BONUS: Amy Keller Laird has OCD and created the website MENTAL

Amy Keller Laird is the founder of Mental, the first mental health lifestyle platform for women. Previously, she was the Global Editor-in-Chief of Women’s Health and Beauty Director of Allure. Amy is a thought leader in wellness, mental health, and beauty, having appeared as an expert on Today, Good Morning America, The Doctors, and Entertainment Tonight. She has OCD, and has been named a Friend of NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) for her journalistic work in mental health.

In our conversation, Amy shares 10 Things she wants you to know about mental health in this moment, including tools that can help you and thoughts on destigmatizing the way women talk about living with mental health struggles.

Learn more about Amy Keller Laird

Check out the MENTAL website

MENTIONED in this episode:

Calm Strips

Fired over zoom: what to do next

6 Reasons you might want to reconsider ADHD

Is it ADHD? Or bipolar? Could it be both?

How to find your best weighted blanket

Poet Brianna Pastor

Use Astrology to boost your mental health

Amy’s 10 Key Takeaways:

1. Would love to talk about why I created Mental: because studies show young people go online to find mental health resources, but what they get there is often either clinical (the Mayo Clinics, etc) or general wellness, which rarely goes deep.

2. My theory of radically redefining beauty and lifestyle products as mental health management tools—we created the first-ever Best of Mental Health Awards (with input from 17 experts and over 60 clinical studies) to bring people the stuff that really works. https://clubmental.com/best-of-mental-health-awards/

3. During the month of May, you can get a "daily cope" on Mental's Instagram: @club_mental. We're sharing tips from prominent people in the wellness world on what they do to achieve some calm during their most "bananas" days.

4. Mental recently launched its first product, co-branded with Calm Strips. The Banana Breather a sensory sticker in the shape of a banana (our motto: "Because life is bananas") that has a breathing exercise right on it, and part of the proceeds to to the mental health org Made of Millions. See here.

5. There's a particular type of angst/depression that occurs when you get laid off by Zoom during WFH times (as everyone now is). We did a story about this in October that was, sadly, prescient.

6. Women get misdiagnosed in the mental health world a lot. Particularly on the ADHD front, and there are misdiagnoses between ADHD and bipolar as well. We can talk about what to look for.

7. Weightetd blankets! One of our popular TikToks talks about how to find one that works for you.

8. Happy to talk about reading! I've been audiobooking lately because my OCD can make it hard to read books without re-reading them 800 times. My recent reads: Amy Odell's "Anna," Prince Harry's "Spare" (which I consider a "therapy dupe"), and also obsessed with the poetry of Brianna Pastor, who just came out with "Good Grief."

9. If you feel you're struggling with mental health, you certainly aren't alone. Check out interviews with Tina Majorino, influencer Christina Grasso, chic beauty editors, etc. One in five people are currently dealing with a mental health condition, but 50% will have one during their lifetime (that's per the CDC).

10. You can use astrology to boost your mental health! We talked to experts about it and made this TikTok video explaining it.