Happy Monthly
February 2023
Welcome to Happy,
My name is Jeremy Fischbach, the Founder/CEO of Happy (www.happythemovement.com) and I wanted to personally welcome you to our community. I'm sending you this newsletter because you're part of a critical community of individuals who are deeply interested in the future of mental and behavioral health. I've had the pleasure of personally connecting with most of you over the past few years to discuss Happy's novel approach to mental health.
Our wellness service is focused on proactively delivering peer-based emotional support that finds people where they are, when they're ready. We call this barrier-free delivery model “frictionless mental health". We believe frictionless mental health is the key to tackling the world's growing mental health crisis, and we've spent the last few years building out the infrastructure to deliver it — one simple, human interaction at a time.
We've successfully introduced frictionless mental health to some of the largest insurers and hospital systems in the country, as well as the Department of Defense.
In this newsletter we share some of the lessons we've learned along the way — and open an honest dialogue about the most pressing question we hear our customers asking:
"Why do most mental health solutions look nothing like the support most people want and need?”
This newsletter presents the principles that drive our company — traditional and digital mental health solutions are failing a majority of the population, and many of the assumptions underlying traditional and digital mental health solutions are fundamentally flawed. We plan to send occasional newsletters (like this one) sharing important updates, impactful insights, and an inside look at the differences we are making in the lives of our members.
Our Biggest Epiphany From the Past Quarter
Happy is uniquely equipped to find and reach vulnerable populations that don’t typically engage with, or respond well to, traditional health services.
Numerous entities try to reach these groups, but almost no one breaks through.
In the words of a wounded combat Veteran
Happy recently received a letter from a wounded and traumatized combat Veteran we’ve been supporting. Here’s an excerpt:
“ I don’t know what your vision was when creating this company, but it has far exceeded my expectations a multitude of times.
I can honestly tell you that Happy has saved my life on at least two separate occasions when I didn’t want to wake up the next day.
A company’s greatest assets are the individuals on its front lines. Melinda has battled with me every day — she’s an amazing woman, and I can’t remember hearing her voice before I could feel her heart.”
Post-Covid, America's mental health epidemics persist
The worst of Covid may be behind us, but America's mental health epidemics persist – and are likely here to stay for the foreseeable future (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8133797/).
Happy continues to tackle these epidemics head-on by offering proactive, frictionless support to vulnerable populations – people on the front lines and in the back of the lines (e.g., veterans, nurses, minority populations).
“Finally, an emotional support resource that actually meets people where they are.
They’re not telling me to sign up for a coupon code or a discount code, they’re not saying fill out this long form and maybe you can call us and schedule appointments every week.
They’re reaching out directly, and I’ve benefited tremendously from that. “
- Kimether Redmon, Registered Nurse in Maryland
Partnership expansion across a range of industries
● Health Insurers ● Health Systems ● Dept. of Defense ● Universities ● Major Employers
Over the last few months we’ve successfully launched partnerships with major institutions that are as committed as we are to making frictionless mental health and emotional support a reality for all populations.
Our existing partners include the Department of Defense and major hospital consortiums; we also continue to seek opportunities to expand into new sectors, and we’ll soon be announcing new partnerships with major universities, including HBCUs and some of the largest employers in the country.
Industry leading adoption rates and ROI
As we’ve suspected all along, unprecedented adoption rates are what you get when you design your business process to systematically remove every obstacle that historically prevents access to the essential ingredient of mental health:
Emotional support from an actual human being.
A critical 30-second exercise
As open season approaches and you consider your own mental health offerings, we urge you to devote 30 seconds to the following thought exercise – navigate, in your own mind, the journey that your employees, members, patients or students must undertake to actually use the mental health resources that organization is offering on paper.
Specifically: Do the mental health resources you offer impose any of the following requirements?
Each requirement significantly reduces the number of people who use them by several percentage points.
