Mental Health Needs a New Approach.

Those who’ve been following along know that our SameHere Global team is out in Mexico City - meeting w govt leaders on the local, state, & federal levels, as well as large Mexican tech businesses - to help share our proactive mental health solutions more widely arnd the globe/outside the US.

As it relates to this story, our top piece of our technology, our app: SameHere Scale, as well as those techs we’re partnering with, all use AI in some form. This post is NOT meant to knock AI, generally. Let me give an example:

While we have STARR (stress & trauma active release & rewiring) exercises or a “gym for the brain” w MH exercise options already in the app, AI that we’re incorporating w tech partners will enable us to show users their trends, & make recommendations as to the best exercises that work for them. AI bots can be like personal trainers taking users thru the “brain gym.”

That’s harnessing the power of AI to HELP people.

Bc of the travel, I wasn’t going to post this wk, but this story had me boiling. AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, & others need to have safeguards related to mental health & suicld@lity put into place - NOW.

These AI tools aggregate posts & data from all over the web. Think of the web as a library of books you can take out. AI is a way to get a summary of what’s in all the books, collectively, in the click of a button. Bold font for this: THERE IS NO REASON THAT SUPPORT OF SUIClD€ NOR MEANS TOWARDS SUIClD€, AGGREGATED, SHOULD EVER BE SHARED BY ANY OF THESE AI TOOLS. EVER.

There is no legit reason that can be given for why this info shouldn’t be deleted from any data that can be pulled up by these tools when users search.

When someone’s having ideations - they need HOPE, not a push to follow an impulsive error msg they’re having. We have to hold these companies to higher standards.

Also, terrible headline by the NY Post here - to put the “means” discussed in it is awful. Media companies need to be held accountable too.

#safeai #aiaccountability #airesponsibility #aiandmentalhealth #preventsuicide #SameHere🤙 #5in5

Trauma IS: what happens inside our body (physiological changes) when we live thru & perseverate over challenging life events that overwhelm our ability to cope in the moment.

Trauma can be FROM: SO many events/thoughts - that so often we invalidate ppl’s experience bc they don’t seem “that bad” to have caused a big “issue.”

@slivingstn shared a post w me that went pretty viral, that invalidated ppl’s individual paths & experiences. It: incorrectly referred to trauma as the EVENTS themselves. In doing so, it then: made a broad brush statement that society is using the term trauma for too many “events” & now, the term’s been watered down, bc every minor inconvenience is being referred to as trauma.

I think a post like that misses the mark in so many ways, & invalidates the unique human experiences we each have.

- For one child, for example - something that would appear to be awful - the sudden loss of a grandparent - leads to trauma in the body. Why? Maybe their parents deal w loss in a way where they mourn & emote very heavily.

Whereas in another fam, they cope differently - having a large celebration of life & appreciating all that this grandparent contributed to the world. The result? This child may not develop trauma from that loss whereas the first one did.

And NEITHER fam is “right” for how they handled the situation. We each learn to cope w diff tools.

Go past events, & go to thoughts. One person loses their job in their 40s & goes rt back on the hunt & finds an even better gig. Another goes thru the same thing, & gets lost in a very active brain w “what ifs” - abt losing out to a younger candidates, not having enough skills, afraid their name’s tarnished in the industry, not being able to make rent.

Obv you’d like to have skills to cope like the first example - but everyone’s wired differently, & so a job loss for person 2 may lead to trauma, where it doesn’t for person 1.

Why can’t we have this nuanced discussion & understanding? Why must we invalidate ppl’s experiences? It’s so judgmental. Trauma happens inside 5 out 5 of us. And we don’t get to choose how we’re each impacted.

#SameHere🤙 #5in5 #trauma #ACEs

I was getting ready for a presentation & started to look up these stats & they both shocked me/at the same time, confirmed what I’ve been thinking abt this space for some time.

First off, let’s start w the macro: only 23% of ppl in the US get mental health treatment. Awfully interesting given how the media & large orgs in this space perpetuate the “1 in 5” w mental illness stat, exhaustively. Aligns almost exactly: here’s the percent of ppl who are sick, & therefore those are “the ones” who need treatment.

This stat creates a reactive model where nearly 80% of our population does NOTHING to treat mental health proactively - no therapy…let alone effective therapy.

But dive deeper into what’s on this slide. Even of those who go to treatment - almost 3x do meds alone vs do therapy alone. In a country where the Ph@rma industry is promoting direct to consumer (1 of only 2 countries in the world), we’re seeing how their “quick fix” model is appealing to MOST of the ppl who do something to seek out treatment. And…the fact that MOST think that meds - alone, is their answer, is not surprising, given the promos out there.

This post will get crushed. Bc it’s not like our Lewis Capaldi post which talked abt therapy, “generally.” When you talk in platitudes abt help, generally, posts can soar. In this case, that post has been seen by ~325k, already.

When you get into specifics about meds vs therapy, abt types of therapy, abt modalities that help you get to the sources & actually go on healing journeys, these social companies CRUSH the reach, bc the very system these slides show - is exactly what the powers that be/their advertisers want: a reactive model, that makes ppl wait till they feel sick, to then run to the “fix” or to types of general therapies that keep us coming back as customers & never get to the source.

Please share. Doesn’t have to be here - don’t want you to think it’s abt our numbers. Screen shot it & share w your friends/fam via text if you want. But please help more folks understand this reality. It needs to get out there!

#therapy #talktherapy #somatictherapy #mentalhealthtreatment #mentalhealthawareness #SameHere🤙 #5in5