore what this disease looks like, how it manifested itself in our own lives and how we got better. We challenge the public perception of bipolar disorder and how the media portrays it. One of the key takeaways from this conversation is how differently two people can experience the same mental illness.

Today, Jason is an author, mental health advocate, stigma fighter, professional speaker, and founder of StigmaZero, Jason is also the creator of the StigmaZero Online Training Academy, where he combats work-place stigma and helps employers to create a stigma free working environment.

You can connect with Jason here: StigmaZero, Jason on LinkedIn, Jason’s Book - Jason:1, Sigma:0, StigmaZero on Twitter, Email: hello@stigmazero.com,

Referenced in the conversation: Book: “Moodswing”

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. What is bipolar disorder? How is it different from depression, or other mental illnesses? We talked about how bipolar manifests itself in our lives and draw distinct comparisons between how different it has been for each of us.
2. We compared and contrasted our experience identifying that we had a problem, that we needed help, and how we both came to get that help.
3. Jason explains that when he first realized he had an “illness” that he immediately started to stigmatize himself and avoid treatment at first.
4. We talked about our varying cycle times, what that looks like, and how public perceptions of what a bipolar cycle looks like vary from reality.
5. Jason explains what severe depressive episodes look like for him and how he would navigate his way out of them.
6. We talked about what manic episodes look like as well and importantly, how you can tell the difference between a “normal” elevated state, versus a hypomanic or manic state, especially once you become aware of having this illness.
7. Jason talks about his 3-week stay in a psychiatric hospital, when he got diagnosed and how that led him to finally get the help he needed, and how he has lived symptom free due to his treatment regimen since 2005.
8. We discuss the Hollywood portrayal of bipolar disorder as well as public perception of bipolar disorder. Jason explains that people tend to think bipolar is this “thing” that looks like X or Y, or Z. However, it does not fit in a box. You cannot stereotype it. It is quite different for everyone who experiences it.

Pop culture is a real problem. In the media the bipolar representation is skewed heavily toward the manic, dangerous episodes. They never portray the 16 hours in bed per day during depressive stays so public perception is that everyone with bipolar is running around un-hinged all the time which is extremely far from reality. 9. Do you miss the mania? This is a question Jason fields quite frequently when speaking in public. He explains that he has learned to understand the difference between healthy positive feelings, that are sustainable, and unsustainable manic episodes which are ultimately very destructive and while they feel good for a minute, can lead to long term pain and agony. 10. We talked about how you know when a reaction is a normal elevated response, versus a sign that there is a problem coming on. This requires some vigilance. In his first 2 years Jason worried that every time he felt good, that maybe he felt too good. He tracks his sleep, and energy over time and as able to use that to baseline how he feels. 11. Jason shares that he has not experienced even the mildest hypomania since June 2005 when started treating the illness. 12. We compare our diets, the medication we take, our regular routines, sleep patterns, and how we manage our illness broadly.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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Mental Health Market Update: 5/22/2020 – Mindstrong Raises $100mm Series-C

1. Mindstrong Health announced a series-C investment of $100mm in a press release dated yesterday, Thursday 5/21/2020. This funding round included capital from What If Ventures, General Catalyst, Bezos Expeditions, Foresight, ARCH, 8VC, and others.
2. Press on TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/21/with-an-ex-uber-exec-as-its-new-ceo-digital-mental-health-service-mindstrong-raises-100-million/
3. Mindstrong job postings: https://mindstrong.com/careers/
4. Tom Insel video explaining digital phenotyping: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZKAaqfaX8I&feature=youtu.be
5. Support for claim that most anti-depressants are prescribed by general practitioners: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5473964/

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Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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“I launched a Company While Serving Time for Coke Smuggling” – Emily O’Brien

I’m so inspired by our conversation with Emily O’Brien. Emily is a keynote speaker, entrepreneur, consultant and convict. Emily is an entrepreneur, who started her current business from prison. She overcame far more than most entrepreneurs have to deal with, to start her business. She is the founder of Comeback Snacks where the website proudly proclaims, “We broke the law, but we fix good snacks!”

In this episode, Emily talks about why she went to prison, how her perspective on life changed during that time and how she started her business from prison. We talked about where she is with the business today, how it is scaling and what is next for her. Her story is incredibly inspiring. Check it out!

You can connect with Emily here: Emily’s personal website, Emily on Instagram, Comeback Snacks on Instagram, Emily on LinkedIn, Comeback Snacks Website,

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. Emily experienced a very “normal” upbringing. Nothing spectacular to note, and in fact, she was a rather “good kid.” She made great grades, did not get in trouble, and did all the right things. Sure, she liked to have a good time, and party a bit, but nothing too outside of the lines. In her early 20s she found herself starting to use drugs not just to “celebrate” a good time but to medicate the tough parts of life.
2. As her drug use increased, she found herself hanging out with, dating, spending time with people who were doing the same things. This led her to a situation where people she was with brought drugs back across the border. They got caught, and she was sentenced to a 4-year prison sentence.
3. While she was in prison, she wanted to create something good and make use of her time in a positive way. So, she started a popcorn business. In the podcast we talked about how she came up with the idea, how she started the business and how she created momentum for the business ahead of her release.
4. Emily shares about how she focused on what she did have access to, rather than what she did not have. Sure, in prison, her resources were extremely limited, but she had the ability to write letters, so she did. She sent letters to journalists who had written about prison reform or crime in the area. She also sent letters to authors, and podcast hosts who cared about entrepreneurship or prison reform. These letters led to a lot of opportunity that we discussed in our conversation.
5. She explains that entrepreneurship is all about risk and in prison you do not find a lot of people who are afraid of risk. Some entrepreneurs are on the wrong side of the law, taking the wrong risks, and end up in prison. That does not mean they were bad at being entrepreneurs, in fact, there are a lot of really successful entrepreneurs in prison who, if they applied their skills differently, could build phenomenally successful businesses. We ended up agreeing that prison could be a funnel into the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
6. Emily has been out of prison for just over a year now and is starting to scale her business. We talked about how she is making that happen and the challenges ahead for her as she navigates scaling the business.
7. Emily also talked about prison reform as well as second chance hiring and how she tries to primarily hire people who have spent time in prison.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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Arielle Dyment is an influencer in the recovery community, and a highly sought-after sober coach. She joins us to talk about addiction, getting sober, and how she’s helping people who are falling through the cracks of the existing recovery solutions in the market.

Arielle built a recovery coaching platform called My Sober Compass in order to help people get sober and stay sober. In this podcast, she tells her story of addiction, how she found her way to recovery, and why she started a platform to help others get well.

You can connect with Arielle and My Sober Compass here: Instagram, Facebook Community Page, LinkedIn, Website, Book a Coaching Call

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. Arielle and I commiserate about experiences we both had during our pre-sobriety years. She explains some of the problems she faced, what she was like then, what has changed and what she is like now.
2. We talked about the experiences we have both had in the recovery community, the various resources available to those living in recovery and where the holes are in that “market.”
3. Arielle explains how My Sober Compass works to help people get well, why she started it and what she does to help people as they work through her program and lean on her as a coach during their recovery journey.

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Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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Market Update 3 – Sizing the Mental Health Market & What Can We Learn From One Medical's Q1 Earnings Report?

• We dig into 8 research reports on various sub-markets of behavioral health that I believe add up to give us the size of the mental health market.
• Overview of One Medical's Q1 earnings report and what founders in the mental health space can learn from key metrics around volume, virtual mix and reimbursement, etc.
• Links to public sources:

NAMI Stats

What If VC (mental health startup investing)

ONEM Earnings Press

ONEM Q1 Earnings Call Transcript

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Today’s guest is Nyemade Boiwu. Nyemade recently wrote blog post on the NAMI website titled “It’s Okay If You Need Meds to Be Okay.” This post caught my eye because I’ve been a part of several conversations lately about stigma where taking medication has been the focal point.

In today’s conversation Nyemade and I tackle the stigma of mental health medication from the perspective of two people who both take medication for mental health differences. I hope you learn as much from her perspectives as I did.

You can connect with Nyemade here and find links mentioned in the episode here: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, All her links on Link Tree, Nami Article: It’s Okay If you Need Meds to be Okay

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. Nyemade shares with us about her personal struggles with mental illness beginning around the age of 13 that ultimately lead her to attempting suicide. She explains that about 50% of people who will struggle with a mental illness begin showing symptoms by the age of 14. We talk about how this is overlooked and brushed aside as “being a teenager” often.
2. She describes her journey with her mental health after that time in her early teenage years as a long and winding road that took over a decade to travel until she finally got the help she needed in the form of medication, and effective therapy.
3. She talks about having seasonal affective disorder (living in Rochester, NY) and how she tried to out-run her mental illness by moving to Florida at the age of 19 instead of taking medication or tackling the problems directly. She was hoping that medication wasn’t going to be needed, so she tried to run from it because of the stigma associated with taking medication for mental illness.
4. Where does stigma associated with mental health medication come from?
   Nyemade explains that society has created this stigma and that the media perpetuates it. Generally people who are taking medication for mental illness are grouped into one of two buckets: 1) a “crazy” person who is running around hearing voices, or 2) someone who is overly emotional and needs to “get over it.”

A lot of people who need help, don’t view themselves as being in one of those buckets so they avoid medication because of how they may be perceived by others as being in one of those groups mentioned above. People think they should be strong enough to “get over it” if it is just an emotional thing. 5. Nyemade talks about her journey to find a therapist that worked well with her. She explains that often we aren’t going find someone we click with right away and you may need to try another therapist to find someone that gives you the space you need to open up and do real work. 6. What advice would you give younger you about how to deal with this stuff knowing what you know now?Nyemade explains that she would give her younger self the advice to talk about things more and it doesn’t matter to who, it can be a therapist, or a friend, or someone else who is struggling. She recalls being young, and feeling like she was the odd person out, but as she got older, and started engaging with people on the internet, she saw that she was not the only one struggling. Growing up she felt as if she was the odd person out, but because of social media and connectivity online, she realizes many other people feel the way she does and there’s been a lot of comfort in talking with others (not just clinicians) about how she’s feeling. 7. What worked for you, to get better and feel better?
Nymade told me that she started feeling better once she got therapy right, with the right therapist and added medication to her routine. The therapy wasn’t enough for her but with medication, things started to get better. She explains that depression is not the same experience for everyone and that it can be situational, but it can also be medical and ther are different ways to treat it depending on what’s causing it so you have to figure out what’s going to work for you. 8. How do we fight stigma?We need to talk more about how we are feeling. It’s ok to share what we are going through. Most importantly, we need to hold ourselves accountable around the language we use every day. We can’t be saying things like “crazy” flippantly. She talks about hwo hard it was for her to change her language and why we need to be responsible for calling others out when they use language that doesn’t help reduce stigma. We can start by just being aware of how often we say things like “crazy” etc. This is really important because these words lose their significance when we abuse them out of context regularly.

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Kristian Ranta, founder and CEO of Meru Health, lost his older brother to suicide in 2005 pushing Kristian to build a mental health solution that could help others dealing with the same problems his brother had. Kristian joins us this week to talk about how his brother’s personal struggle with depression and substance use was never addressed, in part, due to lack of access to quality care.

Kristian founded Meru Health in 2016 and the Company has evolved to become a tech-enabled telehealth practice that features a 12-week digital therapeutic program including therapists, psychiatrists, digital therapeutics and HRV bio feedback.

Kristian also shares with us his advice for entrepreneurs who are aspiring to build startups in the mental health space. He has published great content himself on this topic which we share below as well.

You can connect with Kristian and find links mentioned in the episode here: LinkedIn, Meru Health Website

Articles written by Kristian:Building a Mental Health Care Tech Company
Mental Health Hacks for Entrepreneurs
Revolutionizing Depression Treatment with Digital Therapeutics

Links mentioned in the show: Meru's Long-Term Outcomes Data
Meru's HRV-Biofeedback Study
More Science & White Papers Here
Mom test book
Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation and Growth

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. Kritian Ranta, Founder of Meru Health talks to us about the founding story of Meru Health, a mental health startup. One of his motivations to build in the mental health space was the loss of his older brother to suicide in 2005. Lost brother 2005 oldest brother to suicide. Kristian explains that his brother struggled with substance use and depression, but never found appropriate help from a broken system. Kristian’s motivation to help people like his brother as well as his previously startup experience building medical devices and diabetes testing startups led him to the mental health space.
2. He started Meru Health in 2016. The Company is a tech-enabled telehealth practice that features a 12-week digital therapeutic program including therapists, psychiatrists, digital therapeutics and HRV bio feedback. Kristian explains the business in detail, who their customers are, how they work with employers and payers, as well as how they on-board patients and he talks about the patient experience or journey.
3. Kristian explains the long-term goal of Meru which is to help people get better holistically, and stay better. He shared that his data shows that 92% of his patients are improving on his platform and some are recovering fully from their behavioral health problems.
4. What advice do you have for an aspiring mental health entrepreneur? Kristian wrote a really great article in Inc.com on this topic. You can find it here: Building a Mental Health Care Technology Company. We talk in detail about his top tips for founders including doing intense market research, and prioritizing company culture from day 1. We talked about when and how he learned these lessons and some of the pain he experienced in getting to these realizations.
5. Where is the opportunity or white space for a founder in the mental health startup ecosystem? Kristian explains in details how he would advise a new entrepreneur in the mental health space to get started with their business. He talks about a systematic approach for identifying a problem, validating an idea, and doing early customer discovery. One of the things he talks about is how a lot of founders lean too heavily on “top down” market data (like the stuff you find on the NAMI website about the tens of millions of Americans who need help) instead of bottoms up market analysis approaches.
6. In a conversation about “stigma” Kristian explains that we need to change our thinking about the topic of mental health as a society. Mental health isn’t some touchy feely, “wuwu”thing. It is a tangible problem rooted in biology and we need to treat it the same way we would a broken bone or heart disease, with the same level of care and urgency.

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Lucas Krump joins me on the podcast this week to talk about men’s mental health. Lucas started a company called EVRYMAN, for the sole purpose of helping men, improve their mental health and wellbeing by focused on the unique dynamics that men deal with around mental health and wellness.

Lucas is passionate about connection, community, and emotional wellness. As CEO and Co-Founder of EVRYMAN, Lucas together with EVRYMAN co-founders Dan Doty, Owen Marcus and Sascha Lewis lead a global movement that brings men together to develop their emotional skillset, enabling deeper connections with themselves and others. Since launching in 2017, EVRYMAN has supported thousands of men to lead happier, healthier more connected lives via retreats, weekly groups and online programs. EVRYMAN has been featured in the New York Times, Men's Health, The Today Show and The Joe Rogan Experience Podcast.

He is an adventurer and a traveler. Lucas grew up in Kansas, after college he spent 10 years living in Africa and Asia before moving to New York City and now Hudson, New York. where he calls home. His passion for service and commitment to purpose are rooted in his Jesuit education and midwest values. He believes deeply in human connection and its ability to heal wounds and open hearts to the endless possibilities of the human experience.

The mission statement of the EVRYMAN program says that we cannot change what life brings, but we can change how we respond. This resonates strongly with a lot of what I have learned in recovery from addiction.

You can connect with Lucas and learn more about EVRYMAN here: EVRYMAN Website, Lucas on LinkedIn, Video Explaining EVRYMAN, Lucas on Instagram, EVERYMAN on Instagram, EVRYMAN Podcast

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. Lucas Krump joins us to talk about the mission of EVRYMAN. EVRYMAN is a men’s wellness organization focused on supporting men with mental and emotional health by improving their emotional resiliency. The approach is peer to peer support by combining online and offline activities aimed at bringing men together to practice improving mental and emotional health.
2. Lucas explains the founding story of EVRYMAN and talks about his own personal struggle to find satisfaction and happiness in his late 30s. He thought about what he was missing and what he needed to make him happy. On paper, he had all the things society told him that would make him happy but that is not what he was feeling. That realization led him to create EVRYMAN out of his desire to find a group of men to support him personally in that effort.
3. What do men go through? What causes men to have a specific mental health challenge differently than women? Lucas explains how men go through transitions in their life and how those transitions impact us. We talked about how socially and culturally that men have received a message that they need to “go it alone” during the singular pursuit of accomplishment. This leads men to struggle to handle the transitions we face in life.
4. We talked about where the societal pressures that negatively impact men originated from and how they have evolved over time. We talked about why men tend to “suffer in silence” and what we can do about it. Lucas takes us all the way back to when we as a species evolved out from a “farming” based society to an “industrial” based society where individual pursuits were prioritized over team and community pursuits.
5. We talked about being proactive versus reactive with our own mental health care and wellbeing and how someone can go from being “reactive” about their wellness and mental health to being proactive and engaging in managing our mental health.
6. EVRYMAN started out as “in-person” men’s groups and has evolved into digital groups as they scale toward their goal of reaching and helping 1 million men with their mental health.
7. We talked about nervous system regulation and learning how to do it (and why it is so important). We talked about how powerful groups, and interactions with others (sitting intentionally in a group, bound by a set of agreements) can be for helping us learn to slow down, feel safe, learn to express ourselves and begin to regulate our own nervous system.
8. We talked about the EVRYMAN business, how they are growing, who they want to work with and what they need to scale including potential partners, capital, etc.
9. Explanation of EVRYMAN from their website: EVRYMAN is not about “finding yourself,” but “creating yourself” -- understanding and acting productively on your emotions instead of burying or redirecting them, and thereby building a more fulfilling life. With the need for safe distancing, our online program gives you what you need now more than ever. It’s an interactive behavioral curriculum, not therapy or guru worship, and we invite you to experience it for yourself.

Many of us have suffered major personal, professional and financial losses over the last several weeks, often on top of pre-existing feelings of sadness, loneliness or disconnection.

As a Benefit Corporation, we invest profits directly into operational costs, programming, and the technology required to inspire and improve the lives of men, their communities, and humanity at large.

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Zak Williams joins us to talk about how he handled the passing of his father (actor Robin Williams) and how he found his way to sobriety, and eventually to mental health advocacy.

Zak explains that finding ways to serve, and to help others, was a huge part of his path to wellness and that being vulnerable, is one of the most important parts wellness and sobriety for him.

His story of substance use, and difficulties with mental health differences reminds me of my own personal experience and is highly relatable for anyone who may be struggling or know someone who is struggling.

You can connect with Zak here: LinkedIn, Twitter

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. Zak talks about his experience dealing with his father (actor Robin Williams) taking his own life and how that experience impacted his relationship with substance abuse, and mental health the resulting mental health struggles he had to overcome.
2. Zak talks about service work and about how volunteering around causes helped to heal him. He talked about the first volunteer gig he undertook, teaching financial literacy to prisoners at San Quentin prison. Committing to something like this on a deeper level really impacted him.
3. He eventually started to work with mental health non-profits. As he started sharing his story about what he was dealing with, it drew him into a movement of sorts. During this time he realized he needed to stop self-medicating and he found his way to sobriety at that time.
4. We talked extensively about vulnerability, as well as authenticity and how the two are different including how society and pop culture have perverted the term “authenticity.” Zak explains why vulnerability is such an important part of wellness and mental health.
5. We talked about how our biases impact our ability to be vulnerable and how this time of social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic is forcing us to find new ways to find human connection, and be vulnerable, for the purpose of staying healthy. We talked about how the increased dialogue around mental health during this time of social isolation may be a catalyst to help us talk more openly about biases, and how to adjust for them so we can truly be open, vulnerable and authentic with one another as humans.
6. I heard so much of my own story, and my own struggles in Zak’s story and how he’s handled and continues to deal with sobriety, recovery, mental health and helping others.

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Mental Health Market Update: 5/1/2020

1. Analysis of the UnitedHealth (Optum) acquisition of AbleTo and what it means for founders in the behavioral health startup space.
2. Overview of April 2020 startup funding in the mental health space as well as mention of the $80mm funding round that Compass Pathways just did.
3. Links to sources mentioned or referenced:

What If VC Q1 Mental Health Startup Market Funding Analysis

CNBC United – AbleTo Coverage

Compass Pathways $80mm Raise

One Medical IPO Coverage From January 2020

ATAI Life Sciences April 2020 fundraise link on Crunchbase

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Alexander Holt, Founder of Limitless Ventures, joins us today to talk about addiction, recovery, and investing in behavioral health and addiction-focused startups. His venture fund, Limitless Ventures is an impact investment firm, that looks to fund companies seeking to help people who need behavioral health and addiction treatment solutions.

Their mission at Limitless is to combine venture capital and philanthropic capital to scale multi-disciplinary solutions for people impacted by mental health challenges as well as addiction. They have a unique way of combining capital from non-profits as well as for-profit investors that he explains in detail in our conversation.

You can connect with Alexander here: Limitless Ventures Website, Alexander Holt LinkedIn

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. Alex talks about growing up in a great family environment surrounding by love and afforded many great advantages in life. However, this did not spare him from difficulty, and a desire to be accepted which ultimately led him to alcohol, and eventually to drugs and finding his way into trouble.
2. Alex explains having ADHD as a kid and struggling to focus his attention. He suggests that he needed more behavioral support, but never got it and eventually found himself getting into fights and struggling socially in middle school. Eventually, his desire to fit in led him to figure out how to “bring the life” to the party which meant getting access to alcohol.
3. Alex shares about the moment he realized when he was powerless over alcohol and that his life had become unmanageable. We talked about our shared experiences in rehab, and Alex shares in detail how he got sober, and how he has maintained his sobriety for over 5 years.
4. We talked about our shared experience in the Alcoholics Anonymous program and one of the key components of that program: Service. Alex talks about how he gives back to the AA community, how he helps others, and why that is so important for his recovery.
5. We talked about the “recovery community” which is a concept that seemed so foreign to both of us as we entered rehab. However, that recovery community has been one of the most powerful and influential things in both of our lives in recent years. There are over 40 million people out here who are going through what we went through, and they are there to help each other on a regular basis. There is a lot of power in that.

6. Alex talks about his venture capital fund, Limitless Ventures and his “double bottom” line approach. His objectives are to improve mental and behavioral health outcomes while also driving outsized returns for investors. Limitless is structured as a family of 5 funds, each focused on various points in the continuum of care:

   1. Prevention
   2. Life sciences
   3. Healthcare Technology
   4. Treatment
   5. Long Term RecoveryLimitless currently operates as an independent sponsor creating SPVs for each deal while they work toward their goal of raising $3.5 billion over the next few years.

Source of Capital: Every dollar they invest is comprised of 40% ROI focused on investor capital and 60% non-profit foundation capital.

Alex explains the tax structure, and plan that allows him to combine capital types and do something unique for his industry. 7. Alex talks about one of his investment projects which is filling a hole in the recovery market around housing for those in recovery. He is part of a team-building a 500 bed co-living apartment in New York, NY that will house people living in recovery. The apartment building will be located in Times Square, in a 40-story high rise where a full continuum of care will be proved to people living in recovery from addiction.

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Did you know we can manually adjust our brain chemistry leading to increased happiness (and health)?

Did you know that in countries like Zambia, people with a 4th and 5th-grade education are being taught to successfully administer mental health treatment to local populations? What can we learn from that effort to improve access and cost to much needed mental health care services in the United States?

We discuss all of this, and how these learnings can be applied to help us manage our mental health during physical distancing due to COVID-19 with Dr. Laura Murray. Dr. Murray is a Senior Scientist at Johns Hopkins school of Public Health in the Department of Mental Health and International Health. She is a clinical psychologist by training.

Dr. Murray’s recent Op-Ed in the Baltimore Sun: “Coronavirus stressing you out? Here’s how to cope (March 2020)

You can connect with and learn more about Dr. Laura Murray here: Dr. Murray’s Johns Hopkins Profile, LinkedIn

HERE ARE MY NOTES FROM THE CONVERSATION:

1. What are the mental health impacts of being isolated? Here are some of the ways that isolation and loneliness can impact us. Being alone can make us feel these things and experience these things so we need to be aware.
   Isolation can make us:

Fearful, worried, sleep and eat erratically, strain relationships, shorten our temper, cause suicidal ideation, increase substance abuse, and intense feelings of sadness, depression or anxiety.

If you are experiencing any of these things during this time, then you are not abnormal, you are not alone, and there are things you can do to manage your mental health and improve your experience during isolation. 2. How can someone manage the impact of isolation during social distancing? Dr. Murray suggested some ways we can manage our mental health during COVID-19 induced isolation and distancing including:

1. **Connect with others** – finding ways to do this that works for you. Even seeing someone’s face from 6 feet away can make a big difference with how we feel
2. **Authentic interaction** – seek these interactions even if remotely
3. **Humor** – as they say, laughter can be the best medicine
4. **Sleep schedule** – consistent rest is very important to managing our mental health
5. **Activities that bring you joy or pleasure** – this is up to you to define
6. **Limiting media exposure** – I can only take so much cable news

1. Internal narratives matter – what’s trending in our internal narrative? Dr. Murray explains that our thoughts matter. The more we think to ourselves “this is bad” or “my family will get sick” then our behavior and emotions follow those thoughts.

How does this work?

When we have negative thoughts such as “a lot of people are going to die” then a chemical reaction begins in our brain (within the amygdala) that triggers an emotional reaction. That emotional reaction triggers a physical reaction (heart rate increase, discomfort, gastro-intestinal symptoms, etc.) and these physical reactions lead to anger, agitation etc.

Dr. Murray explains that manually retraining the brain, and what follows from those efforts, is the coolest thing she’s learned in psychology.

Neuropathways in our brain can change because of our behavior

Positively affirming ourselves, or exercising have more of an impact on our brain chemistry than most people realize. Just a brief walk, or a kind word to yourself can release chemicals like dopamine or endorphins in the brain which impact the brain’s chemistry. That brain chemistry impacts your emotions. Not only is your brain getting more of chemicals that make you happy, you are also forcing your brain to get rid of chemicals that make you feel bad.

Even though some things like meditating, positive affirmations, brief exercise, etc. may seem like they aren’t doing any good, the impact really adds up over time 4. Change your vocabulary, even if you don’t believe it, and your brain will change. In Dr. Murray’s research, she’s found that we create pathways in our brain and those pathways can be trained. They become “engrained” so to speak and when certain things happen in our life we naturally or automatically react based on those engrained neuropathways. We have the ability to manually adjust those pathways and change our emotions and behavior. 5. This time we are in will produce MH struggle and addiction Dr. Murray explained that people are coping with substances. She believes we will see an upswing in addiction when we emerge from this period of isolation.

A lot of us deal with stress and anxiety via drugs, alcohol, chemicals, process addiction, sex, pornography, etc. 6. How do we know if we are developing an addiction problem during this time of isolation? Whether you have had an addiction problem or not in the past, one of the best ways to think about it or manage it is just to monitor it. Do you have a problem? Just track it, write it down, a lot of people don’t realize how much they are starting to drink until they write it down. The first step is awareness.

During this time of COVID-19 this is a great time to reach out to people. It’s a great excuse to check-in since we are all in this isolation period. So, check in and ask people, ask your friends, neighbors, family members, etc. How much are you drinking? Are you ok 7. Laura spends a lot of her time working in low- and middle-income countries where mental health access is very low. She started her career researching HIV and the impacts of HIV and trauma on children in countries like Zambia. She spent a lot of time studying kids who were HIV positive and have been sexually abused and how they have been able to take their life in a positive direction.

The challenge is that the ability to access treatment is still quite limited in Zambia, but they have found ways to train “lay providers” to provide basic mental health care, education and encouragement. These are people who often have a 4th or 5th grade education.

What can we apply from that learning in the U.S.?

A lot of people may not require full evidenced-based mental health treatment. Many people just need more skills or tools in their toolbox when it comes to happiness and re-training these neuropathways in our brains.

Many people who are not happy at work, or in a marriage, or social relationships are going to carry that unhappiness into other areas of their lives. There are relatively simple skills and tools that can be applied to find happiness and prevent one negative aspect of your life from dominating all of your life with unhappiness. While there is certainly a place for highly trained clinicians to help a lot of people, there is room for less skilled or trained individuals to help other humans learn to be happy. This is what their work in Zambia is showing.

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Dr. Danielle Ramo, from HopeLab joined me this week to talk about the launch of the Nod app. Nod was built by HopeLab in collaboration with Grit Digital Health. Nod’s mission is to reduce loneliness in young people and to prevent adverse effects during the COVID-19 crisis and beyond.

Danielle is a clinical psychologist and the Senior Director of Research at HopeLab, which is a non-profit social innovation lab based in San Francisco creating behavior change tech to help teens and young adults live happier, healthier lives. Danielle has worked extensively on projects ranging from addressing loneliness among college students, teen vaping, mental health of young parents, young people with cancer, and a multitude of others.

She is also an Adjunct Associate Professor of Psychiatry at UC San Francisco, leading a research program at the intersection of substance use and digital mental health. She has published over 80 peer-reviewed publications and publications on drug use and mental health.

More on the Nod app: Download in Apple and Google Play stores, Nod one pager, Press Release on Launch of Nod

Connect with Danielle and her work: LinkedIn, Danielle’s website, Danielle’s recent article in Thrive Global on ways college students can deal with loneliness during the COVID pandemic

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. Dr. Danielle Ramo joins us to talk about the latest amazing solution developed by HopeLab that helps college aged youth deal with loneliness. The app is called Nod and can be found in the Apple app store and in the Google Play store.
2. Danielle explains a bit about what HopeLab is. HopeLab, founded by Pam Omidyar, is a social innovation non-profit that creates behavior change tech to support adolescent health and wellbeing. They have created everything from video games, to chat bots, and apps that support physical and mental health as well as behavior change among young people.
3. We talked about a recent CIGNA survey that found 79% of the GenZ population recently admitted to experiencing loneliness. We talked about why young people are struggling with isolation and loneliness.
4. HopeLab conducted a survey of 1,400 young people between ages 14-22 in 2018. The survey focused on the relationship between technology use, social media use, and experience with loneliness. They found that there was no relationship between extent of social media use, and experiences of loneliness, depression, anxiety, or other negative mental health issues. They did find that there was a difference in how young people used social media based on their mental health patterns.
5. What is Nod? HopeLab and Grit Digital Health worked together to co-create an app called Nod. Nod addresses loneliness among college-aged young people who can often be overwhelmed by the changes they experience in their environment and in how social connections are made when they get to college. College is a risky time in a young person’s life and better interventions are needed. This was the motivation for creating Nod.

6. How does Nod work? Nod is an app that allows young people to notice and address misconceptions they had about making social connections. Friendships do not come easy, however, there is this expectation for many young people entering college that these new friendships should come easy. Nod works to help young people realize this is not always the case and that we all must work hard to make real social connections and that it’s a skill we can work to improve.
   Two main features:

   1. Challenges – These are actions Nod encourages a young person to take. These challenges can be anything from texting a friend to let them know you’re thinking of them to things like joining a club or reaching out to someone on campus for a specific social reason. Nod wants young people to engage in these challenges in order to make more connections and to learn from their efforts to do so.
   2. Reflections – Challenges can go well or can go poorly. Nod wants to support people to enjoy feeling good after a challenge goes well. At the same time, many challenges will not end successfully, and Nod wants to support young people when a challenge does not go their way. They want young people to learn not to blame themselves or blow things out of proportion. Reflections support people not taking on negative emotions in an unhealthy way.
   3. How much does it cost? The Nod app is free for all college students right now. The app will remain free while the shelter in place order is in effect and while we are practicing social distancing.
   4. HopeLab would love to hear from students who use Nod during this time and hear what feedback they have.
   5. We also talked about the opportunity that exists to build mental health solutions around the younger population and specifically the college population. Colleges are not equipped to provide mental health resources to all students. There are a lot of opportunities for technology to be leveraged to build solutions that provide resources to students and provide care to students where the college’s own resources are maxed out. These are also environments where cost and scalability must be considered because college students and education systems typically do not have large budgets.

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Ben Miller, Chief Strategy Officer at the Well Being Trust joined me to discuss what’s broken, what works, and what the future of mental health care in America can and should look like.

Ben is a clinical psychologist and spent a decade as a professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine where he did extensive work to understand how we can better integrate Primary and Behavioral care resources and what an idea mental health care system would look like in America.

Ben is one of the most well-informed people I’ve spoken to when it comes to:

1. What is wrong with mental health care in America?
2. How did it get this way?
3. How do we fix it?
4. Who is responsible?

I hope you find this conversation as helpful and educational as I did.

Connect with Ben: LinkedIn, Twitter, OpEd: Mental Illness is Epidemic Within the Coronavirus Pandemic by Ben Miller

Well Being Trust: Healing the Nation Report, Well Being Trust Website, Twitter, Pain in The Nation Report,

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. Ben is a clinical psychologist by training and has spent a lot of time looking at ways we can better integrate mental health care into traditional health care. In this conversation we dig into why there isn’t more integration between Primary and Behavioral health care providers and what can be done about it.
2. The Well Being Trust was launched by Providence St. Joseph Health in 2016 as an independent 501(c)(3) public charity with an initial seed endowment of $100 million plus an additional $30 million to be invested in California from 2017 to 2019. Well Being Trust is now investing in approaches that have the potential to model the way forward. Well Being Trust was created to advance clinical, community and cultural change…to transform the health of the nation and improve well-being for everyone.
3. The Well Being Trust focuses on 5 key areas when trying to advance its mission including clinical transformation, community transformation, policy and advocacy, social engagement and learning and data systems. You can read more about each of these functional areas here.
4. Ben explains that he and his team are keenly focused on how they can do something positive for mental health in the United States including how we talk about mental health and lately, what we can do as a nation to lift up communities that are going to suffer the most after the COVID-19 pandemic subsides.
5. I asked Ben about the mental health provisions in the current COVID-19 stimulus legislation and he explained that about $450mm had been allocated to SAMSHA from the stimulus which really seems like an afterthought considering the size of the overall stimulus spending.
6. Over time the U.S. government really hasn’t invested in mental health in the same way we have other major health issues. The $450mm allocated to mental health int eh current stimulus package seems like “budget dust” relative to other spending and this has always been the way the government treats mental health. Ben details his thoughts in this recent OpEd.
7. Why does it seem like the government doesn’t get it when it comes to mental health? It all started when JFK signed the Community Mental Health Centers Act in 1963. The problem with that legislation is that a mental health system was created, separate, of the rest of health care. That separate system was never integrated, and the science and leadership weren’t there to see to this separate system becoming successful. This policy sounded good in speeches, but there was no plan for weaving mental health into broader health reform. This “separation” was codified in Medicare and Medicaid in 1965 and we have been paying for it ever since. This separation includes separate systems, separate benefits, financing mechanisms, training modules, etc. As a result, the government and many people still see mental health as an afterthought since it is separate.
8. On the whole, mental health care is a mess of competing businesses and interests. There are businesses that are kept afloat by making sure things are kept the way they are. When we start talking about integrating services, we are talking about creating financial loss for an established business even though it may be what’s best for a community.
9. Ben explains what an integrated, thoughtful, good mental health care system or solutions would look like based on a decade-plus of research and efforts to understand this problem. He uses two words to describe what the ideal system needs to look like:
   Seamless – We shouldn’t have to work as hard to make addiction and mental health care available or accessible to those who need it. We shouldn’t have to make as many referrals. People should be able to get mental health help in the places where they show up for primary care. We need an integrated care delivery model. Fragmentation of delivery is the problem.

Comprehensive – Mental health care needs to be provided in a way that takes into consideration social needs, displacement, immigration issues, and other social determinants of health. 10. “Fee for service” versus “Global budget” - Ben talked to me about how we pay for mental health care. He explained the difference between “fee for service” and “global budget” payments and who global budgeting provides better care to more people than fee for service. 11. Our language needs to change. Ben talks about how our language needs to change because when language changes, cultures change. If we don’t start using different language, then we just perpetuate things that are broken. He tells me that “Mental Health is NOT separate from your health. It is central to your health.”

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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Karan Singh, Co-founder and COO of mental health startup, Ginger, joins me in this episode. Ginger is one of the early pioneers within the mental health tech space and it’s an honor to have Karan join us to talk about the founding of Ginger, the mental health startup space, and his advice to aspiring mental health startup founders.

He tells the founding story of Ginger, as well as how the business has evolved and grown into what it is today. Ginger has accomplished quite a bit in the last decade and has been named one of the Top 10 Most Innovative Companies in Healthcare by Fast Company, while also being identified by the World Economic Forum as a Technology Pioneer.

He did his undergraduate studies at UC Berkeley and got his MBA from MIT (Sloan School of Business). He was in the Harvard Medical School / MIT Health, Science and Technology program, but left to build Ginger.

There are a number of ways to connect with Karan including on social media which will be linked in the show notes.

You can connect with Karan here: LinkedIn, Ginger Website, Karan on Twitter

SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. Karan walked us through his bio/background including how he found his way into the behavioral health space. Karan’s journey into this space is a very personal one surrounding his reaction to a loved one’s attempted suicide, years ago.
2. What is the founding story of Ginger and how has the business evolved?Karan walks us through the founding story of Ginger. The business began as a tech platform that would support health systems, using smart phones to measure mental health. At that time, and even still today, qualitative assessments make up the bulk of how we measure mental wellbeing.
3. What is Ginger today?
   Over the years, Ginger has evolved into an on-demand mental health system. You can think of it as a virtual clinic for your mental health. Members have access to a team of coaches, therapists and psychiatrists. This multi-functional care team allows Ginger to deliver assistance to their members in under 60 seconds, any time on any day in all 50 states and in 25 countries.

Ginger has partnered with employers to provide mental health care access to half a million people to date. These employers include numerous business in many industries including tech companies, airlines, unions and more. 4. How do people find Ginger? Who can use it? Entry points onto the Ginger platform include:

1. Employers
2. Health plans (Optum, Aetna, Anthem, Kaiser, and others) for in-network covered care

1. Karan explained that Ginger’s definition of “mental health” is far wider than what people normally think of. It’s not just psychiatry, but includes sub-clinical problems, depression, anxiety, and a number of other symptoms. For example, someone going through cancer treatment, may not have an elevated PHQ-9 score, but they likely require some additional emotional support, which is where Ginger comes in.
2. What is the opportunity for Companies like Ginger in the mental health space?Fundamentally, the mental health space is broken. There is a massive supply and demand imbalance. Demand is going up. Supply isn’t keeping up. Ginger provides a set of interventions as a ‘virtual clinic’ that consists of talking to a coach, to a therapist, to a psychiatrist, and provides access to a library of helpful content.

In the long run, Karan believes the great opportunity centers around preventative mental health. The ability to catch people early, before they have a crisis, leveraging technology, will allow Ginger to provide a higher level of care than what has traditionally been achievable, without technology. 7. Where can aspiring entrepreneurs go after in the mental health space now?Karan explains that we need as many people as we can to be getting into this space, it’s a massive opportunity. The supply and demand imbalance mean the current mental health crisis isn’t going away any time soon. We need integrated preventative approaches as well as ways to help people far earlier (before crisis occurs) in a more holistic way.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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In the time of COVID-19 and social distancing, it’s important to know how we can maintain our mental health. Kasley Killam, joins me for a conversation about loneliness, and isolation during this trying time and how we can protect our mental health even when we may not be able to connect physically with others.

Kasley is a Masters of Public Health Candidate at the Harvard School of Public Health. She is also a World Economic Forum Global Shaper and a social health advocate as well as a Contributing Writer at Scientific American (and has been for 5 years).

In March, 2020 she published an article in Scientific American titled, “How to Prevent Loneliness in a Time of Social Distancing.” In this conversation we cover her suggestions on this topic, and we dig into what isolation is, how it’s different than loneliness and why both impact us as humans so much.

Connect with Kasley: Her Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram,

Some of Kasley’s recent writing:

How to Prevent Loneliness in a Time of Social Distancing

A Hug a Day Keeps the Doctor Away

The Need for Human Connection in Digital Mental Health Care

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. What is loneliness? What is Isolation? Kasley describes the difference between loneliness and isolation as well as physical impacts that a lack of social interaction can have on the human body.
   Social Isolation – Is about being physically isolated. It’s objective. It could be because you live alone, or you have physical limitations or you lack transportation, etc.

Loneliness – Feeling connected to other people. It’s subjective. Do you feel like you have people you can reach out to and connect with? 2. Chronic loneliness and social isolation can impact your health in a number of ways including these examples. Here are some examples of how isolation can negatively impact our health: a. More likely to catch a cold
b. More likely to experience depression
c. Increased risk of heart disease/stroke
d. Shortened life span
e. Decreased immunity
f. Increased inflammation
g. Decreased happiness, joy, sense of purpose 3. Loneliness is on the rise, but is certainly not a “new thing.” Kasley referenced a Cigna survey launched in January 2020 where they polled 10,000 American adults. They found that across all age groups that 61% of people are lonely, compared to 54% the year prior. This is particularly common among Gen Z who reported 79% feeling lonely. This has been an issue long before this pandemic. Link here to Loneliness Survey conducted by Cigna. 4. Why are we so lonely? Common reasons:

a. People are increasingly living alone
b. Technology - easy to blame and the evidence is mixed
c. Less participation in social clubs and community organizations
d. People have less time to invest in relationships as they are working more
e. Social anxiety 5. How can we fight against isolation during this time of social distancing? Kasley tells us that one universal that we are all going through is that we are having to adapt and figure out how to function and flourish during this time. There are a number of things we can and should be doing including:

a. Reflect on what social well-being looks like for you. This is different for everyone. This can include contemplating questions such as "how much time do I want to spend interacting with other people?" and "how do I spend quality time with others?"

b. Make a list of the people you want to keep in touch with and focus on the relationships we want to prioritize in our lives. We need to figure out how we want to engage with those people.

c. Connect at least once a day with people on our list, or more, if we can. 6. We also talked about how technology plays a role in both creating isolation, and how technology can be a tool to provide connectivity at the same time. When discussing how to use technology in a healthy way Kasley explained that technology is often to blame for isolation, and it’s true, because many of us have unhealthy habits with social media and technology. Kasley recommends that we use this time to figure out how we can use technology in ways that support your social well-being. 7. We also talked about how introverts and extroverts handle isolation and loneliness differently as well as what healthy can look like for different types of personalities both during this time and later when we return to our old way of life. 8. We also talked about what socially healthy use of technology and social media can look like now and in the future. Kasley gives us tips on how to define what healthy looks like for ourselves and how we can manage our engagement with our devices and social media. 9. Finally, Kasley gave us an overview of what a Masters of Public Health program is about, why she chose to get into the psychology space and what she plans to do once she obtains her Masters.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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Can the Ketogenic diet cure mental illness? Has it really been used to cure epilepsy? Is it safe? How does it work? We answer all of these questions in this conversation with Dr. Chris Palmer.

Dr. Chris Palmer is one of the world’s leading researcher on the use of ketogenic therapies for treating neurological disorders. He has done extensive research on the intersection of psychiatric disorders and metabolic disorders (obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and inflammation). There is a lot of misinformation on the internet about the ketogenic diet and therapies. Dr. Palmer dispels these myths in our conversation.

In this conversation Dr. Palmer explains the ketogenic diet, how it impacts your body, what it can and can’t do, and how it can impact not only your physical health, but your mental health as well. We took a deep dive into the connection between the gut microbiome, mental health, and mental illness in this episode as well as how to use the ketogenic diet to reduce symptoms from psychiatric disorders.

Connect with Dr. Palmer and learn more about his work via these links:

Dr. Palmer on LinkedIn

Dr. Palmer’s Website

Articles by Dr. Palmer

Medical Journal Publications by Dr. Palmer

Extensive Research on Ketogenic Diet for Metabolic Conditions and Mental Illness

Other resources mentioned in this episode:

The Charlie Foundation for Ketogenic Therapies

Virta Clinic – Keto diet cures diabetes and other health benefits

For weight loss keto, learn more from Dr. Dom D’Agostino

Keto News on Epilepsy.com edited by Dr. Eric Kossoff from Johns Hopkins

Dr. Jong Rho at UC San Diego on diet and neurological disorders

SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. What is the connection between the ketogenic diet and mental health?For many years, we have known there is quite a bit of overlap between treating epilepsy and treating numerous other psychiatric disorders. Many of the drugs used to treat seizures are also used to treat other mental illnesses. Likewise, since we know the ketogenic diet has been proven to reduce seizures and symptoms of epilepsy, it makes sense that just like the drugs used for epilepsy, that there could be other psychiatric uses for ketogenic therapies.
   The ketogenic diet has been around for about 100 years (first described by a physician in 1921). It was first developed for the purpose of treating epilepsy. We have a tremendous amount of evidence that the ketogenic diet is a safe and effective treatment for epilepsy today as proven by numerous clinical trials and clinical cases of positive outcomes. Keto is a very common treatment for epilepsy today.

The most “famous” story of it working is the case of Charlie Abrahams who, at 11 months of age was experiencing multiple seizures per day. After many medications didn’t work, the ketogenic diet stopped his seizures and he has been seizure-free and medication free for over 30 years. 2. Why are ketogenic therapies not used widely as medical treatment for mental illness today? Most people are not aware of the abundance of evidence in favor of this diet or the basic science of it. This diet has been tested in randomized controlled trials in people with epilepsy.

Just the idea of using a “diet” that many consider a “fad” or even “unhealthy” to treat something as serious as a mental illness seems to cause skepticism with most people.

In the field of dietary science, there is a lot of disagreement about what is healthy and not healthy. There are also endless “frivolous” or “quack-ish” claims out there. So, when people hear that Keto can cure seizures, people assume it’s another quack claim. 3. Why do so many people struggle to do the ketogenic diet? 1. Skeptical people – Many people are skeptical about this diet because of the number and volume of naysayers out there. A lot of people say this diet is bad for you or will kill you and that this diet goes against the grain of everything we have been taught is a healthy diet. However, we now know that much of what we have been taught is a healthy diet, isn’t actually healthy and is the result of food industry lobbying and bad science. 2. Immediate negative reaction – The 1st week or two of this diet is extraordinarily difficult to endure for most people. Your body is going through a dramatic shift in fuel sources from sugar and carbohydrates to mostly fats. This is a big change that effects almost every cell in the human body. This causes people to often feel worse at first which makes people give up a few days into it. This is likely why so few of the 1,300 at Johns Hopkins finished the trial. We need clinics and clinicians who understand this diet, its complications, the dynamics of the keto adaptation phase, and understand the “art” of doing this diet in order to increase adherence so we can complete more of these studies in a meaningful way and help more people. 4. What are the obstacles preventing broader use of ketogenic therapies for psychiatric disorders? Obstacle 1: Skepticism about a “diet” as an effective treatment for a serious disorder.

Obstacle 2: A lot of people can’t do this diet. There aren’t that many professionals, especially in mental health, who fully understand the diet and how to get people to do it appropriately or how long it takes to work. It’s a very difficult diet in the first couple weeks. Takes a while to work, just like any medication would and often people feel worse before they feel better so they give up too early because there aren’t enough well-trained doctors who can oversee the keto-adaptation phase of the diet. 5. Can this diet “cure” mental illness? Cure is a strong word and one that Dr. Palmer isn’t comfortable using here. He explains that significant, if not total, symptom reduction is possible in many cases and gives several anecdotal examples in our conversation.

Dr. Palmer explains that in the world of epilepsy, people typically fall into three buckets when we monitor reaction to treatment:

1 – Symptoms reduced

2 – Cure – or complete resolution

3 – Treatment did not work

Among the people who get a positive benefit from ketogenic treatment (2 of the 3 buckets), m any of those people are able to come off of the diet after the right amount of time on it, and maintain many of the benefits they received from the diet. Charlie Abraham is the perfect analogy here of what complete resolution can look like for someone with epilepsy. 6. Is the ketogenic diet safe? How long can someone be on the diet? Dr. Palmer explains that there are numerous variations of the ketogenic diet, and there are multiple use cases as well. The answer to questions like these depends on which version of the diet and what your reason is for a ketogenic diet. There are weight loss versions, medical versions, and some are more restrictive than others as far as what you can consume.

If someone is having 20 seizures per day and they are completely disabled from living a normal life, and a ketogenic therapy can control their disability, then the consequences of taking the diet (some perceived, and some real) are worth it when you consider that having sever epilepsy for your entire life is far worse than any potential negative side effect of the keto diet. 7. Is it true that people are curing diabetes with the keto diet? The Virta Clinic is the best source for information here. They have published research on trials they have conducted where they put 300 people through a weight loss version of the keto diet and found that many of the people who had diabetes were able to stop taking all diabetic medication. Check out their research here. 8. Are exogenous ketones (supplements) good, bad, helpful? The ketogenic diet as many effects on the body. The primary mechanism of action in the keto diet is a change in gut microbiome. The food you eat during this diet, and the way your stomach digests that food can profoundly change the gut microbiome. Just taking a supplement or an exogenous ketone avoids a lot of those gut microbe reactions that drive positive benefits for the body and brain.

According to Dr. Palmer, there is no evidence that exogenous ketones (supplements) have an impact on mental disorders or epilepsy. That’s not to say they can’t and won’t work, but there has yet to be any real evidence through controlled trials to prove the connection. 9. If I want to do the ketogenic diet correctly, how do I get started? If you want to use the keto diet to controls symptoms of a psychiatric disorder then you should seek the help of a professional to guide you through the diet, monitor you, help you, and ensure adherence in a healthy way. Here is where you can start your research if you are trying to use the diet for one of these issues:

Epilepsy – go to a neurologist and Keto diet center for help properly executing the diet

Diabetes – The Virta Clinic is a good place to start. They are a remote / virtual treatment program that works with your PCP to help you with the diet. There are others like them out there, so do your own homework on what may be best for you.

Treat Mental Illness – You need to work with psychiatrist. SMIs are dangerous life-threatening disorders. This diet is a very powerful intervention (the medical version is far more than a diet; it is a medication). You need to be monitored by someone who knows what they are doing and can help you navigate the negative side effects in the early days of keto-adaptation. 10. Can the keto diet cure other diseases like Cancer and Alzheimer’s? There is current research ongoing about the impacts of the ketogenic diet on cancer treatment. There have been no cases where the keto diet cures cancer or removes a tumor, but there has been evidence that the diet can slow tumor growth. There are currently trials underway to analyze this.

Some people have wondered if we could treat Alzheimer’s with the keto diet. This is a hot topic in the research community and is currently an emerging field. There is some evidence that Alzheimer’s relates to problems with glucose metabolism in the brain. If that’s the case, then changing the brain’s fuel source could logically have an impact on the disease. The keto diet provides an alternate fuel source to brain cells, so if those cells are not getting enough fuel from glucose, then the change to a different fuel source could be one of the solutions. Some people are referring to this as “type 3” diabetes today.

There are some animal trials going on right now with regards to the keto diet and Alzheimer’s. One of those is taking place at Johns Hopkins and one at another university. Both trials show that a keto diet results in improvement in biomarkers for Alzheimer’s, improved cognition in about 6 weeks, and improved energy levels in about 6 weeks. There is much more to learn on this topic 11. What do the naysayers of the keto diet say? Who is working against the Keto diet? There are a lot of people who dislike the ketogenic diet. Many people say it isn’t good for you or has negative side effects or that it defies basic nutrition guidelines. The primary voices of naysayers are medical professionals that truly believe that saturated fats are toxic and will kill people by causing strokes if they eat a ketogenic diet.

These medical professionals have been educated this way by the system and taught these concepts their whole career and failed to ever question the science, or the data to come up with their own thoughts. That’s what Dr. Palmer has done and why he has come to the conclusions that he has.

A lot of medical professionals (who are good people, who have a goal of saving lives) truly believe this diet can harm people. Dr. Palmer disagrees with these doctors and is vocal about this because he welcomes an open dialogue about the science and the data for the advancement of public health. A great resource to begin doing your own homework here is the Virta Clinic research on the diet.

In addition to these doctors, there are others who oppose the keto diet as well. This includes the broader plant-based dietary movement. Some people don’t eat animals for ethical or religious reasons. Other people prefer plant-based foods because they think that raising animals for consumption is bad for the environment. Dr. Palmer isn’t arguing for or against any of those positions, but rather just stating what opposing views are out there.

One point we would like to make here is that an obese person, with multiple co-morbid problems is having a profoundly more negative impact on the environment in m any other ways than they would be having if they were eating animal-based food. Dr. Palmer explains this in the conversation.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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In this episode, I spoke with Rob Stephenson who is moving mountains to defeat stigma around mental health. He’s one of the most active, and most impactful people I’ve met when it comes to fighting stigma around mental health. His motivation is driven by his own mental health struggle with bipolar disorder and the overwhelming response he received a few years ago when he decided to come out about his struggles.

His main focuses today are:

1. InsideOut Leader Board – An annual list of senior leaders from corporations that have been open about their mental health struggles. The list is designed to celebrate each leader who has decided to be open, thus playing their part in reducing stigma and helping others within their organization to speak out and seek help. Click here to see the current list of corporate mental health role models on the board.
2. G24 Global Mental Health Summit – A global mental health summit, spanning a 24-hour period on May 18, 2020. The summit is designed to bring people together globally during this time of need around mental health. G24 will start at 9am Sydney time on May 18 and finish at 5pm in San Francisco and will involve 3 consecutive remote events hosted over 3 main time zones allowing the world to connect.

You can learn more about Rob and his work here: Rob’s LinkedIn, InsideOut Leaderboard, G24 Global Mental Health Summit, Article on G24, Form Score overview

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. Rob tells us that his involvement in the mental health space is a personal mission-driven by his own experience living with bipolar disorder.
2. He talks about how mental health discussions in the UK, where he lives, have really changed since 2017 when Prince William and Prince Harry spoke out about seeing a therapist and their own challenges with their mental health.
3. Rob decided to come out and share his story at that time. The reaction was overwhelmingly positive and really opened his eyes to how many people experience mental health and stigma.
4. Rob created a non-profit called “Inside Out” – which publishes a leaderboard with a list of business leaders who have come out and been open about their own mental health struggles. Rob talks about how these leaders are doing a great deal to reduce stigma by making it ok to talk about mental health in the workplace and with family/friends.
5. InsideOut Leaderboard has published a list of UK executives two years in a row and is working on their first US leaderboard now which should come out in 2020.
6. Rob has developed something called a “Form Score” which is a daily mental health self-assessment that tracks mood, and other components of mental health and shares them with a select group of your friends/family/peers. It’s meant to be a social engagement feature around sharing our mental health trends.
   Here is how it works:

7. Go to: https://lnkd.in/ex53iz8

8. Scan the QR code or click the link at the top of the page

9. Post your daily Form Score, Out of 10

10. Watch the website update in real-time for insights on broader wellbeing trends.

    1. Jen Fisher – Chief Well-being Officer at Deloitte and host of the WorkWell podcast
    2. Martel Neville – Global HR Leader at Comcast
    3. Sir Ian Cheshire – Chairman Barclays UK
    4. Poppy Jaman – CEO, City Mental Health Alliance
    5. John Flint – Former CEO of HSBC
    6. Many others across the globe being announced in the coming weeks
    7. Summit website: https://fowinsights.com/event/g24/
    8. Rob is also creating the world’s first global, 24-hour live mental health summit called “G24” in May. The event will take place on May 18th, 2020 with three 8-hour events hosted globally and continuously with the first event being an 8-hour even from Sydney, then an 8-hour event from London and ending with an 8-hour event from San Francisco. The event will include:

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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Coming out about having a mental illness isn’t easy. Elizabeth Horner, psychiatric nurse, mother of 4, joins us to talk about how she decided to come out to her friends and family about her bipolar disorder.

In our conversation we both shared our experiences from finding out about our bipolar diagnosis, to how we deal with it and what we can do to encourage others to speak their truth and de-stigmatize having a mental health difference.

Elizabeth’s story of how she finally decided to get help, then how she spent nearly 2 decades keeping her truth to herself and how she decided to come out about her diagnosis sheds a lot of light on the stigma associated with mental health that we face from society, from family and from friends. This highlights the need for us to talk about these things and normalize them so stigma decreases.

You can learn more about Elizabeth here: Blog Post: Coming Out With Bipolar, Her Blog Site, Elizabeth’s Email, January 2020 Post on Self-Acceptance

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. Elizabeth Horner is a psychiatric nurse, mother of 4, and lives with bipolar disorder. She kept it private for many years until she decided to come out and share her story on her personal blog.
2. She was first diagnosed with bipolar disorder 20 years ago and didn’t tell anyone for about 19 years.
3. She shares with us examples of her symptoms of both mania and depression.
4. Elizabeth shares about how she started abusing recreational drugs and alcohol to manage her symptoms. She wanted to die. We talked about how we both have wanted to self-medicate the highs and lows with substances at times.
5. Elizabeth talks about why she kept this a secret from her family and friends for almost 20 years. She reached the point where she just didn’t’ want to keep any more secrets, she wanted to be seen for who she really is. She shares about what kept her from disclosing this to her friends and family.
6. Why did you wait so long to come out about it? She couldn’t bear the thought of how she perceived that others would treat her. But more importantly, she was fearful of how her view of herself would change if she spoke her truth. Elizabeth talks about “unconditional self-acceptance” and how she had to get to that place to be able to speak her truth.
7. How did you make this decision to come out about it? She asked her family, and they encouraged her not to come out about it at first. Elizabeth wanted to own that this was a part of her, and she wanted to get to this place of self-acceptance where she could accept who she is, where she is.
8. What was the defining moment for you on the path to self-acceptance? She told me it felt like she was trying to be silenced, which made her uncomfortable and made her feel shame. When she got to that crossroad, she decided to accept who she is and speak her truth with courage.
9. When she finally spoke up about it, she felt a huge sense of relief. Owning her past experience was very freeing.
10. What fallout could there be? Possible consequences with work, family, and friends. Not everyone will see it the way you do. You can’t control other people’s reactions. I’m going to stay honest with myself regardless of reactions.
11. How do we encourage others to share their stories? 1) Stigma starts young, so we need to educate our children and talk to them about mental health. We need to normalize that conversation and talk about how it’s important to protect out mental health. 2) We need to examine our own feelings about mental health. We need to come to terms with our own views on mental health broadly. 3) We need to stop demonizing medication.
12. We talked about what her support structure looks like from therapy, to medication, and other wellness practices. Elizabeth talked about how she keeps a daily mood chart and notes the benefits as well as short comings of doing so. Often times we find ourselves going to our psychiatrist and telling them we are fine when we may be that day but haven’t been for some period of time.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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Nick Padlo joins us for a very candid conversation about addiction, rehab, recovery, relapsing, and mindfulness. Nick is a long-time friend, and he’s a West Point classmate from the class of 2003. After a successful career in the Army, he obtained an MBA from Stanford GSB and ultimately formed a pledge fund to acquire and launch the Pet Loss Center. He drove the company to incredible growth.

In the midst of all of the success he was having as an entrepreneur, he struggled with addiction. But this isn’t a story of “entrepreneurship drove me to addiction” rather it’s a story of how personal struggles drove him to coping mechanisms which eventually led to addiction that impacted his ability to run his business.

Nick ended up going to rehab, then going again about a year later. After his second trip to rehab, instead of going to an IOP afterward, he took a trip to Southeast Asia to focus on something he knew he was weak at, which is mindfulness. We spend time talking about the mindfulness facility he attended in Cambodia, what he learned there, what it was like on a daily basis and how it has changed his life.

You can connect with Nick Padlo here: Nick’s LinkedIn

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. Nick shares his story of graduating from West Point, obtaining an MBA from Stanford and acquiring and growing his first business, the Pet Loss Center.
2. Nick was very successful with his first business, but he was in an unhealthy place in life. He walked away from his startup in 2019 and went to rehab for the first time. After rehab, he walked back into the same personal life and relapsed quickly. The relapse was far worse than the first time he needed to go to rehab.
3. In our conversation, Nick highlights how he made the decision to go to rehab the first time. He talks about how the first time he went to fix himself to be better for a relationship. Which wasn’t the right reason. He learned a lot of good things, but his motivation wasn’t in the right place.
4. Nick goes on to talk about his motivation for attending rehab the second time. This time he decided to go solely for himself. This time it was “death or rehab” and he knew it was his last shot. He went in feeling like this was his last shot, and he was doing it for himself.
5. During his second stint in rehab, he put a lot more thought into the training, education, and self-reflection because he was doing it for himself. He says that the second time he really “felt his way through it” versus the first time where he “thought his way through it.”
6. Nick explains that before rehab, he never considered going to yoga, or practicing mindfulness. We talked about how we both viewed mindfulness practices as something that wasn’t for us, before we went to rehab. We also discussed what we learned about mindfulness in rehab and how that changed our views of mindfulness practices.
7. After rehab, instead of going to a sober home or some other traditional after care program, Nick decided to go to Southeast Asia and dig deep on mindfulness practices. He realized that mindfulness was the thing he was weakest at, and going to a sober home and spending a little bit of time talking about all the things he learned in rehab wasn’t what he needed so he went to a place where he could do a deep dive on the thing he was weakest at, which was mindfulness.
8. He made the decision to go to this mindfulness training program by asking questions like “What is it that I’m missing?” and “Where is the best place to learn that?” He realized the mindfulness was a big weakness for him, so he looked for a place to focus on mindfulness.
9. Here is the program he attended: Vagabond Temple in Cambodia
10. Nick walked us through a typical day at the mindfulness camp in Cambodia, and what he got out of it. We talked about the mindfulness practices, how he learned to be mindful, and what kind of diet they encouraged him to be on to amplify his mindfulness journey.
11. We talked about Nick’s recovery plan now that he is back from Cambodia, and what he plans to do to remain sober now that he’s back in “the real world.”
12. We talked about Nick’s future plans and how he wants to take his experience as CEO of a high growth business, his new found sobriety and his focus on mindfulness and apply those experiences to find a way to work or build something that delivers the learnings he obtained over the last few months, to others, including other entrepreneurs.

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Michael Perron is one of my sponsors in recovery. He is also a minister who created and runs the Life Recovery Program at Prestonwood Baptist Church. This program has been very influential in my recovery and was instrumental in saving my life from addiction and mental illness.

Michael himself struggled for over 15 years with addiction to drugs and alcohol. In this episode he talks about a spiritual encounter that he had, that turned his life around and set him on a path to ministry and dedicating his life to helping others.

We dig into the role of Churches and faith-based organizations in helping people who struggle with addiction, mental illness, and mental health differences. We talked at length about how the Church sometimes handles this in ways that promote stigma and do not encourage wellness.

Michael explains how faith-based organizations can be effective in helping people who are struggling as well as the loved ones of those who are experiencing mental health differences and substance abuse issues. He also talks about how the federal government is getting involved in supporting churches in this effort via the Department of Health and Human Services.

You can connect with Michael Perron and the Life Recovery group here: Email: liferecovery@prestonwood.org, Life Recovery Program, Life Recovery at Prestonwood (Facebook Group)

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. Michael shares his story of recovery from addiction. He talks about his upbringing, and how he ended up struggling with addiction for over 15 years, and eventually, how he got help.
2. Michael shared about an encounter he had one day where he went to church, did drugs in the bathroom, and was approached publicly by a woman who told him that “God will restore the years the locusts have eaten.” From that moment, Michael explains that God did for him what Michael could not do for himself.
3. We talk about the role of the Church, and other faith-based organizations, in helping people recover from addiction and dealing with the mental health struggles that people face. Michael explains that over 80% of the population approaches a clergy member about mental health issues first. The Church is playing and will play a vital role in triage, and first response to mental health issues.
4. What makes people feel like they can’t come to church for help? We talked about the stigma within the church, and the way the church has either mishandled mental health or addiction struggles in the past or even outright denied the existence of the problems.
5. We talked about one of the primary roles of the church being to educate people about mental health, addiction, recovery and be a resource for those struggling as well as the family members of those who are struggling.
6. What should the relationships between the church and mental health professionals look like? Michael explained how the church can be engaged in helping people, as well as facilitating getting people to the right place for them. Some people need a licensed counselor, some people need treatment, some people need AA, and some people just need community. The church needs to build relationships with people who have been through these struggles and become aware of resources in their area.
7. What is the role of the government in working with churches around mental health? Michael talks about what the White House, and politicians are doing to work with churches to make the churches a first line of defense in the efforts to get help to people.
8. We talked about specific ways churches and faith-based organizations can support people who are struggling with addiction, mental health, and who are trying to help their loved ones who are going through these difficulties in life.

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Bob Moran graduated from the Naval Academy in 1983. He served honorably as a Marine officer, but as he neared retirement from the military, he didn’t make the transition into civilian life as smoothly as others do.

Like many veterans, Bob struggled to integrate into society, struggled to get the right jobs and perpetually under-earned versus his potential as a graduate of the United States Naval Academy. This struggle, combined with his own mental health differences led Bob to losing relationships, his home, and his income.

Eventually, Bob found help in a civilian homeless shelter and made his way to the Department of Veterans Affairs. The VA helped him get back on his feet and now Bob has turned to entrepreneurship, in the mental health space, to build a better life.

Bob’s startup is called Mirror Image Clothing. He explains what they do and their mental health mission during our conversation.

You can connect with Bob Moran here: LinkedIn, Startup: Mirror Image Clothing on Etsy, Instagram, Email,

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. Bob Moran graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1983. Bob talks about his transition to civilian life, and how he never really connected with high paying jobs. He explains how he perpetually under-earned and how that led to losing his family, his home, and how it impacted his mental health.
2. The VA – Bob shatters the myth that the VA is a “bad” institution and doesn’t help veterans. Bob found quite a bit of help and many resources for mental health, homelessness and other problems he faced at the VA. Bob encourages veterans, and their loved once, to ignore what you hear in the press about how bad the VA is, and seek their help because they have great resources.
3. Veterans Crisis Hotline – Bob shares with us that he approached the VA through the Veterans Crisis Line. You can read about that resource here. The phone number is 1-800-273-8255. You can also chat online via their website or you can text to 838-255.
4. We talked about the stigma associated with getting help from the VA. Bob shares about why he didn’t seek help from the VA for so long. He viewed the VA as a place for people that “weren’t like him.” He thought he was “above” needing their help because he was an Academy graduate and an officer. Bob explains how that stigma was shattered for him and what kind of help he eventually received.
5. Bob has turned to entrepreneurship – Bob has leveraged numerous resources available to him via the VA, and other places, to create a startup focused on mental health, called Mirror Image Clothing.
6. Mirror Image Clothing – Bob’s startup is centered around helping people with their greatest struggle. Their mission is to develop a national, then global, brand of clothing that liberates people from their limitations. How? Online sales via Etsy at first, and simultaneously locate 1,000 female entrepreneurs ages 18-64. Then help them develop their ideas into million-dollar businesses by providing founder training, experience and support through a franchise of Mirror Image Clothing.

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Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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Sophia Mahfooz is a survivor, she is a role model and she is one of the most inspiring people I’ve met. She was born pre-maturely, as her village in Afghanistan was bombed while her young parents fled to a refugee camp. This trauma shocked her mother into labor and left Sophia with very little chance to survive. Shortly after this, her family quickly fled the war-torn village where she was born after their home was destroyed.

Sophia spent many of her formative years living as a refugee in Afghanistan, and later in England. In our conversation, she tells the story of her family fleeing Afghanistan, making their way to England, and eventually how she moved to San Francisco to become an entrepreneur.

She originally traveled to the U.S. to care for her brother who struggled with bipolar disorder. She couldn’t afford to seek treatment for him within the U.S. healthcare system, and she couldn’t send him back to England, so she decided to figure out another way to treat him. Her efforts resulted in a solution that she hopes to replicate and commercialize for others who are trying to help their loved ones find relief from serious mental illness in a cost-effective, and natural way.

She is building a startup to bring her vision to market to help others. Her business is called NeuroX.

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. Sophia details her early childhood experience. She tells a harrowing story of survival, escape, and how her family found their way to safety after her village was bombed.
2. She explains the difficulties of being an immigrant / refugee. Sophia talks about some of the difficulties refugees and immigrants face that I had never thought of before. One specific thing she explains is that she never got a birth certificate which makes it nearly impossible for her to navigate parts of life that we take for granted (identification, travel, visa, etc.).
3. Sophia shared about growing up in England and living what felt like two separate lives. There was the life she lived at school where she spoke English and pretend to be a “normal” child who fit in with others. Then there was the other life she lived at home where she spoke a different language, at different food than her friends and often felt isolated because of her race, and heritage.
4. She talked about her family’s history of mental illness. Her father had bipolar disorder, and she talks about how she believes it to be a byproduct of the stress he had to endure to survive. She also shares that her brother later suffered from bipolar disorder.
5. Sophia traveled to the United States to take care of her brother when he was struggling with manic episodes from bipolar. She said that they couldn’t afford to admit him to a hospital in America for treatment, and it wasn’t feasible to send him back to England for help. This led her to try to find a solution on her own.
6. The idea for her startup, NeuroX came from this pursuit of a solution for her brother. She researched non-medical treatments for bipolar disorder and found evidence that such treatments existed. Sophia started to try different techniques from diet, to meditation, exercise, and other wellness routines with her brother. He showed signs of improving and over time he was able to live a better life.
7. Now Sophia is working to build a program based on what she learned, helping her brother, to facilitate other family members of people struggling with mental illness. Her platform is designed to be a resource for people suffering from mental illness and their loved ones as they try to find natural, cost-effective solutions.

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Chantel Garrett, Founder and Executive Director of Strong365 joins me for a conversation about psychosis, schizophrenia, and how we can help people when they first start to struggle.

One of the biggest problems we face in helping people who struggle from mental illness is reducing the “pathway to care” from the first symptoms until treatment. The average duration from symptom to treatment in the U.S. is 15 months when the World Health Organization says it should be under 3 weeks.

Strong365, is a non-profit, and a subsidiary of OneMind. Chantel and her team are on a mission to connect people who need help, and the loved ones of those people, through online education, 24/7 peer support, and connection to specialized care centers across the U.S. in order to reduce the time to care for those who need it.

Chantel has a degree in applied economics from UC SF and lives in SF with her husband, 2 daughters, 1 dog and 5 chickens!

You can connect with Chantel here: Strong 365 Website, Chantel’s Twitter, Chantel’s LinkedIn

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. What is Strong365? Strong365 was created in 2014 to shorten the pathway to care for young people facing their first episode of psychosis. They use digital channels to connect with teens and young adults about what psychosis is, provide educational information and humanize their stories to reduce stigma. They also provide a directory of care centers around the US of which there are about 300 today (when in 2014 there were only 50). The federal government has helped support that growth.
2. Why did she create Strong365? The idea came from a personal experience. Her brother was diagnosed with schizophrenia when he was 20, and he is now 40 years old. It has been a long road, and he’s doing well, but it took about 15 of those 20 years to find quality and effective care. There is a huge gap, particularly for young people, that are experiencing mental health issues outside the realm of what most people usually talk about.
   While on sabbatical in 2014, Chantel researched this topic of how to find care for psychosis. She realized the lack of options for help and wanted to create something. So, she started Strong365 to use her marketing background to promote a new model of care. This care is called “Coordinated Specialty Care.” The National Institute of Mental Health (NIH) did a study on this model leveraging more than 20 sites. The outcome of this study is that young people do so much better if they get care early in their mental health journey than waiting until some sort of disruptive crisis sends them to the ER or inpatient care.
3. The average time that passes between the first episode of psychosis and getting care is about 1 year and 3 month today in the United States. The World Health Organization has set a goal for that to be 3 weeks globally. ‘The time to care’ is the biggest lever in the long-term health outcomes of young people with early psychotic disorders like schizophrenia.
4. How do people find you? People typically don’t come in for help on behalf of themselves. Typically, it’s a parent or some adult that helps a young person come to care. The number one referrer of people to care are inpatient units in the U.S. We consider this failing because most people are coming for help after a very traumatic event that leads them to the ER and or inpatient treatment.
5. How can we reduce the time to care gap? Strong365 is piloting a project in NY state to test their approach. They have partnered with 23 clinics (all are coordinated specialty care clinics that treat young adults with psychosis). They are trying to figure out “what role digital media can play in meeting a young person directly where they are at the right time, with the right information and support.” This pilot program is funded by the NIH and is a 3-year grant.
6. How soon can we solve this problem? We talked about how solutions in this space move at a snail’s pace. While Chantel has a very entrepreneurial spirit and wants to see solutions in market ASAP, she must work around funding concerns, clinical concerns, finding the right partners, and building a team to execute once all those hurdles have been overcome.
   Today, the care system for young people experiencing psychosis is a very manual, fragmented system. Usually, someone comes into an ER, and the ER looks them up in an EHR (database) to see what specialty provider to call. It’s a manual, slow, and impersonal process that is not working for young people.
7. Chantel and Strong365 have partnered with several organizations. As mentioned above, the NIH has funded their latest work, but they also work closely with Mental Health America (MHA), which has a mental health screening tool on their website that screens for psychosis. However, MHA has admitted to Strong365 that they struggle helping someone after the screen results are presented. A lot of the times, people just disappear from MHA once the screen is completed. This is the problem that needs to be solved.
8. Funding for Strong365 is primarily provided by family foundations. Some money is also provided by NIH research grants as mentioned above in the specific use case we discussed on the podcast. We talked a bit about her fund-raising challenges and how hard it was to get funding in the first few years as a “startup” non-profit.
9. Personally, Chantel spends her time teaching yoga and mindfulness in underprivileged neighborhoods to people who may not normally have access to yoga studios and mindfulness apps. She explains that mindfulness is something she discovered by the function of needing to take care of herself and now she looks to share that experience and the positive benefits of mindfulness with others.

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Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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In our latest episode, I had the chance to speak with congressional candidate Lindsey Boylan. She is a candidate for Congress in NY’s 10th district.

I found myself getting emotional a few times during my conversation with her. She has a very personal reason for pushing a mental health agenda as part of her campaign. If you do nothing more than watch her short video on why mental health is such a big part of her platform here.

In this episode, Lindsey explains how the people in her district are spending more time searching for things like mental health, depression, and anxiety on Google, versus gun control, climate change and plumbers. Not to diminish those other issues, but her constituents need a candidate who cares about what they care about. Americans needs politicians who care about what we struggle with because they have experienced it personally.

Lindsey is a New Yorker, a lifelong public servant and has done some great work in her service efforts to help secure hundreds of millions of dollars for underfunded public housing in NY, she’s worked to generate job growth in NY state, and she was heavily involved in the fight for a $15 minimum wage in NY.

She is a Board Member at the Design Trust for Public Space, she is on the Powerhouse Committee at “Run for Something” which is a group that encourages young progressives to run for state and local office, and she spends time advocating for NAMI-NYC (National Alliance on Mental Illness).

You can connect with Lindsey Boylan and learn more about her work here: Campaign Website, LinkedIn, ‘Mental Health is Personal’ Video, Twitter

SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. What made you decide to run for congress? Lindsey talks about how she’s spent most of her career focused on solving problems to make systems better for people. She’s always been very driven to help other people.
2. In Manhattan, more people are googling “depression, anxiety, and therapy” than “gun control, climate change, and plumbers.” Not to minimize the latter issues, but our leaders aren’t really focused on the issues that the people are most concerned about. People want to see politicians focused on mental health, and Lindsey is laser-focused on it from a policy perspective. Lindsey is running for congress to help bring these very personal issues around mental health, to the forefront in government.
3. Lindsey talks about how mental illness has impacted her and her family. She is very passionate about changing the mental health system. Mental health is a core component of her campaign and it drives her personally, as well as professionally.
4. Lindsey produced a video called “Mental Health is Personal” – in the video she explains that we don’t have a mental health care system in this country. Instead, we have a patchwork of resources for those who can afford it. We talk about why there is no real mental healthcare system. Lindsey gives an example about how in NYC it’s almost impossible to see a therapist that is paid for by insurance. We have this archaic barter system of a scale of payment that is very opaque. If you’re experiencing a crisis or a hardship, and you don’t know where to go that is affordable, then it’s extremely daunting.
5. We don’t treat mental health the same way we treat physical health in this country. We talk about the pool of resources that are out there to help people with various ailments and diseases. We also talk about how many research dollars are available for things like diabetes and heart disease versus dollars available for mental health research. The legislation is required to get more funding flowing to mental health research.
6. We talk about this forced narrative that exists around violence and mental health. Most people with mental health concerns are not perpetrating violence. People often want to only talk about mental health around tragedies and gun control. It’s frustrating that the only time the mental health conversation comes up in some circles is around tragic gun violence situations. Lindsey explains how frustrated she gets when people force the gun conversation and the mental health conversation to take place in the same breath.
7. We talked at length bout political appetite for mental health bills in congress. Lindsey explains that when she decided to run for congress, she spent a lot of time thinking about how we can move policy forward with regards to mental health. At first, she wondered who the members of the mental health caucus are, and if any are from her state of NY (as it turns out, only one congressman from NY is apart of the mental health caucus – it is Rep. John Katko from the 24th District of NY – a republican). She realized that the people in NY are concerned about mental health and the elected officials from NY are not focused on this problem.
8. We talked about what inspires her as a politician. Lindsey explained that she decided to run and was most inspired by leaders who have made politics personal. Personal experience with the problems we are trying to solve help us inform the debate. She is personally motivated to solve problems around mental health and once elected, can use her personal experience to help drive real change on this topic.
9. We talked about the bipartisanship we saw in 2018 around Tyler’s Law. We talked about what can get done, and how much willingness there is to pass mental health legislation in Congress. Lindsey explains that with the Affordable Care Act, we were able to move the conversation forward. Parity laws were important as well. Lindsey is a proponent of Medicare for all which would help drive more money and more coverage to more people who need mental health care as well. Lindsey explains how we have had several decades of lackluster investment in research.
   As we start to revamp our healthcare system in the country, we need to make mental health a central part of whatever system we have in the future.
10. We talked about how there isn’t really a great way to deal with crisis in this country when the problem stems from a mental health problem. There are so few resources available that most people call the police whenever there is a problem. Police often escalate a situation that doesn’t need to be escalated. This can make a situation more severe than it needs to be. We need to reform how we treat moments of crisis. Most people facing a mental health crisis are mostly potentially harmful to themselves, so we need to re-think about how we resource the emergency management system in this country. The current system moves toward hospitalization and police involvement. We can do better.
11. We talked about prison reform at length as well, which in our opinion, has a lot to do with mental health. Lindsey told me that 40% of the people in Riker’s Island jail have a serious mental illness. Are we dealing with people in a way that is putting these people in prison who used to go to mental institutions? Are there more humane ways to deal with these people? Could we all live more productive lives if we get this right? We need to spend money researching this so we can have the answers and reform these systems.

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In this episode, Stephen Hays chats with Clay Cockrell. Clay is a therapist in New York, NY and has gained quite a bit of notoriety for the medium through which he meets his clients. He meets his clients for walks. Clay started Walk and Talk Therapy in NYC after realizing many busy professionals simply don’t have time to transit to therapy sessions.

Clay has been featured on numerous TV shows, and in many publications including Good Morning America, CNN, The Wall Street Journal, The Times of London and the NY Times for his unique approach of walking with his therapy clients instead of meeting in an office.

It is evident from our conversation that Clay is passionate about helping people navigate the complicated world of accessing mental health care. His entire career has been focused on making therapy convenient. He created The Online Counseling Directory - which connects qualified psychotherapists and life coaches with clients all over the world.

Clay is also the host of the podcast “Finding Therapy” where he takes listeners through a step by step process of finding the right therapist and he hosts another podcast called “The Online Counseling Podcast” where he educates therapists on the ethical and effective ways to use technology to connect with clients.

You can connect with Clay Cockrell and learn more about his work here: Walk and Talk Therapy, LinkedIn, OnlineCounseling.com, Podcast: Finding Therapy, Podcast: Online Counseling.

SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. Clay Cockrell is a therapist in New York City who has always been attracted to stories about humans and how our histories impact us. He built his Walk and Talk Therapy practice in NYC on the idea that clients often are busy, stressed out, and rarely willing to make transit across the city for a therapy meeting in the middle of their busy day.
2. Clay was born and raised in Kentucky, and his wife is an actress in New York. Clay noticed his clients had a hard time getting out of the office to come to meetings with him. He wanted a way to make it convenient, so he decided to come to his clients, and host meetings while walking and talking. Clay credits the idea to his wife suggesting that he make meetings more convenient, and she was right!
3. Clay noticed that as he walked and talked with clients, that his clients opened up more, and the sessions were more effective. He also meets with his clients remotely online now as well and we talk about the effectiveness of remote therapy via voice, video or text in this episode.
4. One observation Clay made during walking meetings is that clients are often uncomfortable sitting on a couch, staring a therapist in the eyes, and revealing their deepest darkest secrets. However, if you get the clients moving, there seems to be more of a willingness to be vulnerable. Maybe this is due to the movement, maybe it’s a more comfortable environment, maybe it’s the eye contact.
5. Clay’s clients are primarily men, and we talked at length about men’s mental health broadly. Men are resistant sometimes to talking about emotions. It seems to Clay that men are resistant to sitting down and reflecting. In our society, it hasn’t been considered “masculine” to go to a therapist. However, that is changing, and Clay believes that men are seeing the value of therapy more and more today as stigma decreases.
6. Why does this idea of masculinity keep men from getting help? It’s the media, John Wayne imagery, being vulnerable is considered bad. We are complex beings. It’s hard to live with intention and often we find ourselves operating whimsically under the influence of what the media tells us we have to be.
7. What makes men willing to come into therapy for the first time? Desperation and pain, Clay explains, for the most part.
8. We talk about the value of community in our lives. There are millions of people in NYC but everybody is lonely. Isolation is dangerous and we must proactively fight against it.
9. How can technology be leveraged by therapists to help their clients? Clay encourages people to use meditation apps such as Calm and Headspace. He also talks about how many therapists don’t even have a website or know how to market their practice. Teletherapy is also a great tool – while it does change the dynamic, both for good and bad, there are many positive benefits to teletherapy. However, there is a need to focus on using technology ethically and legally when providing care remotely. We must also make sure the client is suitable for online counseling (someone with suicidal ideation, psychosis, etc. may not be suitable for online therapy).
10. We talk about the legal rules around therapy and how they impact online counseling. The current laws prevent a therapist from crossing state lines unless they are licensed in the state where the client is located. Originally states wanted to protect patients and the licensing boards need to make money so they require licenses in each state for now. This isn’t an issue outside the United States. Some states are coming together to create reciprocity, but this is an issue that needs to be taken up politically. This needs to be addressed at the federal level.
11. Clay built a platform for finding a therapist (both in the U.S. and globally, in any language): OnlineCounseling.com. Clay’s site investigates the therapists and validates them on behalf of the potential clients. They spend a lot of time educating and training therapists on their platform as well.

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In this episode Stephen Hays chats with Ryan Hampton about Ryan’s personal addiction journey that has led Ryan to the forefront of our national conversation on addiction and recovery. Ryan shares his story and talks about where we are as a country on combatting addiction, fostering recovery, and defeating stigma. Ryan really tells it how it is, and if you are at all concerned about how the government is dealing with (or not dealing with) drugs or addiction, you will feel better when you hear that Ryan is on our side (and when you hear what he’s doing).

Ryan is a former white house staffer (Clinton Administration) and is leading the national conversation about addiction and recovery. He is the author of the book, American Fix – Inside the Opioid Addiction Crisis and How to End it. He’s also part of a team that released the first-ever U.S. Surgeon Generals Report on Addiction (2016) and has been called a “top social entrepreneur” by Forbes. He’s appeared on countless broadcasts on Fox News, CNN, NPR, HLN, and in the Wall Street Journal, The Hill, Vice, HuffPost and many other publications. He is an authoritative figure on addiction and recovery in America.

Ryan has been instrumental in getting addiction legislation drafted, and passed both in California, and at the Federal level including HR 4684, also known as “Tyler’s Law” or the “Ensuring Access to Quality Sober Living Act of 2018.”

You can connect with Ryan Hampton and learn more about his work here: Ryan Hampton’s Website, Book: American Fix, Ryan’s Twitter,
SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. Ryan tells his story of addiction, and recovery. Just after Thanksgiving of 2014 Ryan was in drug treatment. It was a place he never thought he would end up. Certainly not after being stranded and homeless on the streets of Los Angeles. Ryan had a very promising future career in politics, he worked in the Clinton White House, then worked for the Democratic National Committee through 2003. After a hiking accident in 2003, he was prescribed an opioid based pain killer which ultimately led him to addiction to not only pain killers bur heroin and other addictions.
2. Addiction journey: From 2003 to 2014, Ryan spent years living in addiction to opioids and later heroin. After multiple attempts at treatment, rehab, sober living, and struggling with uncertainty about what to do, he found himself homeless in Los Angeles at Thanksgiving of 2014. Ryan spent Thanksgiving Day of 2014 on the corner of Hollywood Blvd and Highland with no food, no place to sleep, and no insurance, begging for help. That week someone helped him and got him to a treatment center.
   After treatment, he moved into a sober house, and plugged into a peer community that lifted him up when he couldn’t lift himself up. He focused on his recovery, went to meetings every day, drove Uber, and worked odd jobs. He was still incredibly ashamed though. He didn’t want to talk about addiction and recovery outside of the recovery community.
3. What made you start speaking out, taking action, and coming out of the shadows? 13 months into recovery, while still living in a sober living home, Ryan experienced the death of several of his friends in the recovery community. These were people he lived with or went to treatment with. These were people who got sober, but then relapsed, and could not get care, some of which went to hospitals and were denied care or left out on the street and died as a result.
   Ryan soon started to look outside of his local recovery community to see why people were dying and why nobody cared. This is when he started to get more involved and connect with the recovery community and recovery movement nationally. Leveraging his former political activist roots, he started using the cause of addiction to organize people and get people registered to vote, call their congress person, etc.
4. Comparing the AIDS crisis to the addiction crisis: 1/3 of households in the U.S. are impacted by addiction. This is a larger constituency than the gun lobby, the pro-life lobby, it’s larger than the LBGT community. Why is nobody talking about it at scale? Why have there not been changes? We don’t need everyone to bang on their legislators’ doors but if a couple thousand people would do it, then we could see huge changes.
   When the AIDS crisis was at its height, not every gay person in America got up in arms to change funding but a few thousands did. The result was billions of dollars of investment and research in science, which led us to a point where today, AIDS is a manageable chronic disease
5. How can someone go to the ER for help and not get it? Ryan explains that close to 95% of hospitals can’t treat substance use disorder in the ER. There’s a huge stigma and bias against drug users when they walk into an ER. ER doctors want to get “those people” out of their ERs as fast as possible. These “dirty junkies.” People die because of this stigma (stigma is the wrong work, it’s really discrimination).
   Recently we have seen more hospitals start to have Naloxone (Narcan – an opioid antagonist) on hand. Naloxone is a medication used to counter the effects of opioid overdose. However, most ERs still treat SUD as “catch and release” instead of offering or facilitating access to overnight care until a stable plan can be put in place for the individual to move into recovery or sober living.
6. Why don’t hospitals have a plan to send people to sober houses? In a perfect world, if someone walks into an ER, overdosing, it should be the same as a heart attack. We should not only triage but offer a continuum of care (like we do for any other medical condition). But we treat it more as catch and release. We would never do that with a heart attack. There should be a warm hand off from the hospital to a peer recovery coach, community organization, sober living, etc. – there should be some sort of continuity of care (as opposed to zero). Most of the time the ER is releasing these people onto the street after doing basically nothing, and just giving them a sheet of paper with some 800 numbers to call in the event of emergency which is totally useless to an addict in crisis mode.
7. What should hospitals be doing? Look at what they are doing at Mass General. They are taking a very disruptive, recovery informed approach. They are making warm handoffs with “recovery coaches.” This is taking place in Alaska, and Las Vegas as well. We will get there nationally, but hospital ERs are drastically behind where they need to be on treating Substance Use Disorder.
8. How do we get the federal funding to follow the campaign rhetoric with regards to addiction and recovery? How do we get the hospitals to get in line?
   It’s important to attack the funding issue from the top down (congress, senate). The federal government needs to provide money to the states, then the states need to have a plan in place to organize and distribute the money to the communities where it is needed.

During the height of the AIDS crisis, there was an act passed called the “Ryan White” act. This law really changed how we got money from the federal government into AIDS research, care, etc. at the state level. We need something like that law for addiction.

Here are a summary of thoughts Ryan discussed on this topic:

-AIDS gets $25bn a year from the federal government
-Addiction / recovery gets $2bn a year if we are lucky

-Addiction / recovery funding should at least be on par with AIDS when you consider the size of the problem

-Funding should be at least $20 bn per year if we want to combat the problem

-The CARE act is in congress now, and it would grant $10bn in grant money to local governments and states – but it just needs to get a hearing in committee, and it isn’t happening. It’s a democrat written bill, in a democrat-controlled house, and it can’t even get a hearing. This makes you think it’s just lip service.

• Presidential candidates are laying out robust proposals on par with the $10bn a year commitment.
• How do get bills like the CARE act to move beyond stalling out in committee?There’s no outraged advocates demanding a hearing. Therefore, we need to build civic action and civic capacity to build direct engagement and put pressure on politicians.
• So, what if we pass the CARE Act? Then what? There’s another fight after that. We will need internal controls to make sure money finds its way to front line services and that it just doesn’t all go to treatment centers. As a country, when we spend money on addiction, we normally spend money on law enforcement, treatment, and interdiction/prevention. You don’t hear much about long-term recovery supports. You don’t hear much about peer recovery supports. We don’t hear about harm reduction. Harm reduction is a pathway toward recovery and saves lives. It creates trust between the drug user and the system.
• How can individuals help? Who can help?
  You don’t have to be a policy expert, doctor, scientist etc. People with ‘lived experience’ have a much more unique and valuable perspective on what needs to happen in our own communities than these “experts” who see us through the lens of data and science. We can put names and lived experience to what is happening and impact our legislators together. Anyone who has been touched by the addiction problem should make an appointment with their state representatives, and federal representatives and tell the story of the barriers we experienced in seeking help for ourselves or for our loved ones.
  There are Organizations you can get involved with:recoveryvoices.com
  Faces and Voices of Recovery
  Shatter Proof
  Young People in Recovery
  Google ‘Recovery Together Initiative’
• The story of Tyler’s Law: Ryan was sponsoring a young man named Tyler at a sober home Ryan managed in Pasadena. Tyler was Ryan’s first sponsee. Tyler’s parents were paying $2,000 a month to have him live in the sober home. Tyler came home one night and said he was using again. The house manager let Tyler stay one more night, but Tyler had to leave the next day. Tyler slept on a sofa in the living room, not his bed, per the house manager, and that’s where Tyler died. The house manager came down at 6 AM to check on him. He was blue, but still alive. Clearly overdosing. House manager called the owner of the sober home and had no idea what to do to help save Tyler form overdosing. There was no Naloxone on site, nobody knew how to react. They called 911 and he died while the EMTs were on the way. How could a sober home charge $2,000 a month and have nobody on site with the skills to revive Tyler and no Naloxone on site? This was a preventable drug death.

The next day, the Owner told Ryan not to be upset at the sober home. The owner blamed Tyler saying Tyler didn’t really want to get clean. Instead of taking a baseball bat to the sober living home windows, Ryan said, “this is wrong” and he acted.

Ryan and a couple friends in recovery went to state see their senator, state representative and their member of congress. Ryan and his friends shared about Tyler’s story and how many community members are suffering and dying.

Those conversations led to a law being passed: HR 4684 in US Congress. Tyler’s Law. Ensuring Access to Quality Sober Living Act of 2018This law provided published standards on sober homes (for the first time) including requiring Naloxone on site and drug overdose reaction training for employees as well as an overdoes reaction plan. Passed in congress unanimously. 1 vote against in the Senate. Trump signed in late 2018. Lives will be saved because we told this kid’s story. We have a story to tell. That’s the power of lived experience. That’s how people can get involved. 13. Which of the current presidential candidates are the most recovery or mental health friendly? They are all saying a lot about it. What they are saying and how they plan to pay for it is equally important. They are all talking about it.

Warren – CARE act

Sanders – Medicare for all.

You can’t really end these crises without a massive expansion. A total revamp of the healthcare system is needed.

Ryan has endorsed Pete Buttigieg and his plan (an 18 page mental health plan that includes $10bn a year for addiction, a specific focus on peer work force, service, long term recovery support services, and harm reduction).

Doesn’t matter who you vote for or support. Please get involved. Help inform your favorite candidate and impact their policy on this topic. One of them WILL BE president and its important that we inform all the campaigns on this topic. 14. What can we built privately that could help or be for profit? Peer to peer and peer recovery support is THE way to close the recovery gap. Even if we had treatment centers on every corner in the country, we would still have a huge treatment gap (financial barriers, insurance, cultural barriers, and other things that prevent people from getting into treatment). We need peers, warm hand offs, expanded peer work force.

Innovation from people with lived experiences are needed. On-demand services are also needed. We must figure out how to combine tech and traditional on-the-ground services together. Private investors can play a role there. There are many people living in parts of the country where help is not accessible with in 50 miles or more 15. What can we do to reduce Stigma?
We need more people to speak out. We need to normalize this problem by increased sharing. But stigma isn’t really the right word. Stigma is just a nice way of saying what is really happening. The problem is systemic discrimination and bias against people with a medical condition. We are on the way to combatting this problem. This is a historical problem. The drug crisis in this country isn’t just 5 years old. There have been decades of “wars on drugs” and “wars on people who use drugs.”

Specifically, the medical profession needs help - there is still a lot of education to be done. Medical schools are still not providing the training necessary on addiction. Doctors who have been around for a long time are averse to learning anything new. It’s going to take a new generation of doctors who are wiling to learn and educate themselves to provide compassionate care to people with SUD 16. *“War on people who use drugs” – what does that mean? The war on drugs at its heart is a war on race, class, poverty, etc. It’s disgusting. We are locking people up for simple possession. These drug induced homicide laws are ridiculous (2 people using drugs, one dies, and the survivor gets a murder charge). Decriminalization of drug use, and possession is a step in the right direction. It will have to be taken on state by state. It will be very hard to do this nationally. 17. Should we legalize drugs?*

Ryan talks about how he is still unsure when considering all the facts right now. It’s worked in some countries. How will that play out in the U.S.? Not sure. Still weighing the pros and cons of that. But we do need to make more of an effort on decriminalization.

People are working hard against us. Status Quo is public enemy number 1. Lot of moral entrepreneurs who have planted a flag and don’t want to see change. They want to see prevention and treatment remain the focus without looking at the other tools that we could deploy. The fight for change is disruptive to these people.

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In this episode I chat with Dr. Stephen Schueller about the role of technology in treating people for mental health conditions as well as the landscape of existing technology solutions, and those that are yet to be built.

Dr. Schueller is an assistant professor of Psychological Science at the University of California in Irvine and he is also the Executive Director of PsyberGuide, which is a non-profit functioning as the ‘consumer reports’ agency of the mental health technology world. Dr. Schueller has a team of people who evaluate technological tools (such as apps, and other tools) used in the treatment and improvement of mental health.

You can connect with Dr. Stephen Schueller and learn more about his work here: Stephen’s Twitter, PsyberGuide Website, Stephen’s LinkedIn, Facebook (PsyberGuide), Press on Dr. Schueller
SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. What is the role of technology in mental health? Can we use technology to treat and or diagnose people suffering from mental health conditions, addiction, etc.? Dr. Schueller shares his thoughts about how technology is unavoidable in our daily lives to some degree and how we can leverage that for the improvement of mental health within society. This will include the use of some apps, websites, devices, etc. that were intentionally built for mental health purposes as well as some that were not. Ultimately, access to treatment is one of the biggest hurdles to getting people help who need it, and technology can help remove some of that access barrier.
2. Is technology useful in clinical treatment of mental health conditions? Dr. Schueller talks about how traditional services (face to face therapy, etc.) are great, and they work for many people, and some people want traditional face to face services. However, not everyone feels this way. Technology expands the available options so that different people can get exactly what they want or need in the mental health resource space. In the event that someone is not receiving care for one reason or another, and where a technological solution can bridge that gap, then technology is certainly useful not only then, but in many other applications as well.

3. Can we use technology to test, measure and diagnose mental health conditions? Dr. Schueller explains how he thinks about the clinical utility of technology in this space. He uses 2 questions to being to test the effectiveness of an app, or technology.

   1. First question – Is the input useful?
   2. Second question – is data or the translation of that data a clinically meaningful insight that can help a client or patient improve their life?

   We must think about where we get data, and how we interpret it. There have been many great developments and inventions in the data gathering area, but we still have a long way to go when it comes to interpreting the data that we gather from all these wearable devices. 4. Should we be relying on surveys or measurements for analysis of our mental health status? Dr. Schueller talks about how mental health assessment is fundamentally broken. Surveys like the PHQ-9 are not as effective as passively collected data when it comes to things like sleep patterns and quality, however when it comes to thoughts of self-harm survey data is likely better than some passive measurement. Dr. Schueller explains that, “we need to think about how to optimally bring together data streams to give a full picture, or triangulation of what a person is going through.” 5. Should startups in the mental health tech space be focused more on technological innovation or clinical accuracy? A tug of war, of sorts, exists between clinicians and technology focused entrepreneurs. We have to make sure that in the process of helping people, that we do not harm people. There is a fine balance to walk between “moving fast and breaking things” and helping people with their mental wellness. Some of the challenge around innovation in this space is that often technologists don’t have an understanding of what standards of clinical care looks like. We must innovate from a place of understanding standards of care and standards of practice. There are lots of places we can innovate while being responsive to minimizing harm, while maximizing benefit for patients and individuals suffering from mental health problems. 6. What is PsyberGuide? It is the consumer report of digital mental health products. This is a non-profit that Dr. Schueller helps to run with the support of numerous partner agencies such as: 7. We talked about data security in the space among the apps in the industry. Recently Dr. Schueller’s team looked at 120 apps focused on depression. He indicated that half of those apps didn’t have any data security policy at all. Of the ones that did, only half of those (25% total) had policies that are acceptable by industry standards. Dr. Schueller goes on to explain that there isn’t a lot of transparency on what many products are doing with your data. This must be addressed and resolved in this industry. 1. What is PsyberGuide? It is the consumer report of digital mental health products. This is a non-profit that Dr. Schueller helps to run with the support of numerous partner agencies such as:

   Dr. Schueller explains how there are thousands of digital mental health products out there. There could be somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 apps or tools out there from his estimate. Very few have any evidence-based support behind them – he estimates that about 3% of those apps have any kind of evidenced-based support behind their approach.
   PsyberGuide focuses on separating the good from the bad in this space.

   Their reviews provide structured, consistent frameworks for looking at critical aspects of a product. Their reviews focus on these key areas:

   1. Credibility of the product or platform (or the science behind it)
   2. User Experience (engagement, likeability, etc.)
   3. Transparency (Data security / Privacy ) – They review the policies of the company or app, but they do not do a full technical audit of the privacy practices
   

   1. How many apps or startups are out there in the mental health space? As mentioned previously, there are somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 mental health apps on the market (depending on how broadly you define the search criteria). The barrier to entry to build in this space is very low.

Many of the apps are one-off apps that are not maintained or supported or have “failed” or been abandoned in an app store somewhere. A large portion of them are just put up by people with some programming experience but no science or clinical team behind it. This is why PsyberGuide exists.

Some of the apps are built by entities that have dozens of apps out there. One group that Dr. Schueller references has about 20 apps of their own. So, when you consider this, the number of abandoned apps, and the low percentage of apps that have any clinical evidence behind them, there seem to be about 3% to 5% of the 10,000 to 20,000 that are viable. This would imply a market size of maybe 500-1,000 startups or companies and that is consistent with my (Stephen Hays) prior analysis on this industry. 9. How do you pick which apps PsyberGuide reviews? There is a little bit of art and a little bit of science to this. Dr. Schueller explains that they track the app store, as well as the research world and keep track of what’s being researched, and what’s being built. They also have partners (mentioned above) that often come and ask for help reviewing a technology. Additionally, they track traffic on their own website to see what consumers are interested in learning about and use that to manage workflow and prioritization as well. 10. Why do we need something like PsyberGuide? Dr. Schueller talks about how there isn’t anyone out there policing or patrolling this space. The mental health care industry could be one of the largest industries in the world with billions of people in need. The FDA can’t possibly review everything. PsyberGuide hopes to become the gold standard of independent reviews for digital mental health solutions. 11. Why technological solutions to mental health are needed? I asked Dr. Schueller about why we need teletherapy and some of these other solutions. He explained to me that 1 in 3 counties in the US do not have a licensed psychologist and that 70% of counties in the US do not have a child psychologist. The access problem around mental health is huge. Technology will be required to fill the gap. He goes on to describe that in a perfect world, technology is used to supplement therapy and to make it faster, better and more efficient. Technology can help us transcend time and space to reduce the access issues we are facing today.

Dr. Schueller also talks about how technology can take insights from daily life and help make the information gathered from our daily lives actionable when it comes to our mental wellbeing.

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Dr. Alexandra Katehakis is a pioneer in the area of sex addiction, and healthy sexual behavior. In this episode, we talk about what sex addiction is, where it stems from, how to treat it, and how to know if you need help. It’s a provocative conversation on one of the most stigmatized addictions we face.

Dr. Katehakis is a Marriage Family Therapist, Certified Sex Addiction Therapist/Supervisor and Certified Sex Therapist/Supervisor, and Clinical Director of the Center for Healthy Sex in Los Angeles. Dr. Katehakis has extensive experience in working with a full spectrum of sexuality; from sexual addiction to sex therapy, as well as and problems of sexual desire and sexual dysfunction for individuals and couples. She has successfully facilitated the recovery of many sexually addicted individuals and assisted couples in revitalizing their sex lives.

She has written numerous books on the topics of sex addiction, erotic intelligence, the neurobiology of sex addiction, intimacy, and other topics related to this space.

You can connect with Dr. Katehakis and learn more about her work here: Twitter, Center for Healthy Sex, Her Books on Amazon, Her Books on Her Website

SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. We spent some time in our conversation talking about what exactly addiction is more broadly. Dr. Katehakis explains that addiction generally is a strong predilection for something. It doesn’t really matter what that thing is.
2. We discuss the “history” of sex addiction including when people started talking about sex as an addiction, the early research as well as current research and how society views the topic of sex addiction.
3. Dr. Katehakis talks about some of her work with Dr. Patrick Carnes on the topic of sex addiction as well as some of the discoveries he has pioneered since he began studying the topic in the 1980s.
4. Dr. Katehakis explains that shame is the driving force behind a lot of our unhealthy sexual practices including sex addiction. She says that, “Shame is built into the autonomic nervous system. It’s in the gut. It’s in the enteric nervous system.” And that “Human beings are biologically coded for shame.” Shame is a pro-social function that drives a lot of how we develop as humans.

5. We discussed what a sex addict is, when they become one and how to know if someone needs help. Some of the criteria she mentioned for judging whether you may need to seek help include:

   1. Spending more time than you intended on a sexual behavior
   2. Privileging sexual behavior over other obligations
   3. Continuing behavior despite negative consequences
   4. Preoccupation with sex
      There are assessments people can take, one of which is located on her website here: https://centerforhealthysex.com/sex-therapy-resources/sex-addiction-test/

   There is a section on her website dedicated to figure out if someone is a sex addict or not and you can find that content here: http://centerforhealthysex.com/sex-addiction/ 6. We talked about the history of sex addiction treatment and the work of Dr. Patrick Carnes. His model is one of abstinence, not forever, but for a period of time so you can get a read on what’s happening with your mood when you take that break from whatever you are addicted to. This helps you figure out what is driving “this thing” that may be addiction (could be a mood disorder, or something else). Sometimes someone has a mood disorder, then they get on medication, and their extreme sexual behavior becomes less common. 7. We talked about what recovery from sex addiction looks like. Dr. Katehakis explained that not all sex addicts are alike. She explains how in her workbook called, “Sexual Reflections,” people can create a sexual health plan as part of a recovery process. She explained that anything can go on that plan as long as you don’t feel shame about it, and it is not secretive. 8. We talked about how men are in an identity crisis of sorts today. Men are socialized from an early age to be in competition with each other, to measure everything and this translates into unhealthy behaviors early in life as well as later in life. We also discussed how in the recovery community, you see the opposite, where people are helpful to one another and it radically changes how we get along both as individuals and collectively with society. 9. How do you recover from sex addiction? We talked about 12-step recovery programs, websites, resources, etc. Some of those resources are listed here for both porn and sex addiction:
   https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/

https://saa-recovery.org/

https://centerforhealthysex.com/

Dr. Katehakis explains that, “People change their attachment styles when they attend 12-step meetings over time. She goes on to explain that attachment issues have to do with “regulation” of the nervous system. In a 12-step program you start to realize you can get your needs met from other people (as opposed to only getting them met from yourself, through destructive behavior). During this process, another human is helping to regulate your nervous system. Sex addicts have been doing this through unhealthy sexual behavior. Eventually, you start to learn to trust other people, and then your nervous system starts to seek other people when it needs help rather than engage in unhealthy sexual behavior.

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In this episode, my friend Alex Wilhelm joins me to talk about our shared experiences in recovering from addiction. Alex was most recently, the editor in chief of Crunchbase News, and is currently the host of the Equity Podcast on TechCrunch. He’s been covering the tech world as a journalist for many years and has had a wide variety of experiences in the entrepreneurial and startup ecosystems.

Alex had a huge impact on my decision to get sober, and my decision to get help when I got to the point where I decided I wanted it. In this episode Alex shares why he got sober, when he realized he needed help, how he got help and then what he has done to maintain 3 and a half years of continuous sobriety.

We also talk about how society views addiction, and how stigma plays a role in that societal perception as well as when and how some people get help.

Here are some ways you can connect with Alex: Twitter @alex, Alex’s Personal Blog, TechCrunch Equity Podcast

SOME OF THE THINGS WE DISCUSSED:

1. Alex Wilhelm shares with us about why he decided to get sober. He talks about when he realized he needed help, and all the times he attended AA, only to go home and drink immediately after. He then shares how he finally realized he needed help, which came when he ended up in the ER because of alcohol – which was 3 and a half years ago.
2. We talked about how rehab, and then specific life changes, and support systems positively impacted Alex’s recovery. We both share some of our experiences living in recovery and some of the actions we took to foster our recovery in the early days.
3. Alex shares about why he is intentionally being public about his recovery story. We talk about “stigma” and how society often views addiction and addicts themselves. Alex explains how addiction is a disease, and how it should be viewed and treated as one as well as why it has not been until recently.
4. Sometimes life changes are required to set ourselves up for success in recovery. Alex talks about some of the changes he has made in his life, some large, some small. Some of those changes include not using mouth wash with alcohol in it, or not having alcohol in the house, nor eating foods cooked in alcohol.
5. One of the most critical things Alex found that helped him with his recovery was learning to be of service to other people. Addicts can be very selfish individuals and when you remove the time wasted on your addiction from your life, you have more time to do healthy things. One of the things Alex fills his time with is being helpful to others. He even wrote a blog post about how serving others is “self-care” which you can read here.
6. I asked Alex how sobriety has changed his life and he shares with us how he would have never gotten to marry his wife if not for his sobriety. He talks about how he dated her in college, then didn’t speak for 4-5 years then reconnected when he was 5 months sober. Without his sobriety, their relationship would have never worked, and he would have missed out on that incredible blessing.
7. We talked about some of our habits that we have formed during our recovery and Alex listed a few of the things he focuses on that helps him with recovery including: exercise, meditation, diet, a social calendar with people who are sober or accepting of his sobriety, and a lifestyle built around sobriety.
8. If you want to quit what is your first step? I asked Alex to advise anyone who may be listening on what to do today, if they think they may want to quit. He gave us a bit of a check list of things to do to see if you need to quit, and how to start that process.

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I had a raw, personal, and honest conversation with Robbie Millward about mental health, suicidal ideation, self-harm and how he struggled with these things in his life, and what he’s done to overcome them.

Robbie is a military veteran and now serves on the Board of Directors for NAMI in New Hampshire where he has taken part in drafting materials that guide how New Hampshire’s state level first responders handle mental health crisis situations. Robbie has overcome a lot with respect to his own mental health and he has used that as a platform to help others.

I was moved by Robbie’s story of his experience with thoughts of self-harm, how he has gotten help and the action plan he has in place to prevent any future self-harm. He also shares about how his daughter has struggled with these thoughts as well and how he has worked with his daughter to overcome those struggles. We go into detail on how to develop an action plan, what to look for and how to respond when a loved one is struggling with suicidal ideation or thoughts of self-harm.

You can connect with Robbie here: LinkedIn, Twitter, Website, Video of Robbie Telling His Story

SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

1. Robbie shares about his mental health journey from the time of his childhood, and how some of the things he struggled with as a child evolved into mental health struggles later in life.
2. He shares about how he was misdiagnosed with a personality disorder in the military, and it wasn’t until after several more years of struggling and an anxiety attack at work, that required hospitalization, that he was appropriately diagnosed with severe depression, anxiety and PTSD.
3. After a while, he thought he was good, so he relaxed on taking medication and seeing his therapist. He began to rely on self-medication which led him back to the hospital in a severe episode of depression.
4. One weekend, he went to go snowboarding and got a call that his 14-year-old daughter was in the school counselor’s office struggling with thoughts of self-harm. Robbie raced to get to her and when he did get there, he spent time sharing all his struggles with the same thoughts and problems in his life which seemed to have a profound impact.
5. We talked in detail about how both he, and his daughter have developed written action plans for times when they are struggling with thoughts of self-harm. These plans include daily action items such as checking in with a specific handful of people, daily actions and fail-safes for days when he doesn’t check in with those people. Robbie walks us through his safety plan as an example of what one looks like.
6. We talked about the signs to look for as a parent to know when your child is struggling with self-harm, or suicidal ideation as well as what to do about it when you do see those signs.
7. I asked Robbie where people can go to get help with building a safety plan or finding community support around ideas of self-harm and suicide. He emphasized that the National Alliance on Mental Health (NAMI) has free resources available online and in most communities that can help.

If you are in a state of distress or emergency and need to talk to someone, never hesitate to call the Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255

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In this episode, I speak with Yossuf Albanawi, co-founder of Opioid addiction solution, Pilleve. Yossuf is a graduate of Wake Forest University, he is a fellow at the Halcyon Incubator in Washington DC.

This conversation is about the Opioid crisis. This is such a huge problem in our society, and we need solutions faster than we are bringing them to market. While there are traditional resources available for people once they become addicted, there are no solutions on the market focused on preventing addiction effectively. That’s the focus of Pilleve – to prevent addiction to Opioids while still allowing doctors to prescribe these drugs, when necessary, with reduced risk of addiction.

You can connect with Youssef and learn more about his work here: Pilleve Website, Yossuf on LinkedIn, Pilleve on Twitter,

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE DISCUSSED:

1. Yossuf shares his experience with addiction at an early age to prescription drugs. He talks about how his loved ones noticed very early on and sought the help of a professional to intervene. He gives a great example of how we can help our loved ones if we notice that they need help.
2. What were some major parts of recovery for you? Yossuf explains that spirituality, and awareness were the two biggest components of his recovery from addiction.
3. How did he learn about the scale of the Opioid Crisis? Yossuf took an entry level job after school at a rehab center. He did this to learn about what was being treated, why, and how. He found his purpose there. He explains how about 10 years ago most of the patients in treatment centers were there for alcohol. Then it flipped to be mostly Opioids in recent years.
4. Can Opioid addiction be prevented? While working at a treatment center, Yossuf wondered about this. Why can’t we screen for this or treat this like other physical health problems? Is there a preventative measure we could put in place? Yes, but he had to build it. And he has. Pilleve.

The healthcare model in the United States is a fee for service model which means we typically treat people once they are sick or need treatment. Whether or not that’s a fair or good model is up for debate, but in this system, we have to look for innovation in order to “prevent” problems and that’s what Yossuf has done around the Opioid crisis.

Heroin addicts traditionally (60%+) begin with prescription drug abuse. There is such a huge opportunity to identify this before it happens and then prevent the long-term cost on the person, on companies, on the economy, and on loved ones of that future addict’s problems (death, destruction, in-patient treatment, etc.). 5. What is Pilleve? Pilleve is a smart, secure pill bottle that adapts into existing pharmacy and physician workflows. The Pilleve bottle and platform tracks, monitors and reports real-time use data to physicians allowing physicians to identify potential addictive behaviors very early. The Pilleve device makes it safer for doctors to prescribe Opioids to their patients.

Pilleve focused on 3 main things:

1. **Compliance** – Making sure people don’t take too much of their medication. This is very different and needs to be distinctly differentiated from “adherence.” Adherence is the focus of most who have built solutions in the “prescription pill” market. Adherence means making sure people take the medications they should. We are focused on preventing people from taking too much. Is someone taking too much, or abusing the pills (this is the unique Pilleve focus).
2. **Reduction** – Focused on getting people “off” of the Opioid medication as soon as possible. This is an application of the data they gather on each patient while they use the medication.
3. **Diversion** – Get the excess pills back to the pharmacy once the patient has recovered. Today, many pills remain in the medicine cabinet for misuse at a later date, often by someone else in the household.

1. What is the high-level mission of Pilleve? The Company’s mission is to become the controlled drug standard for prescribing, dispensing and using controlled drugs.
2. Are there other smart pill bottles out there? There are a few smart pill bottle caps and such that are used for monitoring opening and closing by the patient. These are more focused on adherence, whereas Pilleve is focused on compliance (as described above). We are focused on taking too much, versus these other solutions, that are focused on whether you take the medication at all. These are very different behaviors, mindsets and use-cases.
3. Should drugs be illegal? A favorite topic these days, we talk about how in some countries (Portugal and Netherlands) the legalization of drugs led to lower crime, lower addiction, and fewer people going to treatment centers. However, we also talk about how those countries have different dynamics than what exist in the U.S. (different people, different healthcare system, different culture, etc.) so you can’t look at them as a 1:1 comparison on whether or not certain drugs should even be illegal.
4. How can we de-stigmatize addiction? This is a huge part of the solution. It’s our responsibility to make sure addicts get treatment. We must differentiate between addicts and criminals. If you are an addict, you are not a criminal (well not by default).

We find that when we share our experiences, others react by sharing theirs. The more this happens, the more stigma reduces and the easier it is to change this perception that an addict, is a criminal by default.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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In this episode of the Stigma Podcast, I had a chance to speak with Mandy Froehlich. Mandy is an educator, and personally, opens with us about overcoming PTSD, depression, and anxiety.

Mandy is an experienced educator who leverages her professional experience, and her passion for learning, to teach, train, and inspire other teachers to renew their excitement for teaching, and re-engage with their profession in an innovative way.

Currently, she spends her time consulting school districts and post-secondary institutions on effective use of technology to support teaching, mental health support for educators, and how to create organizational change within educational institutions.

Mandy has published a couple of books. The first was titled “The Fire Within: Lessons from defeat that have ignited a passion for learning” – where she discusses the idea of mental health awareness within schools. Her most recent book, titled, “Divergent EDU” is based on an organizational structure concept called “Hierarchy of Needs for Innovation and Divergent Thinking” which was developed to support teachers in innovative and divergent thinking.

Mandy is also the host of a podcast, called “Teacher’s Aid” – which focuses on providing social and emotional support for the very personal challenges that teachers face.

You can connect with Mandy and learn more about her work here: Her Website, Her Twitter, LinkedIn, Teacher’s Aid Podcast

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE DISCUSSED:

1. Teacher burnout – We talked a bit about how she became a teacher, and how over time she struggled to stay motivated. This led to a conversation broadly on teacher burnout and why teachers disengage, burnout, have a high attrition rate, etc. This impacts the children and we dig into why on this podcast.
2. The role of the school, teacher, and parent in acknowledging a child’s mental health issues – We talked about this concept that as parents have begun to work more, with both parents having full-time jobs, the school has been forced to become a de facto parent for 7-8 hours a day. We discussed what role the school, the teachers, and the children themselves play in observing and helping those who have mental health needs within the school system.
3. Should teachers be talking about their own mental health concerns? It depends on who they are talking to. Although teachers should be able to be vulnerable with their students, oversharing can be bad. It’s ok to admit when you may be dealing with something difficult. Kids need to know they are not alone. It’s also ok for teachers to admit their struggles to other teachers. In a lot of ways, teachers are the only ones who really understand other teachers.
4. What will mental health help look like inside of a school? Some schools are implementing social and emotional learning as well as mindfulness into regular curriculum. The schools that are doing it well are integrating these things into regular content, so kids are learning to self-regulate and read at the same time, for example.
5. What if the parent or teacher isn’t pulling their weight? This is very common. It’s more common than everyone being on the same page. Sometimes the MH issues are caused at home. Not all MH issues come from the parents, there are other things that cause MH issues and trauma, but sometimes it does come from something going on at home. Alcoholic parents, abusive parents, etc. This makes it much more difficult for the educator. Any headway the schools can make is erased by the child going home at night or over the summer. We talked at length about this.
6. Peer to peer support systems within schools – and at what age can it work? We talked about peer to peer support networks within schools and how effective they can or can’t be. We discussed at what ages it can work or makes sense to try. We talked about how peer to peer solutions are good but are only one part of a bigger implementation of solutions. We find that many kids have a stronger connection with their peers than adults, and when you consider that teachers have to report a lot of what they hear kids talking about, it is safer for kids to talk to their peers (and better than not talking at all). On the topic of how early is too early, she says she has seen peer to peer networks work as early as 2nd grade (with adult monitoring and facilitation of course).
7. We talked about stigma and compared the way children and adults stigmatize mental health issues. Based on our conversation, it appears that children are less likely to stigmatize themselves or others and are more open to talking about their problems than many adults. However, at younger ages, they don’t have the coping skills to deal with the issues that come up so they have to be in the right environment with the right oversight to have these conversations.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn

Connect with host Stephen Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental Health Venture Fund)

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What do monks, startup founders, and Ph.Ds in cognitive neuroscience have in common? They all have a heartbeat. Today’s guest, Rohan Dixit, founder of Lief Therapeutics joins us to talk about how our heartbeat, can tell us more about our mental health, than any other biomarker, and how we can learn to use it to self-regulate our mental well-being.

Rohan explains how Heart Rate Variability (HRV) data can be used to help us learn to self-regulate our emotional state by taking biofeedback and using it to train ourselves to regulate our mental state.

Rohan explains the science behind it. He has a degree in cognitive neuroscience from Northwestern and has done a lot of interesting research around neuroscience at both Stanford and at Harvard and around the world when he spent a year measuring the HRV in Monks who have mastered the art of self-regulation.

You can connect with Rohan and Lief Therapeutics here: Website, Twitter, Rohan’s LinkedIn

Some of the things we discussed:

1. Rohan Dixit is an expert in Cognitive Neuroscience and he joins us to talk about neuroscience, heart rate variability, his startup Lief Therapeutics, and his story of recovery from depression and anxiety. He began his own mental health journey as a teenager. Solving problems in this space is very personal to him. He talks about how mindfulness and meditation changed his life by helping him manage his mental health struggles and ultimately led him to this space.
2. Cognitive Neuroscience is how the brain thinks and how we perceive who we are. We can use it to help people who are sick (with mental illness). Rohan talks about having spent a year studying the biofeedback data from monks and noticing how masters of self-regulation present when analyzing brain waves and heart rate variability biofeedback.
3. We talk about the Default Mode Network, a large scale brain network of interacting regions that controls our perception of ego. If we tweak that network, then some parts of what we think about our self can be turned off or managed. Rohan explains how using biofeedback to improve our ability to self-regulate can help us do just this, tweak our Default Mode Network.
4. What is biofeedback? Have people been using it for a long time? Biofeedback testing started in the 1970’s. One of the earliest studies included a group of students where half were asked to consciously raise the temperature of their fingertip, and the other half asked to lower the temperature of their fingertip. If you give those students an accurate enough sensor, then they could do it. With the right biofeedback, you can train your body, and your mind. Heart Rate Variability (HRV) is the best biomarker to use for biofeedback when it comes to mental health.
5. What is Heart Rate Variability (HRV)? It is the most accurate biomarker for tracking the body’s response to a variety of mental states, stressors, and moods. This is all found in the variability of one heartbeat to the next. You can track this with an EKG or some very good sensor. If you track it enough and practice regulating it, then you can effectively manage your mental wellness by actively controlling HRV. You can practice how to make that biomarker (HRV) improve through breathing and biofeedback.
6. Why did Rohan become an expert on HRV? Rohan found relief from his struggles in meditation and self-regulation practices. He started to have better emotional responses while engaging in these practices. He wanted to know why it worked, so he went to Tibet for a year and studied the biofeedback in Monks who are experts in self-regulation.
7. What is Lief Therapeutics? Rohan aims to integrate those learnings into the mental health system that is currently failing millions of people. The system failed him, as he states. He has found a way to use science, to measure the effectiveness of a person’s self-regulation and turn it into something that insurance companies will pay for.
8. Why do biomarkers matter for treating mental health? Imagine if your doctor was trying to treat you for diabetes without using any blood tests. Maybe they only asked you how tired you were after big meals and diagnosed you that way. That’s how we diagnose mental health issues today.
9. What about other biomarkers like voice, facial recognition, etc.? Those biomarkers can’t really be called biomarkers. They are behavioral assays. They are not the best with respect to teaching people how to get better either, but HRV is, and that’s the focus at Lief Therapeutics. Let’s say you use voice to diagnose depression, then you’re telling people it’s a behavioral issue that’s in your head and if you talk a little peppier, then you’re well, and we all know that’s not true. Depression is a physiological problem. It’s not just “in your head.” HRV is easy to measure accurately. You can teach people to improve HRV using the biofeedback.
10. How to measure HRV? How Lief works. To measure it in a clinically accurate way and provide biofeedback you need hyper accuracy. The only way to do that is with an EKG. Lief built an EKG smart patch. You put it on your body, it’s very discrete, and measures with hyper accuracy. Then it gives you vibrations through the patch, that teach you to breath in a pattern that improves the HRV and in turn your mental health. Eventually, you know what you’re doing and you can take the training wheels off and not need the patch anymore.

The goal is to be like training wheels on a bike. Lief teaches people how to be aware of what’s happening inside them. Lief gives them skills to get better. Eventually, people don’t need the advice. The solution is a short-term training program. Once you know how to self-regulate, then you don’t need Lief anymore, and that’s a victory.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn

You can connect with host Stephen Hays in the following ways: Website, Blog, Twitter, LinkedIn

Feel free to email us: info@stigmapodcast.com

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I had the most educational, and enlightening conversation with Dr. Cameron Sepah and I’m lucky that I captured it digitally and can share it with everyone!

We talked about a range of topics from his education at Harvard and UCLA, to his time growing a digital health tech startup from 6 to 300 employees and now his efforts running his own private practice while advising multiple venture capital funds on their investment strategies in and around digital health investing.

Dr. Sepah is a venture capitalist, an investor, an executive psychologist, an assistant clinical professor at UCSF Medical School, he’s a founder, a CEO and someone whose public commentary on mental health, and human performance to be very educational and insightful.

In his private practice, he helps CEOs, and VCs optimize for health and performance using evidence-based approaches. We had an incredible conversation about evidence-based treatment, stigma, and psychotherapy will have to evolve in order to become mainstream (just like jogging or physical fitness). The answer is in and around the idea of how we select our sexual partners and goes back to Natural Selection.

You can connect with Dr. Cameron Sepah directly via his Twitter and LinkedIn, and keep up to date on his work via his newsletter which I highly recommend.

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE DISCUSSED:

1. Dr. Cameron Sepah talks with us about growing up in San Diego, then attending Harvard for his undergraduate degree and UCLA for his Ph.D in Clinical Psychology (Psychoneuroimmunology). We talked about his love of people and passion for understanding them from a very early age and how that drove him toward his educational focus and profession of choice because he wanted to apply his learnings to helping people.
2. While in college at Harvard, he worked in a cognitive neuroscience lab doing research with Stephen Kosslyn. Their research included looking at how Buddhist monks can control their emotions, one of them to the point where he could avoid reaction to a gunshot next to his ear. We talked about this study of learned emotional responses in our conversation in this episode.
3. While in graduate school at UCLA he focused on several areas including anxiety disorders, and behavioral medicine/health psychology. He did a lot of work around using behavioral interventions to manage chronic illnesses including obesity and diabetes. We talked a lot about some worrisome and fascinating statistics and facts around these diseases including:

a. Only 12% of people have zero metabolic issues (blood sugar issues, diabetes, obesity, etc.).

b. This is the first time in history that most adults have abnormal blood sugar levels.

c. We live in a profoundly sick society. 4. Diseases of lifestyle kill more people now than diseases of infection do. We as humans are dying mostly from diseases of excess. We talk about why, and how this is relevant to the mental health struggles of many people who Dr. Sepah has treated over the years. 5. Individual or group therapy isn’t set up to solve the breadth of the mental health problem set in society. It’s not that it isn’t effective, but most people can’t afford it, don’t have the time, or don’t have the energy or resources to show up in person and do what they need to do. So why should providers expect people to come to them, when providers could come to patients, digitally and conveniently? We talk about the emergence of digital access to care at length and Dr. Sepah’s contribution to developments in that space. 6. Dr. Sepah moved to Silicon Valley right after getting his license to practice. He wanted to help people with metabolic diseases, so he joined the founding team of Omada Health where he was able to help far more people than he could in an individual practice. Their business helped over 250,000 people lose over 2,500,000 pounds while he was there. 7. We talked about the mental health crisis in the university school systems and how colleges are not prepared to handle it or deal with it. Even at his college, Harvard, where he was surrounded by wealthy kids with tremendous privilege, there were many mental health issues and struggles. He estimates that at least half of the students there struggled in some way with mental health. 8. What contributes to human flourishing? If you go to your doctor for a check-up and the “check engine light” says you’re ok, are you really? Is there really nothing you can do to improve? Is the absence of illness necessarily the presence of health? We dig into this from a mental health perspective. 9. When will psychotherapy be mainstream, like jogging or going to the gym? You must look at it from a sexual mate selection perspective. Let’s look at fitness as an example. Fitness is a growing market, and it hasn’t always been that way. 50 years ago, fitness was not a big thing. It wasn’t that long ago that the only people who jogged, were athletes almost exclusively. Fitness is a relatively recent phenomenon as it has become a status symbol, or a signal for sexual partner attractiveness. On the contrary, therapy and mental fitness efforts signal that you are mentally ill or a potentially unstable partner to potential mates. Mental health will never be at the same place as physical fitness until it enhances your potential value as a partner to other people. This will require stigma reduction. 10. How do we de-stigmatize psychotherapy? We have to re-brand it all together. The term “therapy” has too much cultural baggage for us to reclaim it. We talked about the need to move away from pathology and stigma toward performance and prestige. Take having a personal trainer or personal chef for example – they are status symbols indicating that you prioritize nutrition and fitness. We must find a way to re-brand psychotherapy so that people can view it as a positive tool in your life. 11. Calm and Headspace have nailed the consumer marketing aspects of mental health. They brand themselves as sleep aids or meditation apps, but when you look at the reviews of the apps, people are using these apps to improve their mental health. The best mental health companies don’t use the words “mental health” to brand themselves or what they do. 12. The best athletes in the world, have coaches, they could probably coach themselves. They know that playing is not the same as coaching. There is unique value in someone who is focused on theory and strategy on your behalf. You also need clear objectivity from an outside observer when you train as an athlete. Finally, you need someone who curates all the potential techniques and approaches to help you decide what’s best for you. Coaches help athletes with these things so the athlete can focus on execution. We need this in our lives from mental health professionals. The term “life coach” or “executive coach” hasn’t taken off because of how the non-licensed life or executive coaches have treated the industry. It all comes down to tracking and ranking performance outcomes. This works in physical training and needs to be applied to mental health and wellness. 13. How do we reduce stigma around therapy? If therapy is always associated with coping with job loss or coping with a breakup or coping with low self-esteem, then it’s always going to have stigma associated with it. Maybe we should re-brand it as “performance psychology” and focus on what people want such as making more money, attractiveness to potential or current partners and increased confidence.

We should be more focused on the positive. Focus on producing outcomes that people want and things that make you an optimal person or partner in every way. 14. How do I find a therapist or a performance coach? We talked about who to look for, what to look for and how to do it. Dr. Sepah emphasizes that you should find someone who is licensed to do this kind of work (there are many “life coaches” and others out there who have no licensing or very minimal training). We talked about resources for finding therapists and some things to watch out for in how providers describe themselves and their areas of expertise (too many therapists list their expertise too broadly). 15. We talked about the mediums over which therapy can be delivered from texting, phone calls, video calls, and in-person meetings. Dr. Sepah talks about the effectiveness of each way of meeting with people and which ones are effective in his opinion as well as how each of those methods can be used in a holistic treatment plan where continuity of care is important.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn

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Marie “Mxiety” Shanley joined me for a conversation about mental health, depression, streaming on Twitch/Mixer, and how to get help when you are struggling. She shares her own story of overcoming debilitating depression, PTSD, and anxiety.

Since getting help, Marie felt compelled to create a place that connects people who are currently struggling with people who have struggled, so nobody ever has to be alone in their time of need.

She has built a community on streaming platforms Twitch, and now Mixer, where she talks with her audience about mental wellness two nights a week. In addition to this, she’s written extensively about her mental health journey and experiences on her blog here.

Please do check out Marie’s website, stream, and social channels, which you can find here: Website, Twitch, Mixer, Twitter, IG, YouTube.

Here are some links to a handful of her very helpful blog posts on a range of mental health topics:

3 Things you can Do Right Now if You’re Anxious

List of Things to do When You’re in a Depression Low

List of Warning Signs that You Might be Falling Back into Depression

Marie’s current streaming schedule is every Wednesday and Thursday night at 7 PM ET.

Some of the things we talked about in this episode:

1. Mxiety is a streamer on Twitch and Mixer. However, she doesn’t play video games like you may expect. Her show is about mental health and wellness. She’s apart of a surge of content creation meeting demand for mental health and wellness on streaming platforms by creating community around the topic and sharing personal experiences.
2. Marie tells us about her mental health journey. One day Marie found herself sitting in a corner, struggling, rocking back and forth because of the pain she felt due to debilitating depression, anxiety, and PTSD. She shared with us about how she got to that point, and what she did to get better.
3. We talk about how we label ourselves by our weaknesses and struggles. We talked about how and why we came up with labels and why we continue to use them both for the benefit of ourselves (or detriment) and because of how others expect us to label ourselves.
4. Is there anything that could have led you to get help sooner? Marie talks about trying therapy, and going to a school counselor, which didn’t seem to work for her at first. She tells the story of experiencing suicidal thoughts and going to see the college counselor, who couldn’t help her in her time of need.
5. We talked in detail about the extreme stigma around suicidal ideation. We discuss how hard it is to be open about this topic. Marie talks about how after 7 years of therapy, finally had a therapist who seemed to handle it appropriately and talk through it, instead of upending her life. We agreed that there is some work we must do as a society around how we respond to people who have these thoughts.
6. Marie shares with us about where she finds support and what her support network looks like for her struggles. She talks about this by framing her current network against her old network, which was basically no support at all. She gives a list of things she tries to do daily, weekly, monthly, etc. in order to manage her mental wellness, which she has also discussed on her blog here.
7. We talked about how she got into streaming and building a community of people interested in mental wellness. Once she found support in a local community, she wanted to create a place where people could find a sense of community when they are struggling.
8. Marie talks about her streaming community and how many different people, with so many different struggles from all over the world have joined her community and engage in the conversation she creates space for several times a week on her stream, which you can find here on Mixer and here on Twitch.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways: Website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn

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Dan Seider joins us to talk about his bipolar diagnosis, how he manages it today, and the automatic mood tracker he built out of a self-motivated desire to track his mood over 100,000 times since his diagnosis.

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My conversation with Cheri Garcia, founder of Cornbread Hustle was very raw, very vulnerable and opened my eyes to the movement around second chance hiring that’s growing quickly here in America.

Cornbread Hustle is a staffing agency for second chances (people getting out of prison or living in recovery). Cheri is passionate about helping felons, and people in recovery find transformation through employment or entrepreneurship.

Cheri’s story of addiction to methamphetamines, and alcohol resonated with me and her story of finding sobriety is going to be helpful to many people. Cheri talks about how she educated herself as to exactly what the alcohol was doing to her body, and when she realized that it was increasing her anxiety, instead of numbing it, she quickly found the necessary motivation to get help in AA.

Cheri found her own transformation and recovery through starting a business and eventually building a career in the TV news industry. As she progressed along this path, she developed a number of skills in marketing and PR. She now uses those to help individuals getting out of prison re-brand themselves to become the person they want to be and get noticed by the people they want to meet.

Cheri is also a PR consultant for Mark Cuban companies, and provides strategy plans and media opportunities for a variety of Shark Tank companies.

Links: Cornbread Hustle, Cheri’s Twitter, Cheri’s LinkedIn

Here are some of the things we talked about:

1. Cheri tells her story of getting over her meth addiction in 2007. She talks about how she didn’t really get into the recovery community but replaced her addiction with a love of success and money which led to a whole set of other problems for her.
2. She talked about why she felt a need to use drugs and drink, and what she was trying to escape from with that numbing. Many things led to her falling into addiction including lacking healthy boundaries, people pleasing and wanting people to like her because she didn’t like herself.
3. Cheri opens up to us about what she felt like when she got a DUI, how she found herself in that situation, and what it meant as the founder and CEO of a second chance hiring business.
4. We talked about why she got help and sought sobriety. Cheri talks about how someone reached out to her and mentioned their concern. She downloaded a book on trying to control alcohol. As she learned about what alcohol withdrawals look like, she learned that a lot of the anxiety in her life was because of the alcohol, not relieving her from the anxiety.
5. Cheri’s business is, “Cornbread Hustle,” a staffing agency for second chances. Cheri’s team helps people getting out of prison and people who are living in recovery, find jobs. We talk a lot about what kind of jobs she helps them get, where those jobs are, and how she places them. Her work is truly inspiring and she’s doing amazing things.
6. Cheri talks about how it wasn’t popular to be helping felons a few years ago when she started. Recently, with celebrities like Kim Kardashian and others talking about this cause, it’s become more mainstream. She talks about how a lot of people discouraged her from creating this business.
7. She talks about how she doesn’t go out and pitch companies to hire her people, but that companies are proactively coming to her. She does spend a lot of time hearing employers talk about how they want someone with a non-violent background, and Cheri talks about how she gets those employers to be more open-minded about who they will and won’t work with.
8. What kinds of jobs do you place second chance hires into? We talked a lot about the types of jobs she is placing felons, drug dealers, former doctors, and others in.
9. We talked about how many of the people getting out of prison may be very well suited to be founders of startups. Cheri talks about her vision for where this idea can go and how this could turn into an entire ecosystem of its own adjacent to what she’s doing with the staffing business.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways:

Website: https://stigmapodcast.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/StigmaCast

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Stigma-Podcast-105616270782583/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/stigma-podcast/

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I’m excited to share my conversation with Mark Freeman. Mark is an author (Book: “You are Not a Rock”), mental health coach, workshop facilitator and someone that I follow closely as his frequent tweets and public commentary on mental health and wellbeing are helpful for me as I live in recovery from addiction and live with bipolar disorder.

In addition to talking about stigma, mental health care and treatment for anxiety, Mark discusses his own struggles with addiction, anxiety and OCD. We were able to relate quite a bit about our past struggles and paths to recovery. We also dig into how the mental health care system is designed to foster increasing stigma. In the same way, you don’t have to have a diagnosis to get a gym membership, you shouldn’t have to have a diagnosis to get help with mental health. The solution to this broken way of thinking is an entirely new mental health care system, which we talk about in this episode.

Mark currently lives in Toronto and focuses his professional efforts on change management workshops for Fortune 50 companies, peer support for people suffering from anxiety disorders, and creating books and videos to fill the gaps in our healthcare system.

More about Mark: Website, Book, Brain School

You can connect with Mark directly via twitter @thepathtochange

Here are some of the things we talked about:

1. Stigma is a Squirrel. Run at it Shouting. Mark makes this analogy about we fear stigma, and let it prevent us from getting help and how similar that is to the squirrels in Toronto that will steal from you, but if you are aggressive toward them, then they run away. Stigma is very similar.
2. We talked about Mark’s personal experiences with compulsion and OCD. He talks about how he didn’t think he was struggling with any mental health issues. He started to feel separated from reality and would start to do things like standing in front of his stove for a long time just to make sure it was not on. His compulsions and OCD tendencies gradually took over his life. Although he viewed none of this behavior as strange, because he thought he had perfectly good reasons for doing it.
3. What led you to seek help? Depression, addiction and sexual compulsion issues led him to speak with a counselor. He thought everything else was fine and totally healthy, and that’s when he learned that he needed to work on the compulsion and OCD.
4. We talked about the intersection of mental illness and sex. If you are running into any kind of mental health challenges, they are likely affecting your sex life as well. Sex is so much about out intimacy, being ourselves, uncertainty and vulnerability. So, if you’re struggling mentally, it’s going to be hard for you to experience intimacy and be vulnerable.
5. Mark talks a lot about wholistic mental wellness. I asked him where people should start to get help if I haven’t gotten help before. Do you start with cutting out social media, dealing with addiction, therapy, or church, or some other place? Mark talks about this and gives some examples based on his experience. He talks about how he encourages people to start learning to interact with the thing in our heads differently. For example, resisting urges to check your phone or email. Learning to know that you have an unread message, but not opening it and controlling that urge for some time.
6. How do we make changes in our lives before we crash and burn from addiction or mental illness? Will we lose our edge if we go ask for help or seek treatment? We talk about how we can be more proactive and where to start if we have never sought help before.
7. Often with physical health, we get proactive because we see somebody doing something we want to do. In mental health, because people keep it quiet, we don’t see those examples as often. So, there isn’t as much of a sense that we can be doing something to improve. We are still in the early stages of people talking about mental health, even though, we have had brains for a very long time.
8. A lot of the things we call mental illness could maybe have been considered great survival tools back in the caveman days, but in today’s world, it’s hard to fit in when you demonstrate those traits.
9. Swimming is not about “avoiding drowning” it’s about “learning to swim.” We don’t label ourselves as having a drowning disorder because we want to learn to swim. It’s about the thing we want to learn and build. We need to approach mental health this way. IF you think of anxiety as a lake, you don’t have to “fix the anxiety lake,” rather you want to figure out how to swim across it instead of stopping and seeing it as a barrier. We need to learn how to go where we want to go.
10. Where do I start if I want to deal with my anxiety? Start with smaller uncertainties. Things like not checking your phone. You notice a simple uncertainty, and you don’t react to it. Then you can progressively level up from there.
11. How do we learn to sit with uncomfortable feelings? Just like exercising the first time. If you went to the gym and tried to lift a weight, and failed, you wouldn’t just never go back to the gym. If you go to therapy and have a painful experience you must keep going back. You must push yourself just like you would physically.
12. We talk about where stigma comes from and how we can address it. The mental health care system was designed around stigma. Nobody would exercise if you could only get a gym membership by admitting an illness or have a diagnosis. The mental health system works this way where we have to admit we are ill or be diagnosed before we get help. We must change how the system functions. We should view getting help for mental health the same way we do a gym membership. We should view it as doing something good for ourselves. It’s going to take consumer led services led by people who are living in recovery to fill the gaps. It will take a new system all together. Then we can hope to see stigma reduced.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways:

Website: https://stigmapodcast.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/StigmaCast

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Stigma-Podcast-105616270782583/

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Bea Arthur is a Columbia University trained psychotherapist, founder and CEO of The Difference, and an author who works with high-performance individuals. Bea was the first African-American female founder in Y-Combinator and was named as an Entrepreneur to Bet On by Newsweek Magazine as well as one of Bumble’s 100 Most Inspirational New Yorkers.

I had a blast during this conversation, and I learned a lot. Bea is just all-around amazing and I learned a lot from my conversation with her. She knows the history of mental health care, and the mental health tech landscape better than anyone else I’ve met lately. This conversation was really educational and informative for me.

You can connect with Bea on her websites and social media. Her twitter handle is @BeaArthurLMHC and you can find her online at her personal website, The Difference website and on LinkedIn.

Here are some of the things we talked about:

1. What led you to get a master’s degree in Psychological Counseling? Bea talks about how psychology “fell into her lap.” She talks about how she found her ability to connect with people by being nosey, and she found that people would open up to her while she was a real estate agent digging into her clients’ backgrounds to see if the home they were viewing was a fit for them.
2. How did you find your way into entrepreneurship? Bea talks about her journey from multiple jobs including being a real estate agent and finding her way to a counseling degree and into the entrepreneurship community.
3. Bea talks about how she came up with the idea for The Difference, which is a startup that provides on-demand access to therapy as Amazon’s first mental health Alexa skill. We talk about how hard it is to find a therapist. Bea explains how the primary reason people aren’t getting help is because of access. She talks about how the suicide hotline (a non-profit) is the only platform that has always been around and always had volume and impact. The reason is because it’s accessible. So, she is building a tool to give people better, immediate access to therapy.
4. History of the therapist, patient, and payer relationships since the 1980s. Bea explains how we got to where we are today in the mental health market. She explains that there is a misconception that therapists charge a lot of money based on their worth. The truth is, therapists charge that much because they must.

People used to get 20 free therapy sessions a year from their insurance companies. Then in the 80s and 90s, when mental health started being categorized as disability, employers started using this against employees to fire them. This was before the disabilities act. In the 80s and 90s when there was free therapy, people started paying out of pocket so their employers wouldn’t know. Also, when submitting a claim, a therapist must wait 2 months to get paid $60 when they can just get $200 now private or cash pay. Since then we still haven’t figured out how to get clients and counselors connected in a good way, and that’s what The Difference is trying to solve. 5. We talked about corporate leaders having a responsibility to take the lead on mental wellness. Bea explains that most companies are quick to nod their head and say they want to help or be supportive of employee mental wellness but are not quick to write a check to do so. Companies are still in a place where they need to be convinced of how that spending will positively impact their bottom lines. 6. We discussed men specifically struggling with mental health. Bea talks about some of the statistics on this issue and how much worse mental illness is among men than women. She talks about the way men make social connections, and how men spend their time socially (watching a game, golf, gun ranges, fishing) doing things that don’t foster face to face sharing and vulnerability. This type of “manly” social connectivity is harmful to men and their mental wellbeing. 7. Isolation can kill you. We talked about how humans have always been tribal creatures, but recently we have become such an individualistic, kill or be killed alpha-male society. Going back to the topic of men’s’ mental health, a lot of men think of themselves as leader of the pack. But back when we were in packs, we all had to rely on each other, even the leader. We had to admit our fears and work together. In an individualistic society, only “you” need to survive, so you worry about yourself and keep all the fears inside. 8. We talked about this idea of a “mental health baseline” and how we have to be self-aware both physically and emotionally. Our bodies will tell us when something is wrong, so when things don’t feel right, you need to talk to someone and not just think it will go away.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways:

Website: https://stigmapodcast.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/StigmaCast

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Stigma-Podcast-105616270782583/

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In this episode of the Stigma Podcast, I spoke with Jordan Brown, an advocate for mental health, a social worker in the mental health field, writer, poet and key member of a mental health-related startup. He has also spent time volunteering with the National Alliance on Mental Illness as well.

He’s a part of a team helping to build “AnswersNow” which is a solution that helps parents raising children with autism by providing access to board-certified clinicians via desktop and mobile devices for guidance to help the parents through day to day concerns they face.

Jordan has written several articles on many topics surrounding mental health. His writing can be found on his website, nerve10.com. He also has a newsletter where he distributes some very meaningful and authentic mental health information.

Jordan’s Website: nerve10.com

Jordan’s Twitter: @JPBrown5

Jordan’s Newsletter: https://pages.convertkit.com/d4d10d3480/e64a43d759?src=twitter_profile

1. We talk about Jordan’s background and how he found his way into the mental health space. Jordan did not begin in mental health. He got involved because of a personal connection to a family member who had a mental health issue. Many of us can relate to that.
2. Jordan shares about how he underwent open heart surgery in 2012. He has written about, and shared on our podcast, about how much harder the mental and emotional recovery was than the physical recovery from that surgery. Jordan talks about that and how he dealt with the mental health component of that recovery. He shares about how after surgery he struggled to sleep, which led to mental health issues.
3. We talk about OCD, anxiety and compulsive struggles including skin picking. Jordan shares how he overcame his own struggles with each.

4. Jordan talks about after getting some less than desirable help from mental health providers, he was admitted to a mental health facility in Montana after having concerns about harming himself. He discusses how treatment providers he worked with before being admitted were not helpful, and then when he was admitted, he was helped by a psychiatrist who really understood him and his needs which made all the difference in the world. It took quite a bit of courage to stand up and say he wasn’t getting any of the help he really needed and checked himself in to a mental health facility.

   1. Getting enough quality sleep
   2. Good sleep hygiene – consistent sleep and wake times, etc.
   3. Turning off tech an hour before sleeping
   4. Meditation – he calls the mindfulness he gets from meditation, a superpower he has
   5. Getting enough exercise – such as walking and hiking
   6. Avid reader (50-80 books a year)
   7. We talked about how to proactively manage mental health. Jordan gave a list of things he does to proactively manage his mental health. That list includes:
   8. Jordan has mentioned publicly that we have an ethical responsibility to talk about mental health. I had a chance to get more of his thoughts on what that ethical responsibility means. He makes the point that mental health issues can’t be allowed to “slide” – for instance, if someone has cancer, we rush to their side. So, when someone has a mental illness, we need to support them the same way.
   9. We talked about ways to defeat or reduce stigma. We have to talk about it. We have to tell uncomfortable stories. We don’t really give people a voice who are dealing with serious mental illness. We go into the co-occurrence of mental health and addiction as well as the presence of trauma when addiction is also present in people.
   10. We need to drastically reform the mental healthcare system. What we are doing right now is not working. Different parts of the health care system don’t talk to each other and the care isn’t what it should be. HIPAA, even though it has good intentions, makes it very hard to communicate about mental health issues.
   11. We talk about the culture of “toughness” and specifically how it pertains to men in society today. We talked about how men are not encouraged to be vulnerable, share their emotions, and open up and how that impacts boys later in life. This culture is prevalent not only in “sports” for young kids, but it’s prevalent in many industries, like startups where the culture of working harder, longer, and sleeping less is seen as a badge of honor. The mentality of “suck it up” has destroyed the fabric of humanity.
   12. Finally, Jordan shares more about what he is working on at AnswersNow and how his business is helping parents of children with autism.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways:

Website: https://stigmapodcast.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/StigmaCast

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Stigma-Podcast-105616270782583/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/stigma-podcast/

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Micah Baldwin is a serial entrepreneur and founder of Graphicly which was acquired by Blurb in 2014. We are very fortunate to have him share his experience recovering from addiction and battling mental illness as a child and throughout his adult life. He has a lot of wisdom and experience living in the recovery community and helping others do the same.

Micah grew up in Silicon Valley and started his first company at the age of 9. After selling Graphicly, he spent time at Amazon where he led a team dedicated to helping startups grow their businesses by connecting with large enterprises and business units. Currently, Micah is the founder and Executive Director of Create33 in Seattle which he describes as a labor of love, providing resources to founders such as advice, fundraising access and other resources he would have loved to have when he was starting out as a founder.

He is also an experienced startup investor, and a trusted advisor to many startups as well. He’s a mentor and advisor at 500 Startups, Techstars, CrunchFund and others where he helps early-stage companies with fundraising, business development, product development, marketing and growth

You can connect with Micah on twitter @micah. You can read more about his background and find a link to all of his socials on his profile at about.me/micahb.

2:15 – Micah tells me about his entrepreneurial journey. He talks about growing up in the heart of Silicon Valley and how his father worked at Stanford and was asked to be the 4th employee at Cisco. Micah grew up around entrepreneurship.

4:45 – What comes to mind when you think of mental health? Micah talks about how stability comes to mind first and goes on to explain his lifelong struggle battling mental health issues. He discusses his mental health diagnoses which include bipolar 2, anxiety and bipolar depression, all of which are medicated, and he is currently in a stable state. He talks about how when he was growing up, nobody really knew what mental health was and that people just viewed him as “the crazy kid” who was sad all the time, or the little “genius kid” that was like a little energizer bunny all the time.

9:20 – Micah discusses talking with his mom about his mental health as an adult. Often her response is that she says she wished she knew this was going on. Which is a very valid point. Mental health was not talked about when we were kids. It was something you kept quiet. He gives an example about how if he had gotten in a car wreck and become a paraplegic there would have been a conversation about how to deal with it, but mental health just wasn’t talked about.

10:48 – Micha talks about how hope and fear are paired together as opposites. He lived much of his life in fear until he became stable, and now his life is full of hope.

11:38 – We talked about how addiction interacted with his mental illnesses throughout his life. Micah talks about having an addictive personality, and how moderation has been something he struggled with. His very first drug was food. He became a big kid and he talks about how he used his role as the “funny fat kid” as a defense mechanism. Later in life that translated into drug and alcohol addiction. He talks a lot about how he bottomed out and when he decided to get sober, as well as his process to gain sobriety and maintain sobriety.

14:10 – I asked him to talk about the difference between “white-knuckling” it with regards to addiction versus going through a program like AA. He talks about how he first attended AA after being court mandated after a DUI in the early 2000s. When he went he expected it to be full of fake people pretending to work a program but, he realized how nice everyone was, how different everyone was, and how every single one of these very different people were full of pure love for one another. The sense of belonging was the biggest wake-up call for him.

17:55 – We talk in-depth about the spiritual component of AA (or 12-step programs). He talks about how at one point he was turned off by the mentions of “higher power” in AA. He talks about how he would listen to all these people turning their lives over to a higher power and that it didn’t’ make any sense to him. He talks about how for him higher power has evolved into the broader AA group and how each friend he has made in the program represents a piece of this higher power.

20:50 – I asked how stigma has impacted his journey with his mental health and addiction. He talks about how there is always this image of “perfect” in certain fields, like venture, or startups with respect to how you look, or who you are. He doesn’t fit the mold in many ways, and his fear of adding his mental health issues to his reasons why he doesn’t’ fit the mold kept him from wanting to get help or talk about it. Eventually, he made the shift from worrying what other people think to not caring if someone judges him because he’s not like everyone else or because of what he’s done in his past.

24:40 – We talk about how we can address the problem of stigma. Micah outlines three things that need to happen:

1. Each of us needs to be open to admit that we all have biases and we have to work to be compassionate, accepting, and willing to listen to a person’s whole story instead of judging them based on part of the story.
2. We need to talk about mental health as a medical condition because it is one. My brain works differently than other peoples’ brains. That’s ok just as it’s ok for someone’s legs to work different than other peoples’ legs. Furthermore, education is key. There needs to be more opportunity to learn what it means to live in unstable versus stable mental states. We need to educate people on how they can be helpful to us when we are struggling whether it be in a crisis or in a depressed state or whatever it may be.
3. We need more people who have succeeded in spite of mental illness and addiction, to come forward and share their stories. We need to make it well known that many people achieve a great deal of success while struggling with instability or addiction.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways:

Website: https://stigmapodcast.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/StigmaCast

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In this episode we talk with Scotty Tidwell, Chief Community Officer at GFuel, the official energy drink of esports. We dive into the intersection of mental health and gaming. This has been a topic that has come up for many of us, our entire lives from our parents telling us video games are bad for us, to finding out later in life that you really can be addicted to video games.

Scotty is a bit of a legend in the esports community. He’s been around since the early days of esports and has been apart of marketing and producing widely followed content in the space since those early days. He’s basically the go-to marketing guy in esports. If you’re doing to build in the space, and you need to do some marketing or branding, then you’re going to shortlist Scotty to run that part of your business.

You can connect directly with Scotty via his twitter: https://twitter.com/ScottyTidwell

2:44 – Scotty gets vulnerable with us and talks about how over the last 3-4 years he has had at least 4 close friends that have either killed themselves or overdosed. He talks about how tough it was to watch these successful people who were married with families, and realize they were the same age as him.

3:44 – What does mental health mean to you? Scotty talks about personal happiness and being happy with yourself.

5:13 – How has mental health touched you personally? Scotty opens about his father having a drinking problem and how his mom protected him from a lot of that fallout and the physical violence that resulted.

8:15 – Scotty talks about how the impact his father had on him manifests itself in the way he disciplined his kids. He said that he compensates by taking it easy on discipline with his kids because of what he had to see growing up. He took it from one extreme to the other. The kids turned out great, they are smart kids, but it’s one of those things where you wonder if you were a great parent or if you made mistakes because of what you saw growing up.

9:40 – We talked about the difference between being proactive versus reactive regarding our mental health. Scotty talks about his experiences at various times in his life, sometimes reactive and sometimes proactive as well as the things that seemed to prohibit him from being proactive at times instead of putting his own wellbeing first.

11:15 – Scotty talks about times he has tried to get help for mental health issues, but then people start throwing stones and knocking him down which he suggests is one of the main reasons why people don’t reach out or ask for help.

16:12 – He talks about how some of his friends died due to addiction to pain killers, and how Scotty found out about it. He saw on Facebook. Turns out the guy had been on Tramadol for a year and a half, then on a Friday night he had a couple cocktails and died from it. It was ruled a suicide, but that’s wrong. He had a few drinks because in his mind, the Tramadol isn’t that strong and doesn’t affect him that much and the next thing you know he stops breathing in his sleep.

17:45 – Scotty discusses the link between his physical health and mental health. He discusses how he was at his worst with his mental health when he was also at his worst with his physical health (being overweight).

21:35 – There is a storm coming. When we go out to dinner, we see all the young people on their phones non-stop. Social anxiety is at an all-time high. People cling to their phone like a lifeline. Social media is making that anxiety even worse. People aren’t used to face to face interactions, and it shows at events he attends full of young people.

23:15 – We talk about the dialogue in the esports community around mental health, addiction, and wellness. Nobody talks about it unless something bad happens. Once there is a tragedy, the engagement on mental health shoots up, but then 3 days later nobody is talking about it anymore. He talks about how he doesn’t see anything coming from the game makers about how much time is healthy to be spending on gaming. He poses a question to the industry on how much time spent doing something, is considered healthy?

26:00 – Scotty talks about how during his years in the startup world, that when he finally got done working, and had time for himself, that the ‘me’ time activity he engaged in wasn’t something physically or mentally healthy. He just played video games. He never set boundaries. We go on to talk about how the professional esports players also need to be setting boundaries around playing time, practice time, structured practice, and practicing properly.

29:10 – We talk about facial recognition technology for mood tracking that will come to market and how those technologies will be used one day to hold game makers accountable for their games’ impact on people.

31:20 – The esports leagues will likely come out in the coming years and mandate practice time limits, and they should do this sooner rather than later.

32:00 – We talk about the toxicity of the gaming community and how that impacts mental health of those involved in the space.

34:00 – Scotty talks about how much money is going into these esports organizations today. Some of that money is going to hire physical health professionals, but none of it is going to mental health resources. You never see a team hiring a therapist, but they are hiring physical trainers.

35:30 Mental health is not on the esports organizations’ radar because it hasn’t impacted them yet. This is unacceptable and hopefully, as a result of this podcast, someone will take action on this.

38:00 – Scotty talks about how the hardest addiction he had to break was the phone addiction. The notifications, and the pressure to respond right away all the time to email, etc. was something he had to consciously fight against by physically detaching himself from his phone at times AND by turning off notifications from social media.

40:00 – What will it take to get more people talking about mental health in esports? We can’t just have the conversation when there is a tragedy. We need to have the conversation more often. We need people of stature in the industry talking about this topic daily and weekly. We need to be checking in with each other instead of throwing stones at each other. We must get to the point in our society where its ok to not be ok.

47:50 – We talk about vulnerability. In this world, of social media, people see the best 3 seconds of somebody’s life daily. Then there you are scrolling through your feed and you feel like a loser. Then people start judging themselves on a relative basis against everybody else’s best 3 seconds. We view ourselves in a bad light now and it affects us.

49:30 – Scotty has open DMs. He’s there if you need to talk. Reach out, ask for help. Too many people out there do care.

Connect with the Stigma Podcast in the following ways:

Website: https://stigmapodcast.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/StigmaCast

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I had the chance to sit down with Kunal Gupta, founder and CEO of Polar, a trusted-web platform provider for global media publishers. He is a member of the Board of Directors at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Canada (CAMH) which is an organization with over 3,000 team members operating a hospital, providing mental health education and advocacy in Canada, and has one of the largest research teams in the world focused on understanding and solving mental health conditions.

Kunal’s passion or MindTech is unparalleled. He has met with and maintained relationships with over 150 founders and entrepreneurs who are actively building in the space and has access to some of the best minds in the world on the topic of mental health.

In this episode, we have a very frank and honest two-way conversation about mental health and our personal journeys. As the conversation unfolds, Kunal shares about his mental health journey, and how becoming mindful of his mental wellbeing made him a better entrepreneur, a better leader and a better CEO.

If you want to hear more from Kunal, check him out on his blog at www.findfocustoday.com

Some of the key takeaways from my conversation with Kunal Gupta:

1. We talk at the beginning about Kunal’s framework for thinking about the human condition. Humans by default like to ignore our suffering which invites the use of substances, addiction, etc. that we use to numb that pain. When we numb our pain, it’s akin to seeking ignorance. Ignorance feels good, but ignorance leads to more suffering. Then the cycle continues. In order to break that cycle, we introduce mindfulness, awareness, and meditation which can break the cycle.
2. Kunal explains how meditation has changed his identity as a leader and CEO. We talked about how Kunal handles things that happen in his business before and after he introduced meditation to his life. He gives this powerful example of how a client canceled their account. He discusses how he would have reacted before embracing the art of turning inward and meditation, then he explains how he handled the situation after meditation. He explains how his method of handling losing a client has changed from blowing people up in the office, to sending thank you notes to his team when he loses a client.
3. How we get more people to meditate and be aware
4. Kunal has developed a framework for discussing the MindTech landscape which he has outlined here: http://mindtech.institute/mentalhealth/

The framework helps us think about where entrepreneurs are solving within the spectrum of mental illness, to mental wellness and to mental performance. I believe this framework is key to understanding the problem sets, solutions, customers, payers, and strategy for solving problems with startups in this industry.

1. We wondered out loud, what technologies, or startups, or solutions should be built to support better mental health. It starts with where on the spectrum (see above) that you want to focus. Kunal explains this spectrum of mental illness, mental health and mental performance. You can read more about the way he see this spectrum here. We talk about how a point solution will not be developed for mental health, it will require an ecosystem of solutions attacking all parts of the spectrum mentioned above in order for us to see an improvement at a national or global scale in mental well-being.
2. We talked about passion versus profit driven problem solving. When we are passionate, we bring our best self to the table. The people in MindTech are driven by passion and purpose. These are big problems to solve. We need big resources. We need capital, human resources, talent, and enthusiasm. Yes, there will be plenty of profit to go around, but there will be many struggles along the way and passion to solve a problem that we have personally experienced is the secret sauce to building in the space right now.

3. Kunal talks about tech evolution in the MindTech space. He makes the comparison to the cell phone industry and how phones started as large clunky devices and over 40 years they evolved into power smart phones that fit in our pocket. There were three major evolutions in cell phone development. With MindTech, we are in that first stage of tech development with suitcase-sized phones. The bridge to the next phase is data. Once we get the data, we can start to look at signals. The data may not be perfect, but having any data is better than none. Data will accelerate us from “suitcase-sized phones” to flip phones. Then we still must evolve to the “smart phone” generation of MindTech.

   1. Kunal’s blog on mindfulness, leadership and awareness: http://findfocus.today/
   2. LinkedIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bykunal/
   3. Learn more about Kunal:

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3:35 – A framework for understanding suffering and our default state / the human condition. We as humans like to ignore our suffering which invites the use of substances, addiction, etc. This takes us to a place of ignorance. Ignorance feels good, but ignorance leads to more suffering.

“Am I doing this to become more aware or am I doing it to ignore?”

8:25 – Discussion of addiction interaction and the “periodic chart of the addictions.”

9:05 – What does all of this mean for our current state of tech addiction?

10:30 – Facebook is an addiction we can indulge, and not get in trouble for it.

11:00 – What if we walked around with a sign over our head that said how much we used Facebook today, or what if our Facebook profile said how much we used Facebook today. What if we socially pressured each other to use social media less?

11:25 – Facebook is killing part of our human experience very slowly. Attention span. Quality of our relationships and connections. Surface level conversations. Everything is curated for us.

12:07 – What do we think about good addictions like meditation? Any time you chose to avoid dealing with a feeling, it is unhealthy.

13:33 – Kunal stopped drinking alcohol 5 years ago. He’s the guy that got hammered and said, “I’ll never drink again” and he actually did it. I’ve always wanted to find that guy. Alcohol was taking him to a state of ignorance, and meditation was taking him to a place of awareness.

15:48 – Part of the meditation practice is accepting reality. The balance of peace comes with not being disappointed when I don’t meditate enough, nor being too excited when I meditate more.

16:45 – It took time for me to build the confidence to sit with my thoughts for longer and longer periods of time. When you become more aware, you may not like some of what you become more aware of. Awareness does not discriminate.

18:10 – What do you do when negative thoughts come up for you during a meditation? Kunal talks about how he works to go deeper in the meditation to find the goodness in it.

19:30 – How has meditation impacted you? Kunal talks about how meditation has not necessarily made him calmer, but it has made him more aware. Then we get into when he began meditating and how his dedication to meditating has evolved over the last 5 years.

21:31 – What are the benefits of meditation and increased awareness? It’s like strength training for the mind. It’s not how I feel when I meditate, it’s how I feel when I’m not meditating. Misconception that meditation is “not thinking” which is a lie. IF you think you can clear your mind, then you are lying to yourself. Meditation is thinking. It’s becoming more aware of the thoughts in my mind. Once I’m more aware, I can accept the thoughts.

22:55 – How has meditation helped you as an entrepreneur and CEO? Kunal talks about how he has been running his business for over a decade. There have been many chapters and iterations. The business is called the same thing as it was in the beginning, but his relationship with the business and his identity with the business has changed as he has cultivated greater self-awareness. Then he gives an awesome example of how he has handled losing customers pre-meditation and post-meditation (before turning inward, and after turning inward).

27:21 – How do we as a startup ecosystem help founders find their way to more awareness and mindfulness? We discuss how it’s like the difference between living with the lights on or living with the lights off. This is the difference between having awareness, and meditation in your life versus not having it at all.

29:03 – The best teachers Kunal has come in contact with embody the practice. It comes across in their presence, language, etc. The best way to inspire anyone to look inward is for them to come into contact with people who embody the practice. We can write and read about meditation all we want. It’s not until we experience it, or see someone who embodies it, that we can understand it maybe become more open to it.

31:16 – Are there solutions in the tech space, around mental health? What should we be building to help people with mental health?

32:05 – Mental health applies to all people. Kunal developed this spectrum of mental health, illness and wellness that can help us frame the space. We talk about what needs to be built in the space and how it depends on where you want to solve in the spectrum (mental illness, mental health and mental wellness).

33:30 There will be no point solution that solves the mental health problem for everyone. An entire ecosystem is needed around this problem set.

34:00 – What does the mental health ecosystem look like today? Kunal talks about how he has met with over 150 entrepreneurs who are solving problems in this space right now. Most are using technology, some are using process improvements or organizational changes to solve a problem. Just about all of these founders are doing this from a place of passion and purpose versus profit. Passion is the main driver of problem solving in this space.

36:51 – What is bringing the influx of people to this industry now? We know a lot more about our physical health than we did 20-30 years ago. With our physical health we sort of “know what we don’t know.” We are starting to realize that in the mental health space it’s the ‘first inning’. We know so little, when it has such a big impact on so many societal issues. We are starting to realize how impactful mental health is on so many other societal issues.

39:20 – When you practice mindfulness, it is very hard to connect with the idea of failure, because you see goodness in everything. It doesn’t mean that everything is good. That’s very different. But when you see reality as it is, then you can choose how to connect to it and relate to it.

40:37 – Kunal talks about tech evolution in the space. He makes the comparison to the cell phone industry and how phones started as large clunky devices and over 40 years they evolved into power smart phones that fit in our pocket. There were three major evolutions in cell phone development. With MindTech, we are in that first stage of tech development with suitcase-sized phones. The bridge to the next phase is data. Once we get the data, we can start to look at signals. The data may not be perfect, but having any data, is better than none. Data will accelerate us from “suitcase-sized phones” to flip phones. Then we still must evolve to the “smart phone” generation of MindTech.

42:45 – How did you, Kunal, find your way from B2B Software to a passion for the MindTech space? Kunal talks about how a couple of years ago he wrestled with this idea of why he meditates. The answer seemed to be “to obtain more awareness” and “gain more acceptance of others.” But then he realized that’s not it. He realized the purpose was to be of service. He is meditating and becoming more aware so that he can help others. As he merged his passion for mental health, and for technology, it’s a natural fit for him to be focused here.

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Dr. Michael Freeman is a practicing psychiatrist and psychologist in San Francisco. He has performed intensive research on the topic of entrepreneur mental health. His work has been published in numerous journals, books and publications.

Most notably, he co-authored a report called “Are Entrepreneurs Touched with Fire” in 2015 – which is a study that shows the link between entrepreneurs and mental illness. This study has been cited numerous times and most recently in Forbes, as well as the July 2019 Wall Street Journal article, “Beyond the Confetti: The Dark Side of Startup Success.”

The best place to learn more about Dr. Freeman’s work, and to find the report on entrepreneur mental health, is on his website: michaelafreemanmd.com

Research Report Link: Are Entrepreneurs Touched with Fire?

Some of the key takeaways from my conversation with Dr. Freeman:

1. Entrepreneurs are more likely to have mental health issues than the broader population. And these issues are rather easy to identify. Dr. Freeman has embarked upon a research program for the last 8 years that has identified a specific mental health profile or footprint for entrepreneurs that shares many of the same characteristics we see when mental illness manifests itself (creativity, motivation, energy levels, extroversion, etc.).
2. We talked extensively about the relationship between bipolar disorder and entrepreneurship. We talked about the spectrum of bipolar and how some characteristics of bipolar present themselves in people. Some of the characteristics of bipolar like ambition, creativity and optimism, etc. can be very beneficial for a founder, but a full blow manic episode can ruin their life and their business. Finding that middle ground, by treatment and asking for help is our goal.
3. Why is entrepreneur mental health a major issue? Entrepreneurs create the vast majority of new jobs, pull economies out of recessions, introduce useful products and services, and create prosperity. Therefore, it behooves us to understand the cognitive, affective, and behavioral strengths and vulnerabilities of entrepreneurs and encourage them to get help and provide resources for help as well.

Jobs are under attack from many outside pressures such as automation. People who have a job that can be automated, will lose those jobs due to automation, robotics, tele-migration and AI. Entrepreneurs create jobs. 10% of jobs are held by entrepreneurs themselves, and when you add in their employees, 30% of all jobs are created by entrepreneurs.

Right around the corner is this tsunami of unemployment and entrepreneurs will be the solution.

1. We talked about how those of us with mental illness can protect ourselves against the extremes. Dr. Freeman encourages everyone to be evaluated. You may or may not have a condition just because you demonstrate symptoms. If you do have a condition, there’s a reasonable likelihood that you have more than one condition. Start with an evaluation. Find out how your mind is calibrated. Then you will find many ways to “put up guard rails (managing lifestyle, medication, etc.)” so you don’t run yourself off the tracks.

   1. De-stigmatization – We need to normalize the mental health differences of entrepreneurs so that people are not afraid of it. Start by de-stigmatizing yourself. Ignore the negative messages you have been receiving.
   2. Education – Society invents false explanations as to why someone is hyperactive or has another mental condition and we need to learn the real explanations.
   3. How do we address entrepreneur mental health?
   4. Dr. Freeman discusses the concept of “Illness” versus “difference” when talking about mental illness. He says that the concept of “illness” really benefits the “medical industrial complex” more than anyone else. For example, if you are a doctor who wants to have a full waiting room, or a hospital focused on occupancy or a pharmaceutical company selling medication, then it’s great for there to be a lot of illness out there. If we eliminate the language of “illness” and replace it with a vocabulary of relative differences, then we change the dynamic around the topic altogether.
   5. Are we even close to a solution for mental health issues? We have a lot of hypotheses to test. Some solutions are known. That’s what Dr. Freeman is writing about these days. We have a long way to go in communicating solutions. Then we have a long way to go in changing social and public policy in ways that allow those solutions to be implemented. For example, Dr. Freeman asked a woman to run a company he wanted to start, focused on mental health of entrepreneurs, but she won’t leave her current company because she can’t live without health insurance. The limiting factor to getting this woman to take the leap to help mankind, is her health insurance. We need social policies in place that unlock all the entrepreneurial potential energy in the country.
   6. We talked about the concept of “innovation ecosystems” and how we need to help thought leaders recognize that jobs are created in ‘places’ and those places can usually be identified as innovation ecosystems where entrepreneurs feel welcome. When you consider the “birthrate” of new companies per 100,000 employees in various geographies, the places with the highest birthrates are places with the most tolerant social policies. We must get government policymakers involved in helping to shape the direction of such policies. We can look at Austin, TX and the policies put in place by the mayors there over many years to encourage entrepreneurs to come there.

I hope that this episode is a resource for all entrepreneurs, regardless of if they are building in the mental health space, or any other industry.

Lastly, and certainly not least important, we all need help. We all need to check-in. We all need to be evaluated. Go talk to a mental health professional and ask for guidance on your path to mental wellness and mental performance.

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2:55 – Why are entrepreneurs likely to have mental health issues?

5:35 – Why are people with a certain mental health profile better at being founders than others?

7:10 – The “approach network” in the brain is calibrated more highly among entrepreneurs

9:46 – What drives people with bipolar tendencies to become entrepreneurs? Correlation, not causation. These are ancient differences in the brain that we are talking about. For most of human history, entrepreneurship didn’t exist but these traits did. At this moment in time, these traits are particularly adaptable in dynamic economies. This creates a great environment for people with these personality traits to become entrepreneurs.

11:30 – In the 60% of entrepreneurs who are not demonstrating mental illness, we find that half of those founders come from families with mental health conditions. We believe the positive benefits can be transmitted without the negative components having to come along with them.

16:30 – Is there a way for entrepreneurs to harness the positive benefits of these mental conditions while mitigating the negative consequences?

18:14 – All of these mental health characteristics are good until they aren’t. For example, optimism, you need it as a founder, but if you ignore negative feedback then you can’t pivot or change.

25:20 – If you have mental health symptoms that are making things works, then they can be managed. You just have to ask for help.

26:10 – Should every entrepreneur reach out and get screened for mental health issues?

29:00 – Why should we address entrepreneur mental health issues? Entrepreneurs are wonderful people, and they are largely misfits. Entrepreneurs also create the jobs. The economy is highly dependent upon this job creation. As robotics and AI take more physical jobs away, entrepreneurs will keep creating jobs inside of new businesses.

36:00 – How do we address entrepreneur mental health? It starts with de-stigmatization and education. We need to raise awareness. We need to start by de-stigmatizing ourselves. There is nothing wrong with you if you have some sort of anxiety, or mood swings or depression. Society has invented explanations for why people are a certain way and that has stigmatized us. These are false explanations. People need to learn the real explanations then learn how to make it work for them not against them.

39:12 - Entrepreneurs are notably open-minded people. They can’t afford to discriminate. Entrepreneurs succeed by getting new information and building networks. The more people you accept, the bigger your network and the more powerful you can be as an entrepreneur.

41:20 – Dr. Freeman would encourage us to stop using the language of “illness” and start using the language of “difference. “Illness” the language of the medical industrial complex.

43:58 – How close are we to getting to solutions in the space? Closer than you think, but we have a long way to go. Some solutions are known. Some solutions are sitting on lab desks inside of universities needing to be commercialized.

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What is the Stigma Podcast?

Our focus is on the intersection of mental health, addiction, and entrepreneurship. We will be talking with founders, investors, and leaders of all types about how mental health has impacted them. We will be talking with psychiatrists who have done extensive research on the link between mental illness and entrepreneurship. You will hear from CEOs who can tell you specifically how their leadership styles changed once they incorporated meditation and awareness into their daily routine. You will also hear from those who are still struggling and how they seek help.

The purpose of these conversations is to create a virtuous cycle of sharing, and encouragement to fight against the stigma that prevents people from getting help. As we share our stories of addiction, recovery, and living with mental illnesses… others are encouraged to share. As more people share, more people hear that help is available and eventually seek help.

Our goal is to be a part of the amplification of the conversation on mental health, addiction and most importantly, the stigma that surrounds these topics.

Why A Podcast on Stigma?

I want to encourage the increase in sharing about our shared addiction and mental illness in hopes that more people will share, and thus more people will seek help.

I want people to know that there is hope, you can get well, and the path isn’t anywhere near as lonely and hard as you think it will be.

Stigma is the reason why I didn’t get help earlier. False narratives around what my symptoms meant, kept me from getting help, as I didn’t want to lose my manic superpowers. Turns out (As we talk in the first episode with Dr. Michael Freeman), you can keep the positive benefits of whatever illness you have and mitigate the downside.

I shared my story one day in a blog post in March of 2018. Since that day, I receive a steady stream of people messaging me telling me that my willingness to open up on LinkedIn and Medium and Facebook encouraged them to tell their stories or seek help. So, I realized, I need to create a platform where people can tell their stories in order to encourage others to do the same and get help as well.

My detailed story is here: My Struggle with Mental Illness and Addiction

In recovery, we learn that we only keep what we have by giving it away. Part of the recovery process is to be of service and help others, so this podcast and this venture fund I’m trying to build are a giant 12th step for me.

If it keeps me sober, and it helps one other person, then it’s a huge win. That’s the goal. Turn up the volume on people’s stories, encourage others to talk and break down stigma, and hopefully, some people who are in pain will get relief because of it.

Please join us in this conversation. Please engage, give us feedback, subscribe and write reviews, and engage on social media. Show those who are suffering that there is a groundswell of support, whether you are living in recovery, or you’re not an addict, or you don’t know what to think. Just join in the conversation and let's all be well together.

Thank you for being here.

Connect with us:

Email: info@stigmapodcast.com

Website: https://stigmapodcast.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/StigmaCast

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Stigma-Podcast-105616270782583/

LinkedIN: https://www.linkedin.com/company/20144049