The youth mental health crisis was dire before the pandemic, but has only intensified in the past two years, especially among girls and young women.In fact, although suicide has CDC List Among the top 10 causes of death in 2020, it remains Second leading cause of death among young people.
Brent Franson, CEO and founder of the mental health app, Brent Franson, after noticing a large number of young people, most of them women, expressing hopelessness and suicidal thoughts on his platform most daysreach out American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. From there, a partnership was born. The collaboration announced on May 18 marks AFSP’s first foray into mental health applications.
San Francisco-based Most Days provides its users with routines to better manage their mental health in their daily lives. The app also allows users to interact with others who may be in similar situations, giving users a sense of community and peer support. Half of its users are under the age of 25, and 85% are women.
Franson contacted the AFSP in September to better understand best practices for helping Most Days users, who he said reported “very high” levels of anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation. These mental health problems, he said, were linked to increased time spent on social media by young people, a predicament that has only been exacerbated by the pandemic.
The Most Day collaboration so far has led AFSP experts to develop four routines for Most Days users. They focus on the following user groups: those struggling with self-harm or suicidal thoughts, those recovering from suicide attempts, those who support family members or friends with suicidal thoughts, and those grieving the loss of family members or friends who have died by suicide.
These routines were created by Dr. Doreen Marshall, Foundation Vice President for Mission Engagement. These routines are not only a tool for users to better navigate their lives between therapy appointments, but they can also help them self-report more accurately, she said.
“When we’re in a state of depression, it’s difficult for us to communicate our daily habits to professionals,” says Dr. Marshall. “Technology can help us track these habits and then make it easier to have conversations with mental health providers about our mental health.”
According to Dr. Marshall, suicide prevention efforts aim to address mental health issues before they turn into a suicidal crisis. Fransen agrees, saying that focusing on daily habits can go a long way in maintaining a person’s mental health. That idea is how his startup got its name.
“I grew up with a lot of addiction and suicide,” he said. “One thing I’m very aware of is that the things people do or don’t do most of the time are the things that matter most to their quality of life.”
Most Days routines provide users with healthy behaviors to model. For example, the app encourages those recovering from a suicide attempt to take their medication on time, write down three reasons for living each day, and create a suicide safety plan. For those supporting a loved one who is struggling with self-harm or suicidal thoughts, tasks included in the routine include checking in with those they care about and listening without judgment.
Through its routines, Most Days empowers users to improve their quality of life by changing their behavior. The platform ensures that its routines are developed by clinical mental health experts (mostly psychologists and neuroscientists), so users have effective tools to maintain healthy habits. Some of the other regular creators of the app include Brittany Blair, PhD, a clinical psychologist at Stanford School of Medicine, and Alex Korb, PhD, a neuroscientist at UCLA.
“I’m a firm believer in how technology can help people help each other,” Franson said. “That’s largely what Most Days is doing: saying, ‘Hey, here’s a set of jobs that the experts told us about your specific problem, and this is a set of jobs that really helps you connect with other people to support tools to share information with each other and make those changes in your life.’”
Photo: Vacharapong, Getty Images
