The Practice of Therapy

Gordon Brewer: Well, hello everyone and welcome again to the podcast and I'm really happy for you to get to know today. Tamar Blue, welcome Tam.
Tamar Blue: Thank
Gordon Brewer: you
Tamar Blue: so much.
Gordon Brewer: Yes. And Tamara reached out to me online and I'm looking forward to you hearing about her company or her organization, mental happy and what all that's about.
But Tamara, as I start with everyone, tell folks a little bit more about yourself and how you've landed where you've landed.
Tamar Blue: Yeah, absolutely. So I am originally from Florida out on the East coast. I've. Been really passionate about support groups since I was in high school. I started my very first one with me and a couple of other students.
I was also running support groups on a social media site that really kind of got unmanageable and, and hard to handle in terms of advertisements and negative comments. So. Really ventured out to create a platform that would allow for easier support group management. Our platform on the social media site had grown to over 90,000 something people.
So Wow. It just became just too difficult to create like these. Subgroups on a social media platform. So we really started out this venture solving a problem for ourselves. And in this work, realizing how meaningful the support group work is to not only therapists mental health advocates, and even survivors that are looking to create safer spaces online.
Gordon Brewer: Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, so walk us through kind of what it is and how it works and Yeah, and how it, how it helps really as much as anything. Yeah. Yeah.
Tamar Blue: Sure. So Mental Happy is a digital platform. It allows anyone who is anything from a, a doctor, a licensed therapist, a provider. To create a group online, and it doesn't necessarily have to just be online groups.
Plenty of people use it and they run, you know, in-person groups as well, but mostly serves virtual spaces because it allows people to scale their practice, scale their business, scale their services, and once you create that space, your clients, patients or members can chat with one another. It makes onboarding a lot easier because especially with a lot of the behavioral practices that are on our platform, people would have to like email or call to kind of get assigned to a group.
So onboarding is a lot smoother and the video sessions are in app and secure. So people are able to just join, click into a session online. So it's, it's just a, a very secure platform where you don't have to worry about data being sold, health information being shared, sensitive conversations being shared all, all online and a safe platform.
I.
Gordon Brewer: Right, right. So, yeah, so I guess for those of us in that kind of the medical, mental health world, the, I guess HIPAA comes up and just HIPAA secure and that kind of thing. Yeah.
Tamar Blue: Absolutely. Yeah, so definitely making sure any type of sensitive information anyone shares is pretty secure on the platform.
And then, mm-hmm. On the flip side of that, for people who are looking for vetted and qualified support groups, none of the support groups are peer driven, so we really try to maintain high e efficacy of like information, that's why they're led by mm-hmm. An expert and people are able to find them on the mental happy platform as well.
Gordon Brewer: Right. Right. That's great. That's great. So what, what sort of groups have been using mental happy? I mean, just to give us a, maybe a short list of the types of groups.
Tamar Blue: Yeah, absolutely. So it, it really started with the typical people came for, especially when we were running on social media, people were managing panic attacks and anxiety and mild cases of depression.
Undiagnosed obviously, because, you know, we're not, the platform builders. I'm not a therapist myself, but we were seeing people come for just the normal things that people think of in terms of mental health, but once we built out mental happy as a full-blown platform on our own, we saw people coming for, you know, groups being added, for people who are still navigating those things.
But it could be things like what life looks like after a divorce or after you've had a baby. Or managing some type of, you know, repetitive behavior and body image issues to maybe you were adopted as a child and you're navigating those emotions as an adult. We've even seen SA groups on the platform, LGBT support groups on the platform.
So really just the, the full range of life, like anything under this sun and on this earth that people could experience, you would. Typically that we've typically seen some type of support group pop up for it led by someone that's either licensed in that field, an advocate in that field, or maybe has deep information and they've survived something I.
Gordon Brewer: Right. But we
Tamar Blue: vet every single group that comes on the platform. 'cause we wanna make sure they are who they say they are and they know the information that they say they know.
Gordon Brewer: Right, right. Does I'm assuming that and maybe you can kind of talk about some of the features of the platform, but I'm assuming that it would have like a video, a.
The capability to do video meetings. And then is there all in addition to that, is there a way for people to communicate either through, you know, either some sort of for online forum or question and answer Absolutely. Kind of things. Yeah,
Tamar Blue: yeah, absolutely. So with the platform, if you are a provider or a group facilitator looking to host a group for your clients or patients or community, you, they would have access to chat.
On the platform that's asynchronous to video sessions, the group facilitator can schedule sessions and whether they're monthly, we don't control content that's in the groups. We just make sure the content's safe and, yes. And they can also do the, the video sessions as well. So it, it's up to the group facilitator on how they wanna run the group, what type of, what subject the group is on.
When it meets people can chat with each other. Very different in a lot of people who come to our platform who are just using, let's say something like a Zoom before. Mm-hmm. To run their support groups. They would have a Zoom link listed on their website and a date and time. And then people would join the call during that Zoom link.
That's great. And at least it's something that people can participate in terms of a group. But what we found is when people come to our platform and they wanna use it, is that a lot of their members and clients want to chat with each other, or their community wants to chat with each other in a safe space.
And it's very difficult to do that if you have like a Zoom and then you have the chat part in. A WhatsApp or then you have to advertise the link to, for people to join the group through like Eventbrite. And then maybe you have to send a payment link some other kind of way. So providers are able to do all those things in one place, onboarding, right?
Promoting their group if they want to, allowing their members to chat. Viewing the video and then also accepting payments. Yeah. Whether it's free donation or some type of one-time payment or monthly payment for their services.
Gordon Brewer: Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's a, that's, that's good. That's good. Yeah. So are, are you finding that in particularly therapists or using it to do like group therapy or that sort of thing?
Tamar Blue: Yeah, so we find that that therapists are using it to run support groups clinical group therapy, probably a much smaller population on our platform. Mm-hmm. Obviously, you know, clinical group therapy is just a lot more note taking, a lot more documentation. And then it also has to, all those individuals have to be within where you're licensed.
Mm-hmm. So in that instance, some of them will use it for just the chat component so that. You know, members can kind of ongoing talk to each other, but mostly we find that a lot of people are, a lot of these providers are scaling their business through support groups, so. Offering more support groups so that if they have a heavy caseload on one-on-one and they can't see more people one-on-one, at least it's some type of supplemental care.
But also some of 'em, it's a, it's an integral part of the care services that they offer where Right, it's part one-on-one therapy, but then it's also part supplemental support groups as well so that they can better manage and balance caseloads.
Gordon Brewer: Right. Right. So yeah. Are you, are you finding that just thinking about the users of support groups, do you, are you finding that those are, and you may, you know, I'm just, I get on these rabbit.
Trails just thinking about things. But yeah, people are looking for support groups around particular issues and I would think that having a specific issue or specific niche is really important. I.
Tamar Blue: Absolutely, and I'm, I'm pretty surprised and impressed on how specific the, the issues are in, in terms of that, that are being led by experts.
We also take so if, if someone comes to the platform and it is a very niched issue issue that they would like to see on the platform, we also keep a running list of what people request. So if for, for some reason a group. Facilitator comes and they wanna start a support group on the platform, but they're not really sure in what particular topic because their background covers a wide variety of things.
We can say like, oh, well these are the top things. There's, you know, 20 or 30 people looking for this right now. There's, you know, 50 people looking for this right now. We try to make the match that way, but there's typically something for someone and when they come to the platform, just because of the variety.
Gordon Brewer: Good. The good. Yeah. So, yeah, so tell folks a little bit about how they can find out more and what, what the process is for getting started with the platform and that sort of thing.
Tamar Blue: Yeah. It's pretty easy to start a support group. We make it very very low entry. You would just, go online, create an account and tell us what's the topic or subject matter of the group you would create.
Your group description we're really big on like, if you have any community guidelines or any like trigger warnings about your group. 'cause again, as I said, we've seen groups on the platform that have pretty sensitive topics, right? DV issues, SA issues L-G-B-T-Q issues. So if there's any type of trigger or specifics, you should say that in your group, you set, the provider themselves would set the cost, if there's any, if they're accepting donations or what have you.
And then one of our moderators on the platform would just review the profile just to see, you know, does it meet the community standards for being on the platform? And then once that's approved, you're just up and running in a couple minutes. Even filling out, setting up your group just takes like three to five minutes.
Mm-hmm. And then you're, you get a unique URL to share with your clients'. Patients. And then one very important thing is that we do have a lot of people on the platform that run groups specifically for their clients. So it's kind of, or specifically for their nonprofit or their organization, and it's private and they don't want it discovered on the platform.
Mm-hmm. You have full control of that privacy metric and turning it on or off. Making it seen or unseen, but Right. If you wanna leverage it to find more people and to grow your reach, you can certainly make your group public on the platform. Mm-hmm. And then once you do that, you, it's just, it's easy to, to run your group from there.
Gordon Brewer: Right, right. Yeah. What are the costs associated with that, with the platform?
Tamar Blue: So right now to run a monthly group on the platform is anywhere from any as, as little as $29 for the year to a hundred dollars for the year annually. So we keep the cost pretty low. And then I also wanted to mention.
Yeah, and I also wanted to mention that their group participants would have access to their group via mobile apps. So iOS, Android. So if any type of comments are added to the group a session notification is updated, they immediately get the notification versus like, you know, resending people a Zoom link and, and things of that nature.
People would just automatically have it in their phone.
Gordon Brewer: Right. Right. That's great. That's great. Yeah. So well where can people find it?
Tamar Blue: Mental happy.com.
Gordon Brewer: Okay. Alright. And we'll be sure to have links in the show, show notes and show summary for that. Well Tamar, what parting, parting thoughts do you have for us here in just thinking about all of this?
Tamar Blue: I would just say because everybody's always going through something, right? Like whether you're a professional, you're not a professional, just whatever it is, like everyone's always going through something. So my daily thoughts are like. Everything is working out, you know? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It's okay. Like everything, everything's worked out before and everything's continuing to work out, so, all right.
It's like my parting thought.
Gordon Brewer: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I would, I would say too, just in my experience in, in the number of years that I've been a therapist and just the importance of having support groups for people, you know, nobody understands better than somebody that has gone through something similar.
And I might have all the book knowledge in, in the world about a particular top or topic or a particular interest. But unless I've experienced that myself, I don't, there's not quite the same relatability around it as you would as if you. You know, you had gone through something similar. I and I hear all the time from people, you know, with just different issues, whether it's grief or some sort of addiction issue or anything like that, until they can talk with someone and be able to share and be vulnerable with somebody that's been through something similar.
That's when the really, the big changes begin to come for people and they can feel more secure and able to heal from the things that they're dealing with.
Tamar Blue: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And studies are pretty sure that, yeah. It, it has a, a great health. It has a very high likelihood of improved health outcomes.
I mean, as much as 30% some studies report.
Gordon Brewer: Sure, sure. Well, Tamar, thank you so much for being on the podcast and hopefully we'll be having conversations again here, here soon.
Tamar Blue: Yeah, thank you so much, Gordon, and thank you so much to all the listeners and just really all the amazing work that you guys do. So thank you