Giving Compass' Take:

· Yitzi Weiner talks with David Markovich and Zach Schleien about mental health and their journey to building 18percent. 18percent is an online peer to peer community supporting people with mental illnesses and includes multiple channels that cater to specific issues.

· How is technology changing the way America deals with mental health? What kind of support does this platform offer?

· Here are some mental health activists you should know.

Yitzi Weiner interviewed Community experts David Markovich and Zach Schleien. When David is not building communities he consults for a several companies including fortune 500. Aside from Zach’s day job at Johnson & Johnson he runs the mental health online community 18percent.org (not affilated with J&J). Zach is an author of Hacking The Internship Process, and runs the website My Tiny Wins, a social network to share your accomplishments.

Can you tell me about the most interesting projects you are working on now?

The community is called 18percent since 18% of Americans at any given moment have mental illness. We have a variety of channels ranging from anxiety, depression, bi-polar, veterans, gaming, music etc. The channels allow members to seek support and help others! To date we have 550 members with 22,000 messages sent. 18percent is a partner of the Crisis Text Line and was recently featured in NowThis. 18percent aspires to be the largest online community for people struggling with mental illness with a long-term mission to end the stigma of mental illness.

So how exactly does your organization help people?

People offer one another support, share stories on how they dealt with their illness and provide feedback. Empathy is what 18percent is all about!

Read the full article about supporting mental illness by Yitzi Weiner at Medium.