Winter is only halfway over, and though ample holiday cheer surely graced a fortunate few, for many more, this is a stressful and isolating time of year. Youth nonprofit Peer Health Exchange knows that, and to help marginalized youth through to spring and beyond, it's prepared a series specifically about caring for one's mental health during the holidays.
The series is available on the nonprofit's online resource library, and on selfsea, its free "peer-to-peer" mental health app. The app was designed by and for people 13 to 19 years old, and has such features as community message boards, storytellers, and education hubs for sexual and mental health. It even offers coaching on how to come out to your parents.
While the mix of offerings might seem like a mish-mash, Chris Wilson, assistant vice president of digital content, assures potential users that each feature was actually very deliberately chosen.
"Some of the biggest advantages of peer-to-peer, with selfsea, is that it's co-created with young people, and by young people," Wilson said.
Peer Health Exchange has teams of high schoolers like the Youth Design Group and Youth Brand Ambassadors who review everything that goes into the app, all the way down to the resources it provides.
"So essentially — you noticed the sleek interface and the name — young people actually chose that, so they've been a part of this process from concept to scale," Wilson said. That's to "[ensure] that we're responsive to their needs."
That's all great, but one might wonder how selfsea differs from other mental health apps like Calm, Pacifica, or TeenCounseling.
"What really sets us apart is it really aims to meet young people at the intersection of their identity and their health," Wilson said. "So as young Queer people come into selfsea, whether it be [for] the communities, chatting with a health educator, or if they're just checking out resource, looking at videos — they don't have to come into this space thinking, 'I have to put my Queerness to the side and only focus on the current identity I operate in.'"
selfsea does this through its "just for me" process, which is meant to avoid that kind of fragmentation of identity, and build a set of resources that address each person's health in its unique entirety.
"We try to give them what they need, when they need it, for all the pieces of who they are," Wilson said.
The app's message boards in particular might raise some concerns for parents, who've likely heard horror stories of what can happen in a chat room. But as the provider of a mental health app, Wilson said, Peer Health Exchange always makes safety a top priority.
The only personal information selfsea collects and stores is an email address, which is stored separately from other data. Trained moderators and mentors are present in selfsea's communities 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to watch each post and keep discussions safe and constructive. Additional barriers are in place to keep other personal information from being posted, so every user is anonymous.
Of course, when discussing mental health and related topics, people can be vulnerable. Sometimes a user might say something that offends another without realizing it, but selfsea's moderation approach is "restorative" rather than punitive, meant to educate instead of punish. Young people chose that policy, too.
"I thought that young people really wanted this free-for-all space," Wilson said of the community message boards. Instead, "What we heard from the vast majority of young people is, 'I can get bullied anywhere else. I want to come here to get information that actually matters to me; I want to see myself reflected in that.'"
As a result of these efforts, some of the most isolated Queer teens could benefit from the same kind of emotional support and validation of a found family, even if their circumstances might not otherwise allow it.
Even if you "age out" of the app, you can still pitch in. For those 18 to 24 years old, selfsea runs a digital storyteller program, where young adults of varying identities — many of them alumni of the app themselves — can share their experiences and pass down generational wisdom, to let teens like them know that they aren't the first, and they're not alone.
selfsea has been running for two years now. According to Wilson, 69% of its users identify as LGBT+, 58% as BIPOC, and 40% as Latinx, which is a point of pride for an organization focused on serving marginalized communities.
"We've seen huge feedback in selfsea increasing their sense of belonging, their sense of community, but also providing them with health knowledge," he said, pointing out that health knowledge is increasingly hard to come by in certain parts of the country.
As for selfsea's future, one of its newest projects will integrate the resources it collects online with the more convenient and personalized design of the app, lowering the need for swapping between the app and browser pages.
In the meantime, the app already has a lot to offer. For instance, a partnership with the mindfulness service Headspace enables selfsea users to get a free subscription to Headspace. Other partnerships make it easy to contact state mental health resources, crisis lines, and the like.
When asked if he had a message for readers, Wilson said, "Recommend it to young folks. Young people tend to feel like they have to go it alone, and they don't."
You can find out more about selfsea at https://www.selfsea.org/. The app is available for Android, iOS, and online for any device with a web browser.