prescription for total wellness and i'm your host dr joy my guests today are embark they are embarking on something that is very prevalent very new we all need it ok how do you feel i know i feel great i'm going to do is read something did you know approximately one in five adults in the us that would be forty three point eight million people experience mental illness in a given year i don't know that but my guess let me know but less than half of the adults in the us with a mental health condition receive mental health services in the past year according to national alliance on mental health now my guess after experiencing their own struggles with depression co founders jeff dorchester and dion gonzales created i relate as mental wellness challenges continue to impact individuals and communities across the globe new solutions are needed to provide access to help twenty four by seven by three sixty five in a safe confidential way to ensure there is no stigma associated with the jeff and then the larger part of that was based on payments and marketing automation kind of creating an ecosystem behind that we sold a company called will me in twenty fifteen co founded another payment processing company called monetary  which we left in twenty seventeen and jeff and i knew we wanted to work together again it's just a matter what are we going to do so we tossed around a bunch of ideas and then jeff called me one night and said that he had a great app idea and then he was going through some things and i said i can't talk right now i'm going through the family so he said well call me back and that's how this whole thing started dion wow just like that so jeff yeah so i had gone through some health problems and went through a fad where my heart wasn't working too well and the meds they gave me weren't working very well either few days into this issue that i'd never have before i was in a code red and trauma center oh gee then they had to shock me and get my heart working right again so after that there were a lot of series of doctor visits with cardiologists and all these new pills that they tried to have me take to make my heart work right but what they didn't tell me was your head to start working right so i started dealing with things around having a heart issue and not knowing where my health was going right not knowing what the rest of my life would be like and every day living in fear which started bring on things like depression anxiety and maybe that was from a little bit of p t s d from get my heart shot so i really ended up hiding all these things until one day i can realize that there are solutions to get yourself out of that little right right and i found it talking to people online that you may be not know or be face to face right that allows you to get something out and so one night i said to him with a look we gotta give us a deal about a chap where we can get people together that are dealing with similar issues around mental health and allow them to talk and find out that they're not alone and this is very timely of course with the reason the events of we had two iconic folks  take their lives and that means they were battling with something but if you if you looked at them when the outside you wouldn't write as i write so let's talk about the mission what is the mission of i really so i relate  we know that people have an innate and me to to belong and to be with another with one another right so we created i relate as a platform for those people to get together to help people can help heal each other so if you're suffering through depression you would go into the depression room as it exists and an anonymous peer that's been there done that might offer some advice that's relevant to you you may not be at a crisis level at that particular point in your life right you just need somebody to talk to we're doing work with veterans organizations first responders organizations that are helping celebrities athletes artists and also other organizations that are helping teens and young adults of color with these types of situations where they can go in and chat with appear to see if i really need help we say that you know crisis doesn't wait for an appointment so they're going to talk to somebody that they feel is that can relate to them pun intended right right so they can relate to that person and then understand if they really do need to escalate that and talk to a person so it's not a coaching or counseling app it's a peer to peer chat so you mentioned different rooms the depression room how many different rooms do you have within the  have we have we have a bunch of let's say twenty to thirty depending on how the app is used by you we have certain organizations like first responders in general that that have access to other rooms to be able to talk to first responders and and rooms for p t s d and anxiety depression all sorts of categories of mental health and it really gives people an opportunity to find others that have been there done that walked in their shoes a mile you know and so that you can actually use talk therapy to get you through things right right we know that that counselling really is is needed when there's the time for that but there's also the time before that where sometimes you just need to know that you're ok and say ok you're not alone yes yes and also get some some relevant ideas on on how to start coping with things right before you start spiraling right so how does i really work so pretend i'm a user so what do i have to do what is the website and then what will i see take me through it yeah so i relate is a social network for mental health ok available today on the app stores i really i r l for number eight and you'll simply go download the app once you download the app you're automatically put into the call the global room in the global room where you can talk to everybody you'll see the various categories one of them is something just isn't right so a lot of people don't diagnose and solve they should right so i think the statistic that you rolled out the one in five and i don't think that's only american doctor do i think it's global i mean this is a global epidemic people haven't identified it they don't know what to look for but i think if we identify everybody could identify it would be much more like the seventy five percent simple beyond that you can you can even get into more segregated groups in terms of like alcoholics anonymous that is a virtual step so if you have a group of peers church chatting with you say i'm ready to kind of disclose a little bit i really unique right have to because a lot of the a lot of the apps want to capture the information and they sell it to some somebody else precisely and then you have scandal and a whole different different show altogether right so so what do people seem to be seeking the most help for based on what you've seen this far you know it really varies i think what we're generally seeing is a lot of anxiety lot of folks go in and don't make sense yet because it's one of those where people understand that they aren't sleeping well at night there's a bunch of thoughts running through their head they don't really know how to deal with that so they'll go in and chat with one another about that perspective about the power of technology with respect to mental wellness well technology which part of one to mental wellness is is key of what we're trying to do here and what key to what we're trying to accomplish so we partnered with microsoft to have them help us build a scalable platform that can go global so we want to use our technology to connect people obviously to be able to create this platform but also to cross borders where bringing in some translation services that microsoft has that will allow people in sixty three different languages to be able to chat back and forth but see everything in your own native language and in realtime so you are truly a global app where we were building it that way we want to be the global leader in mental health and social network mental health you know that's you know because mental health doesn't have a border mental health doesn't have a boundary not a mental health is something that people deal with and i we're all people no matter where we're at and it's there's no time limit on it there's no date no time limit and it doesn't discriminate and i should say that's right so let's talk about how you're going to expand your your mission you have building on the is your clout and would just accept it into microsoft right can you share what this means to you and how you're going to expand more to get it out to more people is it is it the translation or is it beyond that it's definitely beyond that the translation services offer the ability for us to serve a global network literally within a matter of months versus years  previous life we had built software that was in eighteen countries six different languages it took us some time to do that by working with microsoft we're able to accelerate that probably ten fold so it's really about ramping that up the real time component of it  huge also we're building on world class architecture so people in bangladesh as an example are going to have a data center close to them where they're not going experience any delays that's a major issue when you're trying to scale globally that's not going to be an issue for us based on the microsoft architecture that we're working they also have some great things we're data people we enjoy these things behind predictive analytics and being able to understand what people are saying and that can serve a couple of different things in the app number one is present preventive where if we see somebody starting to spiral we can alert them within the app to connect them to mental health so you guys in the app but aren't absolutely absolutely ok so it's beautiful as any interaction  wow so then that means you can pinpoint and redirect that's right point redirect and also from a moderation standpoint so if anybody is saying anything inappropriate which we haven't had the community is helping and healing each other wh fantastic but if somebody does say something inappropriate we can also use bots to track that language and then alert them and us to that this is an inappropriate this is not part of the terms and conditions of the use of so you mentioned before when we were in the green room that you had one or two stories you wanted to share or do you want to share them now that you want to yeah ok so you take one you take all right yes i think one of the most poignant stories is  and it's heartfelt you see these and it touches you want to daily basis when you raise we have a young man who down one of the at his parents committed him into an institution he was angry about it obviously and he's texting us through the app saying why the heck are my parents doing this to me i'm stuck in here i'm related i don't know what to do and the community is talking i'm like what happened and just offering support you can friend people on the app as well he friended us he was sending me a message late one night saying thank you for building this app i have no contact out of the extreme to the external world as a result of being institutionalized he was getting e c t treatments right so he was in there for the better part of two to three weeks he's about to come out and he starts having some anxiety about coming out and going back into school because what's he going to tell his peers so he has the community because he has he there was a block of time there he he kind of disappeared it's right it's like where's billy all the sudden billy comes back in three weeks later where have you been he didn't know it how to answer that question the community came in and said this is what you say and they gave him various suggestions everything from it's none of your business to had a medical condition that you had to deal with and you feel great now use what you want so he went back to school the next day he came back into the app excited thank you everybody for help me out i went back to school said i had a medical condition explain that to them and it was over i feel so good about this so that was the community doing what we intended the app to do you know and that's helping each other and healing one another that's a really great story you have  another yeah and this one i think is just more general and it's a it's a scene that is ongoing and that is the sense of community that that that happens inside the app so we have people that come in that might be having a bad a bad week you know losing a job whatever it might be going through actual depression moment right having that that horrible thing happening to them that that riddle so many people and when they get in there they're not alone right there talking to other people who are doing the exact same things they're going through the same struggles and they start to be there for one another and say hey you got this man you know go good luck tomorrow with that job interview you can do this and that something to their head maybe i wasn't saying to them because that little voice inside exactly so around teacher so that's going to have the community there to have those people that aren't looking at the stigma behind it more than the burden of hey you know just deal with that right someone who was actually there tha know i get it you know and here's how you can do it and you can do it go do it so i think that community is what we base this on and then we're seeing that that people are there to help and heal and that's the important part because sometimes you need the help and other times it feels good to help another person well that's the best gift you can give is something that can help someone else right so that's a great thing now let's shift a little bit and talk about security and privacy do you feel that uses personal information on i relate is confidential and protected from security issues yes absolutely and can you elaborate on that  you know we deal with that every day you never know if a drone is you know this some like mike you know didn't answer the door and then somebody said you know privacy is a huge issue so how do you make sure that that's like nailed down yeah  a extremely valid concern right but the way that we deal with data security a couple of things number one is microsoft has world class again that encryption and they're all the tools that are going to need we also built the app so that you don't have to ever identify yourself you have an e mail address which is contained in one part of the app that can be a fake e mail address it doesn't really matter toss really you have a username that's in another part of the in between those there's a token that token essentially anonymize that connection you know the store to store differently so if there was somebody that wanted to hack the system there's no payment information there's nothing personally identifiable there would get a bunch of people trying to help each other i'm not sure that's really relevant data that can sell on the dark web but if they wanted to they could maybe pull some conversations it's just it's not a valid use case in our opinion and it's so so sectioned that i think we will ever see  are tight in this it's pretty airtight pretty tight so if you had to say that there was one particular impact that the app is making what would it be i would say the biggest impact it's having is changing lives it's giving people an outlet that they've never had before it's sort of this whole we filled in the system it was always either you don't talk about it or you try to bother your friend or hide from the stigma right or find a counsellor and clinical approach to something but that stopgap in the middle just wasn't there so by making this app and creating this place to have this talk therapy between individuals like minded individuals we've given people the ability to say that there is light at the tunnel right or i can deal with these things day to day and or now it's time to go see a professional you know my so that that intermediate area is really what's giving people that hope every day and you'll see people jump back in and just saying hey i'm doing great today has anyone else you know and that's neat to have that that will and that interaction exactly so but you know what else you've done to you fill the gap between people that don't have insurance and the ones seeing this in some of the communities that we serve so we're able to open up the dialogue provide access twenty four by seven help stop the stigma but we're really where that impact we're starting to see is in different groups so veterans organizations like the green b association as a partner of ours first responders working with the city of lakewood in colorado to roll this out for policemen firefighters mts dispatch as i mentioned before through the i live for organization ni award winner ted speaker as well and she's focusing we're working together to stop the stigma with young adults and teens of color another recent partnership that we have is with we're all a little crazy crazy using and use in the sports professional sports industry for fifteen years and the sole purposes of us working together is to stop the stigma and bring athletes celebrities right and artists together they have what they call the same here movement they've got this little hand signal which i guess is same here in sign language and the whole basis of that is that we're all people that we deal with these life struggles of your stature your professional masons creating the sap we're flattening the world if you will and mental health yeah it's kind of a mental evolution if you will because now all these different groups are able to talk about mental health issues where they couldn't before i think it's i think it's so it's wonderful thing so is there you have a chance to share additional information and anything you want to add anything you know i think the the big important thing around getting the word out is to let people know don't always assume that everyone's ok i had worked with the on for almost a decade i want to throw my struggles for a couple years and then one day i decided to tell him because i said you know i don't need to hold on this alone inside and how did you feel when you really think it's empowering all right so so had i not told him he would never know so if if i learned about i relate and i thought wow that is a great way to help somebody with depression let's say and i didn't know that he had depression or not and i just didn't mention it to him because i thought he was fine well then he wouldn't never found his his hopeful new outfit for the break right so so it's always important  spread the word right let people know that you did you hear that there's a new way that people are trying to fight the stigma right and stop this the stigma of even talking about problems or having a problem it's ok you know for instance one thing that we've been trying to to change is this this concept of p t s d you know i just order no there's no disorder it's it's really p t s d why you have an injury right out of this and you can get through an injury it's kind of like blown out  know you have to work on the knee and i got it you got it you got to rehab it well the mine works the same way and in a lot of cases right so how can we work out your mind to help it heal and get you through that injury so that you can come out the other side  and be good again you know it takes time but there is a way you know you're not supposed to just be cordoned off into a corner and and see a you know you're you've got a mental health issue you don't want to know let's talk let's write it out there in the open let's work through thing what i love about this how i really you guys have built the platform that is no judgment though because that's where that's where the anxiety comes from when people have it they they have an issue they they feel as though if they want to share it with someone they going to be judged and it's so you tell one person you tell the person over here and you trust they're going to be fort knox and then next thing you know they're telling their friends and when you eventually meet that friend that they've already told you can definitely tell they have said something about you and then you start to retreat so with i that there's a lot of awareness around mental health yes time to take action it's time to put action to the awareness because that's the way that we're going to beat this as a global community i would agree with you and i want to end by saying thank you for being a guest on the dr joy show and i know you are a guest on the joy of living show as well radio show and congratulations jeff and dion oh my goodness having that much success to you in the future thank you all right so for my viewers if you are going through something it's ok tune in to i should say tune into log on to download w w w that i rea