How Depression Inspired The Mental Health League App

🧠 So a while back we launched @mentalhealthleague as an apparel brand to help end the stigma. While it was great, a few months after launch I was once again struggling with depression, and in that sad state I found a deeper purpose for how we could help others.

You see when I was depressed, I decided to keep a scorecard to track my moods and journal if I’d won or lost the day to help dig into the causes and try and fight my way out of it. Within a month, I’d learned so much. Like if I spent time reading or learning, I was more likely to win the day. And if had a deep conversation with a friend as well. But if I drank, I was likely to spiral the next day. While they were simple things, seeing the hard data for and against them made me actually change and soon I got to a better place.

But like so many others struggling, when I got to a good place, I stopped doing the things that got me there, and soon sunk back into the fog.

To help hold myself accountable, I got 40 people from the MHL community to do it with me. And by the end, it worked not only for me, but most of the others.

So we built an app and have spent the past months running more pilots…and they also worked and we thought…hey we may as well put this in the App Store.

Is it perfect? Nope. Have I been avoiding telling anyone? Yep. Will it go anywhere? Idk. Am I proud I followed through? More than you know.

If you wanna try it out, go to mentalhealthleague.com. We’ve got two teams — Anxietees (for #anxiety) and Foggy Dogs (for #depression). We’ve got a 28 day training camp that’ll help you get started and we host optional team Zoom calls every Wednesday to talk about our wins and losses and help one another out.

We’ve got a long way to go, but with your feedback, the guidance of therapists, a lot of work, and some luck, we’re gonna try to build a new team-based mental health treatment that helps give people the motivation to stick to their game plans. Bc with #mentalhealth, there is no off-season.