MENS HEALTH ARCHIVE INC

Our ultimate goal as an organization is to encourage men to make seeing a mental health professional a regular part of their annual healthcare regiment. We also aim to provide men with online tools to find affordable and effective care a well as the information to make them well-informed patients. We hope that fostering a common language between men and mental health professionals will improve the effectiveness and relevancy of the professional care men receive. Lastly, we hope that all our efforts will help reduce the stigma associated with receiving mental healthcare.

The bulk of our work is done online so we can help as many people as possible. On Menshealtharchive.com we host a platform where men can share their stories of struggles and successes as well as find accredited mental health information within our database. A key focus of our platform is to thoughtfully integrate mental health professionals into the conversation to keep our community safe but also to give both sides of the healthcare equation an opportunity to raise concerns and ask questions of each other in order to improve the mental healthcare system.

Another large part of our online effort is our regular interview series where we talk with men of all professions about their mental health and the place mental health holds within our personal lives, relationships, and culture. So far we have featured comedians, musicians, chefs, artists, and woodworkers each with their own unique relationship to the topic of mental health. We also plan to feature prominent brain science and mental health care professionals in the coming months.

We also are working to support our mission offline by hosting Men’s Mental Health Support Groups around the Boston Area to give men an in-person opportunity to further the conversation we are having online! These groups will also feature local mental health professionals as speakers to answer any questions the men might have and help them find quality local care.

Another part of our offline community engagement efforts is our Education program where we bring speakers to talk to both students and teachers to help inform everyone of issues they may face and the local in-school resources that are available to them. We also support our schools by funding training sessions for the teachers and administration conducted by qualified local social workers and mental health care professionals. We hope that our efforts within schools can help create more understanding and supportive relationships between students and their teachers.

Our organization believes that leveraging preexisting web-based infrastructure such as Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, LinkedIn, and Youtube to disseminate our content gives us the ability to reach millions of people regardless of location or probable isolation of struggling men. By using each media platform for its strong communication type, whether it be auditory, textual, or visual, we are able to easily push our messages in modified variations to reach as many people as possible.

Another platform we are utilizing is the booming podcast market where the public has shown a renewed interest in long-form content. We host our interview series on all the major podcast outlets and this thus far has been some of our most well-engaged content.

Lastly, we are very fortunate to be based in the Boston Area as our healthcare and research system is arguably the best in the world. We plan to integrate local researchers and practitioners into our organization to help us become a leader of our cause. We also are working to create content highlighting the efforts of leading organizations and individuals such as the BU CTE Center and McLean Hospital here in the Boston Area. By working with these Boston based global industry leaders we can ensure that our work is both responsible and engaging.

So far we have created our platform at menshealtharchive.com and have already gone through multiple trial design iterations before finalizing what is our current website and brand. We were fortunate for the support of the Boston law firm Prince Lobel and with their help, we have been approved as a 501(c)3 organization by the IRS. Since then we have conducted tens of interviews, created hundreds of posts across multiple social media platforms, and gathered thousands of articles within our research database. We are very honored for the support our organization has been shown thus far and we are currently filling our board of directors to ensure that all the support we receive is utilized responsibly and to the greatest effect possible.

Next, we are focusing our efforts towards the creation of our Men’s Mental Health Support Groups around the Greater Boston Area and bringing our Education program to local Middle schools and High schools. We also are focused on finding meaningful partnerships for our organization to increase the amount of care we are able to provide.