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## What is the Mental Health Initiative?

This initiative intends to seek out people who are in mental distress, struggling, or actively suicidal, and give them an outlet so they can speak to another human being anonymously and without censorship. Essentially, our Mental Health Ambassadors provide an ear that will listen, and a shoulder to lean on. We are *not* running a medical or psychiatric service, but rather acting as a first point of human contact. If we can talk to someone when they’re feeling at their lowest and most emotional, we can buy time for them to make more considered decisions once they have the opportunity to put their minds at ease. That is the intended extent of this initiative.

The work on our mental health initiative is still in its early stages, but we’re constantly making progress and developing it further, both in terms of reach, organization, efficiency, and utility. We’re developing a serious use case for this platform, and I do invite anyone who’s interested to join this initiative as it continues to grow. You’ll be a pioneer for something that’s not available anywhere else on the web.

*Keep in mind that dealing with mental health can be very tricky: it’s essential that we find a balanced approach which minimizes risks and maximizes benefits. In case of doubt, it’s always better to err on the side of caution. This is why we must always be willing to learn.*

## How We Have Been Developing the Mental Health Initiative

As implied in [the prior post](https://inleo.io/@freecompliments/mental-health-initiative-on-the-freecompliments-community-expansion-of-utility), I’ve developed a template for @fc-mentalhealth, an account intended for Mental Health Ambassadors to collectively use for documentation of our cases. Here’s the current template:

 https://i.imgur.com/ZYPjzsa.png 

By using this template, we can document each of our cases, then reference them for further analysis and even follow up on certain cases. Continuity shows that the initiative cares about the enduring well-being of the people to whom we speak.

Currently, I have been the only one creating these posts. It is not an easy nor fun task, but it gives credence and professionalism to the project. I would like to know what types of incentives I could provide to have our Mental Health Ambassadors post from this account. Our current incentives include being a 10% beneficiary for the rewards earned on the post.

I have considered some additional options, including but not limited to: paying our most active Mental Health Ambassadors additional salaries in HBD (which would come from interest,, and initially be very small but grow over time), and possibly adding them as beneficiaries to the bimonthly posts I make for this initiative (I’ll discuss these posts shortly). What do you think of these additional incentives?

## Adding Accessibility to the Mental Health Initiative

As certain Mental Health Ambassadors had difficulty accessing the threadcasts, I began creating bimonthly posts ([here is the first one](https://inleo.io/@freecompliments/a-bimonthly-post-for-our-mental-health-ambassadors-to-post-links-to-distressed-users-1242024)) where we could post similar activity. This way, everyone is able to post where they feel comfortable. Having two such places allows complete accessibility while not becoming excessively disorganized.

## Creating An Action Flowsheet

In order to help our Mental health Ambassadors deal with various situations, I created a rudimentary flowsheet of actions to take for certain situations. [Here is the sheet that’s posted under our threadcasts every day.](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bLjnR0W3Rp2LQ0aNkZkP3EY5NqtVIgtkh0GTCjmU4kM/edit)

 https://i.imgur.com/ikDBxwa.png 


It’s certainly not comprehensive or pretty – yet – but it’s currently sufficient for most of the cases that we encounter. I’ll continue working on this to make it more comprehensive, easy to read, and easy to implement.

## Mental Health Initiative Activity via Threadcasts

Over the past month, we’ve had some big wins and some downsides. The downsides truly reared their heads during the first week of February, when I was too busy with my professional life to myself participate in the mental health initiative.

Starting with the downsides, I noticed that our Mental health Ambassadors were reluctant to post using @fc-mentalhealth. This led to [a couple of recent cases](https://ecency.com/hive-140084/@fc-mentalhealth/mental-health-initiative-on-freecompliments-12524-2724) which warranted follow-ups but did not receive them on a timely basis.

This leads me to the primary conclusion that our Mental Health Ambassadors need more incentive to follow and use this account. How can we convince our team to utilize this essential account?

Moving on to our victories, I am thrilled to announce that we did manage to save one life and make a truly positive impact upon another:

[Here is the conversation that helped save a life](https://ecency.com/post/@devpress/s7ahs4) – he is currently in our Discord and finding a sense of purpose.

Here is one of our people espousing [the impact](https://inleo.io/@mintymile/re-freecompliments-ymwevvwe) that this initiative had on her when it reached her.

These are what I’d consider our major victories this month – naturally, there have also been others, but these are the ones that particularly stood out to me.

## Upcoming Plans

We’re going to continue posting examples of successful interventions when the opportunities arise so that we can continue learning how to approach individuals in the least harmful, most beneficial way possible.

We’re going to continue developing an organized way to have our mental health ambassadors address people in distress, and also post using the @fc-mentalhealth account. We’re also going to figure out incentives to help our Mental Health Ambassadors use the account for its intended purpose.

Once we establish a fully functional mental health initiative, where our mental health ambassadors are able to do the work without my intervention (except in special or dire circumstances), then I think we’ll be ready to bring the initiative out to the world, and invite people from outside of Hive to join us. This is how we’ll start an onboarding process – with a fully viable, valuable service!

## Feedback for Improvement

We’re constantly open to receiving feedback on our initiative, and all the various aspects involved. I always listen to my Mental Health Ambassadors, and try to incorporate solutions that provide inclusion for everyone involved. Feedback is key to making this entire project succeed, and I intend to continue hearing people out! I always remind myself that ego will be an enemy to progress, and that I *must* listen to others’ suggestions.

I’d also like to hear the opinions of other people as how you think we can keep improving the initiative on our end. For an initiative that’s based purely on human interaction, we appreciate all human interaction that will help us improve it!

## Mental Health Ambassador Positions

As I’ve once said (paraphrasing myself!)… I’d rather have 365 days per year with zero need for this initiative, but we must always be ready to tackle the busy days. This idea will become more prominent as we increase our userbase.

Therefore, we’re always going to keep the position of the [mental health ambassador](https://inleo.io/@freecompliments/mental-health-ambassador-role-s) open. It currently pays 5 HSBI per month if you’re working 1 day per week, 10 HSBI per month for 2 days per week, etc. The details are within the aforementioned post, plus posting your findings in the daily threadcast. As aforementioned, this also comes with additional rewards for posting using the @fc-mentalhealth account, which we’re going to continue developing over time.

As the responsibility of the MHA position increases, I do expect that I’ll end up raising the associated pay. I *still* like to think I’m fair about these things, haha.

## A Special Thank You

Shout-outs to our hardest working mental health ambassadors over the past month, who were particularly active and helped me hold down the fort when I was gone. Thank you for your consistent hard work @pepetoken and @caleb-marvel.

## Conclusion

The mental health initiative continues to make strides and an impact on some users. It’s still in its earliest stages, so there’s a lot of work left to do to make this an initiative that can be safely implemented on a larger scale. Let’s keep on learning and keep on building, and let’s make this world a better place.
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*Disclaimer: FreeCompliments will be a beneficiary for this post, and I will attempt to boost it via Ecency points as well.*

[Here’s a permanent invite link to the FreeCompliments Discord!](https://discord.gg/qEJkfY5AUV)

[Follow our curation trail and earn 1 HSBI per month!](https://hive.vote/dash.php?trail=fc-curation&i=1)

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