The Creator of MentalHappy Wants to Bridge the Gap Between Tech and Mental Health

Millions at home or in the office are drained and see no light at the end of the tunnel. Workers, including those in the tech industry, are burnt out for a number of reasons.

Tamar Blue created MentalHappy to help individuals overcome life-altering events through professionally-led peer support groups. Blue believes mental health and technology go hand-in-hand. She knows—for people of color—mental health issues are not often dealt with or talked about.

“We started MentalHappy six years ago and it doesn’t sound like a long time, but I feel like the progress [the field of] mental health has made feels like 20 years within the six years because it just wasn’t a thing,” Blue told Afrotech.

“And it definitely wasn’t a thing to talk about amongst people of color.”

According to Blue, a burnout crisis has hit the tech industry and a study backs that up. Tech workers and chief executive officers saw a huge boom during the initial days of the pandemic as Americans stayed home and used apps to get everything from food to toilet paper delivered straight to their residences.

Two years later, tech stocks are falling and a study of more than 36,000 IT workers in 33 countries found two in five workers are at high risk of burnout due to longer hours, more demanding workloads, and work-life balance issues. According to the study, 42 percent of IT workers facing burnout are considering quitting within the next six months.

According to Blue, world events are one of the reasons mental health has become such a hot topic. Events like the pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine war, mass shootings, and rising inflation on food, gas, and rent are affecting people’s lives.

“I think, now, the reason why it’s becoming such a hot topic is because I think people are just worn out. We’re just fed up with everything that’s happening in society,” Blue said.

“You have work stressors, life stressors, you have really horrific things that are seen and experienced collectively through social media and online, and I think we’re just as a society at our absolute breaking point physically, mentally, and emotionally.”

Blue is using tech to bring people together to open up about their struggles and experiences at work and at home with MentalHappy. The platform is safe and secure for people to openly discuss their mental health challenges at work and in daily life.

MentalHappy’s team of professionals teaches users practical steps to help reduce stress, silence, and ignore negative thoughts, increase self-awareness, grow confidence, and positively respond to challenges in everyday life.

MentalHappy is also growing. Last year, the platform raised more than $1 million in a funding round led by Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures.