MHC, IN PARTNERSHIP WITH META, HAS MEANINGFULLY IMPROVED PERCEPTIONS OF THE IMPORTANCE OF EMOTIONAL WELLBEING AND WILLINGNESS TO SEEK HELP.

NEW YORK, Sept. 20, 2022 /PRNewswire/ --The Mental Health Coalition in partnership with Meta, is proud to announce that its content and resources have meaningfully changed how over 500,000 Americans have self-reported they felt about the importance of their mental health and their willingness to seek mental health support.  Specifically, people's reported attitudes about stigma were changed measurably, the process and resulting impact are scalable. The digital initiative showed a significant increase in people's understanding of their emotional well-being and the importance of taking care of it.  It also increased peoples' willingness to seek vital resources for emotional wellbeing.

To view the full case study, visit: thementalhealthcoalition.org/case-study-mhc-meta/

 "Considering that 1 in 4 people struggle with mental health related issues, and that 2 out of 3 of these individuals never seek professional support (according to the World Health Organization), largely because of its related stigma, we are confident that these findings are transformative and can positively impact the well-being of millions of individuals," says Kenneth Cole, Founder of MHC.

Historically, it has been difficult to move the general population with digital initiatives focusing on mental health: in general, there is a neutral or negative reaction to facts around mental health messaging. However, the MHC-created messages were able to shift people's reported attitudes across a range of familiarity with mental health topics, regardless of where they were at baseline.  That is, the Coalition's focus on accessible messaging and broad language was successful at reaching both the general population and at-risk populations. The cost-benefit also is noteworthy, for every $1 spent, almost two individuals' perceptions on mental health were transformed.  This changes the collective ability to efficiently address what is arguably the most pressing public health crisis of our day, mental illness.

"Social media is playing an increasingly important role in the way many deliver critical health messaging at scale. I'm excited to see how MHC has leveraged Meta's tools to help improve and measure mental health messaging and drive a positive impact," says Lu'chen Foster, Director of Health Partnerships at Meta.

The Mental Health Coalition commits to use social media and technology to positively impact people's emotional well-being and willingness to seek resources. Through MHC's long-standing partnership with Meta along with our group of expert advisors, and non-profit partners, MHC commits to take these learnings to key populations, test several different strategies of messaging and delivery methods and publish all the results in a free and open framework that can be used for all to replicate.

This commitment allows MHC to deepen the work it's done to shift the narrative around mental health. Taking and scaling the learnings from the existing impact there is opportunity to leverage new resources and scale by replicating what's worked with different audiences with a goal of transforming the way people talk and think about mental health.  The groundbreaking findings as well as MHC's commitment to action were announced at the Clinton Global Initiative on Tuesday, September 20.

SOURCE The Mental Health Coalition