Despite heightened awareness, the rates of mental health complications, suicides, and overdoses are soaring... Why? Mental health care remains reactive. In physical health, we track ranges in everything from bodyweight to blood pressure to act early. So, why not do the same for mental health?
Our science-backed SCALE gives you clarity and empowers you to proactively track your range of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors along a mental health continuum, all in a shareable app. This common language helps you and your community take control before the impacts of life's inevitable challenges accumulate in our minds and bodies, and become crises.
The SCALE App isn’t just for individuals—it’s a way for schools, workplaces, sports teams, military groups, and more to regularly monitor a collective range in mental health. With everyone speaking the same language, your community can build a culture prioritizing mental health daily.
Complete organized check-ins with individuals & groups
Share results and engage with your support network
Prevent crises & foster well being with proactive insights
We collaborate with a variety of groups and organizations to integrate our tools into their systems, making mental health part of their culture. We’ll work with your group’s members to develop a shared mental health language, empowering them to be the heroes of their own mental wellness journeys.
If you’re looking to proactively strengthen your mental health, build resilience, and move toward a healthier place on the SameHere Scale, you’re in the right place. Just like physical health requires a gym, mental health needs intentional and consistent practice. That’s where our STARR Program, or Stress & Trauma Active Release & Rewiring, comes in. Backed by leading researchers in mind and body wellness, STARR provides evidence-based exercises with guided video, audio, and step-by-step instructions to support your journey.
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Our team offers in-person and virtual programs, assemblies, town halls, and professional development sessions tailored to your group. These programs embed the SameHere Scale and STARR into your organization’s ecosystem, helping transform your culture and empower your people.
Focus on emotional resilience, peer support, and coping skills to promote mental well-being for K-12 and college students.
Help military personnel and first responders manage stress, address trauma, and build resilience in their high-stakes roles.
Build a culture of employee wellness, reduce burnout, improve productivity, and go far beyond what a traditional EAP offers.
Foster team resilience, teamwork, and mental well-being in athletes on and off the field, helping them to manage stress effectively.
5 in 5 Inc. is here to help you take control of your mental wellness. Download the Scale App, explore the STARR Program, or bring our solutions to your organization. Together, we can use common language and exercises to reshape how mental health is understood and managed.
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Want to take your skills further beyond the practices in the app? We offer STARR certification courses and bring these practices to your organization or community. STARR can be integrated into systems at:
Equip educators with proactive mental health tools to support students' emotional resilience and foster a culture of well-being.
Integrate STARR practices to empower healthcare professionals and patients in managing stress and improving mental health outcomes.
Provide innovative, evidence-based exercises and certification training to enhance client recovery and promote lasting mental wellness.
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Gonna come out on the top & say, I struggle all the time during stretches, even tho I may’ve “tamed” the most awful beast I think (hope) I’ll ever face - for 2.5 years - from 2015 thru 2017.
The women on the last two slides of this post: Hailey Van Lith of the WNBA’s Chicago Sky, & Amanda Anisimova of women’s Pro Tennis are shining examples of people who’ve tamed beasts publicly, & go out there saying - while I have great stretches, I still struggle all the time.
Think about how different of a message both of these women are sending, than the toxic “influencer culture” we see on here, daily: the ones where we have folks preaching to us how great their life has been since they hit rock bottom, now on a fully upward trajectory, & how if you just follow their plan of X, Y, & Z, you can thrive like them allll the time too!
Secret revealed: they struggle too.
Back to Anisimov, my friend (great guy, well-intentioned) wrote me right after her upsetting loss in the Wimbledon Final (after I’d shared a number of posts applauding her rise after her own crash), saying: “Tough to watch the women’s Wimbledon finals. After all this girl went through, to lose 0 and 0 has got to sting. Just hope it’s doesn’t set her back mentally.“
And I wrote him back saying - “We don’t know how this will/wont set her back, but she’s shown herself she can dig out of a dark place already.”
We are taught lessons thru stories growing up - that you face an obstacle, overcome, & then it’s clear sailing or happily ever after. But that’s for the storybooks. That’s not how real life works.
Personally, my latest battle is: as I’ve worked to have capacity for feelings of all kinds to come back, my body gets exhausted & overtaxed FROM those feelings (ones I didn’t have for so long), that I crash again when they’re back for a stretch. But I’m learning. We all gotta learn & share, together, bc this life thing is not for the faint of heart.
Wherever you are at, keep working. This is a journey, not a destination, & the journey is better, together, no matter where on the rollercoaster you are!
#SameHere🤙 #5in5 #anisimova #vanlith #chicagosky #wimbeldon #riseandfall
So much effort has been put into changing the narrative away from “commits” to “died by.”
But even when that switch is made, if in the same articles and posts and videos, phrases like:
- Took their life…
- Made the decision to end…
- Did it bc of XYZ reason…
- Thought that things would be better if…
are used to describe the “why”…then the switch to “died by”…does very little to change the narrative.
Suicide is most often NOT a rational “choice or decision.” It’s an overwhelm of our system. If you’ve experienced ideations you know that it feels like error messages (like a computer has error messages) but bc we are human, they feel like impulsive ones of harm to ourselves.
These are error messages and impulses that no one WANTS to do. Just like that computer’s system gets overwhelmed and in that past you’d see the “Blue Screen” or you now see a freeze of applications - our central nervous system is an operating system as well.
We have to move away from the phrasing of - choice or decision…so that we can remove the shame in this space, and improve/increase help-seeking behaviors.
15 mill in the US alone reported suicidal ideations last year. That’s reported. Imagine what the real number is. This can and does happen to anyone, bc we are all human.
Let’s move away from phrasing that shames a choice or decision.
#SameHere🤙 #5in5 #suicideprevention #suicideawareness #ideations #diedbysuicide
Amanda Anisimova made her breakthrough as a 17-year-old!!! at the French Open in 2019 defeating defending champion Simona Halep in the quarterfinals.
Her stardom & rankings grew dramatically as a result of that performance. However, she withdrew from the US Open later that summer following the death of her father, who was also her coach, and she played sparingly the remainder of the season.
Then, as you’ll see in the headline, & personal post to Instagram, in May of 2023, she withdrew from pro tennis completely, to work on her mental health. Imagine that - 21 years old, putting it all on pause…despite being one of the top ranked players in the world.
Now, after months off to work on herself, she has worked herself back, and advanced to Wimbeldon’s semifinals!
In sports, in your career, in life, if it’s needed: Prioritize The Pause!
You don’t fall behind.
You fall forward because you ensure your brain & body have what they need to go back to performing at the highest levels.
Pushing through may appear to be the narrative of the “stronger” path…but it’s not when looking at performance. How many careers ended early bc of pushing through (Andrew Luck ring a bell)? How many careers where players declined through their final years or their contract bc they didn’t have anything left to give?
On the flip side - look at stories like this one…and so many others (Olympians who came back to win medals after pausing) who have taken the time to get well, and come back stronger & better than they were before.
It takes a lot of strength to pause & reset…
But then you thrive. In sports, in offices, in life….
Personally, I wish I’d known this. I wouldn’t have grinded without pause for my whole pro sports biz career. I likely wouldn’t then have crashed as a result.
But…2.5 years of having to sit on the sideline to work on myself taught me as well - you can come back stronger than you ever were before, no matter how long the pause is needed.
#SameHere🤙 #5in5 #Tennis #Wimbeldon #amandaanisimova #USTA #prioritizethepause #burnout #takeabreak #takeapause #refresh
27 girls missing 🥲 bc of the floods!
Thinking of all of those who have been impacted in these flash floods in Central Texas. Prime example of how we don’t need to experience the exact same thing to feel each other’s pain. If you’re a human, and you care about kids, it’s hard to turn away and not feel what these families are going through.
We pray for the safe return of those girls, ages 7-17, currently missing. And for everyone in and around the area who has had to deal with this nightmare. We all can come around in support.
#SameHere🤙 #5in5 #campmystic #flashfloods #guadaluperiver #kerrcounty #hunttexas #campers #christiancamp
The more things change, the more they stay the same. These SAME slides, we posted on July 4th - of 2023, and sadly still hold true - regardless of who is in office or what decisions are or aren’t being made.
The average length of a new country that’s formed a constitution, abiding by it and sticking to its laws and rules before it’s abolished is 17 years. 17! We are at nearly 250.
Some things for many feel wrong and off and misaligned, still now. And for others feel like they are moving in a productive direction.
It will continue to baffle me that some orgs in this space will not acknowledge this day. Some of them have “America” or “National” IN their names. And the way to skate it is to say: “our staff is off for the holiday weekend.” They acknowledge days like Juneteenth (as they should - how terrible that so many slaves were not freed till 2 years AFTER the emancipation proclamation). That day and providing resources to specific groups on that day should continue! But you can honor that holiday, and this one, and show you care about mental health for ALL (maybe today it’s providing resources for military families) - regardless of belief of political affiliation or level of patriotism.
We have to learn to live together, compromise, acknowledge one big COMMUNITY. A flag of a country shouldn’t signal a “side.” Good/bad/ugly, we are all part OF this country. Let’s work together thru what’s ugly... not cancel what we don’t like/is hard. That’s what’s best for our collective MH.
#SameHere🤙 #5in5 #july4th #july4thweekend #america #americasbirthday🇺🇸 #americasbirthday
We are fed that challenge gets resolved in this nice simple package, when we watch shows or movies or read books as kids. There’s always some poetic lesson with a clean ending.
That’s not how adulthood happens. It’s a constant ebb and flow of changes….sometimes of the 50 things you’re balancing, 30 are great and 20 are not so great…and then that number flips to 22 are great and 28 are not. And each bucket changes over time, as situations evolve.
It’s how we grow through the painful things that helps us get even close to using those painful moments for purpose. But it takes a lot of work and a lot of understanding that even when some things are great, other things are likely gonna suck…and that’s the pattern of life. And we can grow stronger thru it all if we listen to the lessons they are trying to teach us.
#SameHere🤙 #5in5 #painintopurpose #thestruggle #overcoming #youcandothis #overwhelm
We have lived in a comparison world online for way too long.
Who has the nicest dress?
Who has the prettiest smile?
Whose dinner seems more impressive?
Whose kids are the cutest?
NONE of those things can be accurately measured. And certainly a like count or an engagement count does not validate that one is “better” than the other. How about the amount of people who go out of their way NOT to like your picture bc of jealousy of how nice you do look in that dress?
Ok, comparison is the their of joy. But now, bc of influencer culture - traumas are being compared?? Reactions to who had it worse?
Here’s the bottom line - there is NO way to compare “levels” of emotional pain from one person to the next. It’s a fruitless endeavor. Let’s drop the comparisons and recognize that what everyone has gone through is valid and impacts them uniquely.
If we support, rather than compare, er are so much stronger and so much healthier. We can do this!
#SameHere🤙 #5in5 #comparisonisthethiefofjoy #comparisons #itsnotacompetition
Anyone miss how the last 20 years and tech advancements have torn us apart? And then how folks online here, use that opportunity to keep us in separate buckets even more? I hate it. We hate it.
Gonna be partnering more with orgs and companies and people who believe in holding hands and spreading messages or community and togetherness. We need that now, more than ever. And if we don’t teach it to this next generation, they won’t have a roadmap for how good and healing and meaningful connection CAN be.
#SameHere🤙 #5in5 #Connection #SavedByTheBell
This stuff has to stop. A fan heckling Jarren Duran from the Red Sox about his suicide attempt..:and now this:
A fan in Chicago for a White Sox/DBacks game started checking Ketel Marte - on the DBacks, about his late mother.
Marte’s mom, Elpidia Valdez, died in a car accident in the Dominican Republic in 2017. Marte, who hit a solo home run in the first inning that game, was seen visibly upset during a pitching change in the bottom of the 7th inning. His Manager,Torey Lovullo put his arm around Marte & consoled him.
“I just reacted as a dad would when I went out to change pitchers,” Lovullo said, according to the Arizona Republic. “I could see he was sobbing. It hurt.”
“(I told him): ‘I love you and I’m with you, and we’re all together and you’re not alone. No matter what happens, no matter what was said or what you heard, that guy is an idiot. It shouldn’t have an impact on you.’”
We need more managers and coaches like Lovullo, and fewer fans like this. We don’t get there by pointing them out and scolding. We get there by teaching compassion and common pain. I hope someone’s talking to that fan and asking him what pain he’s felt, that can help him relate to Marte, to where he wouldn’t do this again.
#SameHere🤙 #5in5 #Marte #ketelmarte #diamondbacks #dbacks #mlb #baseball
To all the men…you’re loved by someone - a family member, a friend - and if you’re lucky, even more than just one or a few. But it often doesn’t feel like that bc of the separation messages/memes/“influencer” post we see here, and are sent via DMs & texts, that confirm biases. We can break through those binaries…through the separations. It’s ok to debate one topic or even have a disagreement & STILL be open about challenges you’re facing with that same person you’re debating.
We are a lot more the same than we are different - bc we all feel pain. Vulnerability is what connects us. And being able to talk about your pain makes you strong…literally the opposite of weak.
#SameHere🤙 #5in5
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