May is Mental Health Awareness Month, which means a renewed focus on what companies are doing to foster mental wellness in the workplace.
The terms “mental health” and “mental well-being” are often used interchangeably, but it’s important to note their different meanings. The former refers to a medical or health condition, while the latter refers to the idea of “feeling good, being resilient and functional, enjoying positive relationships, contributing to society or community, realizing potential, and having a sense of fulfillment or coherence.”
As such, mental health needs to be addressed in ways that address underlying conditions and seeking diagnoses through therapy and treatment for any clinical disorders, while mental wellness is more of an ongoing preventative practice. A mental wellness routine is something people can sustain on an ongoing basis, weaving this practice into their everyday lives.
Many founders are making an effort to incorporate these practices and solutions into their products and services, not only in May, but all year round.
Fostering mental wellness through play:
A 2021 UK-based study revealed that, “a central component of human sociability is our innate ability to play and be playful; as children and adults, as individuals, families and communities.”
In other words, playfulness is essential to making social connections, which has been proven to improve mental well-being.
Inspired by a desire to evoke the carefree spirit of childhood, founder Nadia Kuzmina created Shot of Art, immersive art studios around the country that allow adults to create art in interesting ways – shooting paint out of guns, throwing paint at the wall, and more. The idea is to create art while fostering self-expression and stress reduction.
“On average, a child laughs 300 times a day while an adult laughs only 17 times a day,” Kuzmina says. “I find this statistic rather disheartening.”
That’s why Kuzmina and her husband set out to create an experience that, “immerses individuals in a state reminiscent of childhood, where the desire to draw everywhere existed, where there were no obstacles, where one could boldly mix colors, experiment, and (have) no fear of getting messy,” Kuzmina says, “whether it’s drawing on walls, painting with neon paint in the dark, or shooting from a paint gun onto canvas.”
Shot of Art’s success is proving that adults around the country really are looking to incorporate more play and creativity into their lives. Kuzmina plans to franchise an additional 200 locations in the coming years.
A subtle daily ritual to inspire simplicity and wellness:
Entrepreneur and podcast host Lori Harder always understood the connection between mental health and dehydration. An NIH study was able to prove that increased water intake decreases the risk of depression and anxiety in adults. A lack of hydration actually decreases our brains’ levels of serotonin, the hormone that regulates moods.
That’s why Harder was trying to increase her daily water intake by adding all types of essences to it to make it more enjoyable, yet was growing frustrated with hydration “boosters.” She found them to be more along the lines of, as she puts it, “expensive packets of salt and sugar.”
“I wanted to create something that solved many of my problems, was easy to use, and that I could actually feel and see working,” she says.
That’s what set Harder on her multi-year journey to create glōci, a daily beauty supplement that improves skin health and overall well-being by incorporating a simple ritual into people’s daily routines.
“We know that what we put into our bodies impacts how we feel,” Harder says. “Glōci is a ritual where you take time out of your day to literally ‘pour’ into yourself. On my busiest days, I no longer let myself get dehydrated, which keeps my mood elevated, and I feel good knowing I did something good for myself, my gut, and my skin.”
But the road to developing glōci was quite bumpy. “We faced so many roadblocks, from getting the taste right while having the ingredients we wanted, massive delays in manufacturing, trouble getting the printing on the boxes right, and errors on insert boxes that made us lose months of runway,” she says.
So how did she maintain her own mental wellness as a founder through those tough moments struggling to build out her vision? Outdoor walks. Harder reminisced, “There’s nothing quite as restorative as just getting out in nature and letting it do its thing.”
The transformative power of light therapy:
Red light therapy is an emerging field that claims to have myriad benefits, including some surrounding mental health. It also has promising applications for boosting mood, sleep quality, and cognitive function. One study found that the use of red light therapy showed positive benefits for overall mental and psychiatric health.
These benefits are attributed to the fact that when red light penetrates the skin and hits muscle and bone, it stimulates the mitochondria within the human body’s cells, including those in the brain.
Mito Red Light founder Scott Chaverri explains, “As we get older, our mitochondria naturally make less energy. Stimulating them to make more can help us experience total body wellness benefits and even notice an improvement in depression symptoms.”
Although research into how red light therapy affects the brain is still nascent, it is promising enough that an increasing number of health professionals have started to consider it as a treatment option for cognitive support. SAD lamps have long been used to cure seasonal affective disorder, and red light research promises similar benefits.
Getting curious about ketamine:
Like red light therapy, ketamine is another mental health treatment that’s been growing in popularity. Ketamine is often the first stop for folks who haven’t been able to find adequate symptom relief from traditional psychiatric medications.
“Many of our patients suffer from TRD – treatment-resistant depression – meaning, their depression has not been adequately treated with standard anti-depression medications and/or therapy,” says Dr. Cheryl Malina, one of the co-founders of Keta Medical Center.
Malina co-founded the clinic with her sister-in-law, Dr. Haviva Malina, after spending 15 years working as an emergency medicine physician.
“In the aftermath of the pandemic, Haviva and I were struck by the unmet need for mental health treatment,” said Dr. (Cheryl) Malina. “I began working at a ketamine clinic part-time and noticed the remarkable relief that patients experienced after treatment.”
Both doctors were frustrated to see that ketamine therapy was largely inaccessible to the general population with many patients not even aware that ketamine could be an option for treatment. They opened their clinic as a way to make the therapy safe and accessible for those seeking alternative options for treating depression.
There, one of their options for patients is an FDA-approved medication called Spravato that the patient self-administers on-site through a nasal spray, and is generally covered by insurance.
“I see high-achievers in my practice, people ruled by their intellectual and analytical parts,” says Laura Athey-Lloyd, PsyD, a licensed clinical psychologist and founder of Reflection Psychological Services.
What excites her most about ketamine’s potential is in the way she’s seen the drug’s ability to relax those overly analytical parts of her high achieving patients’ brains.
“The window of neuroplasticity that follows a ketamine session offers a chance to practice and solidify new mindsets and habits for longer term improvements in well-being,” Athey-Lloyd points out.
While many are still skeptical of ketamine due to its association with illegal drug use, it can be very effective if used properly and with medical oversight.
“At Keta, all treatments are administered in-office under the oversight of a medical doctor who is on-site at all times, in addition to a registered nurse and administrative staff,” Dr. Malina says. “Patients are always able to speak directly to their physicians at any point in the treatment process.”
Redefining happiness to foster mental clarity:
Academic researcher Stephanie Harrison’s fascination with the concept of happiness led her to pursue a master’s degree in positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania.
While working on her degree, Harrison began developing the “New Happy” philosophy, “a radically different approach to well-being based on thousands of academic studies.”
“I started sharing that philosophy in 2018 in a small newsletter, which eventually grew into a community of 1.5 million people around the world,” Harrison says.
Earlier this month, Harrison released her book, The New Happy, which further elaborates on that philosophy. She believes society’s biggest problem is the deep, underlying assumptions about happiness and how to find it, which she refers to as “Old Happy.”
“Old Happy teaches us that, in order to be happy, we need to perfect ourselves, achieve more and more, and do everything on our own,” she says. “Yet, according to my research, these pursuits don’t make us happy—they make us miserable! These assumptions need to be challenged to finally experience the true well-being we have been looking for.”
“It’s pretty clear that the way that we’re living our lives isn’t really working for us,” she says. “The United States has just hit a new low in the World Happiness Report, an annual study that measures a country’s level of well-being. People are sad, lonely, and dissatisfied with their lives.”
With the publication of her book, Harrison hopes to offer a definitive step-by-step guide to happiness that anyone can use as they incorporate this philosophy into their everyday lives.
From creating businesses around shooting paint out of BB guns to creating ketamine or red light therapies and treatments, the one thing these founders have in common is how they encourage people to take more time each day to focus on themselves. The benefits of taking as little as ten minutes for an outdoor walk, reading a book about new ways of being happy, staying hydrated or reconnecting with family and friends means time away from emails, screens, and our devices that claim to make us more connected.
All of which helps with that very definition of mental wellness: “feeling good, being resilient and functional, enjoying positive relationships, contributing to society or community, realizing potential, and having a sense of fulfillment or coherence.”
It’s clear that centering one’s offerings around mental well-being is simply good for business.
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