Today we’d like to introduce you to Ivonne Franco Rodriguez and Marco A. Franco.
Mentalwhealth was born in late 2017 when Marco had a mental breakdown in the middle of the night. While our family slept, Marco came into Ivonne’s room, woke her up, and told her how he was feeling. Our mother and Ivonne decided to take Marco to the E.R. to seek professional help. At the E.R. Marco, was evaluated by a psychologist and was later released. After that incident, Marco was officially diagnosed with different mental disorders.
Similarly, Ivonne had gone through a few mental breakdowns in her early 20’s. She attempted suicide at the age of 22, which landed her in a mental institution for two days. She was also diagnosed with different mental disorders after her release from the hospital. During her recovery, Ivonne’s therapists encouraged her to pursue a career as a therapist after she had expressed to them her interest in helping others like herself. Ivonne is currently a MFT graduate student and has recovered from the mental disorders that she was once diagnosed with. Because of their similar struggles, Marco and Ivonne have gotten extremely close over the years.
One day, while Marco was walking at the Legg Lake, a local park in El Monte, he had a vision, He wanted to create a page dedicated to helping and inspiring others who struggle with mental disorders like himself. He came to Ivonne with the idea and together they created a partnership known as Mentalwhealth.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It has definitely been a hard road on so many levels. For starters, we didn’t think we’d ever get hate from people. At first, it was all love. However, as our page started to grow, the negative encounters started to increase to the point where people started personally attacking us.
There was also another point, in the early stages of Mentalwhealth, where we both were going through a hard time. We decided to take a break from the page and announced it to our followers. We were so happy to see an overwhelming amount of support from our followers. When we returned to social media, we came back with more energy and enthusiasm.
In addition, because of the nature of our page, we started to get messages from people who wanted to hurt themselves. Unfortunately, that took a toll on us. We were getting DMs from people in a crisis during times when we couldn’t respond. Ivonne is a full-time graduate student and an advocate. Marco has a full-time job and leads a very busy day to day life. An instant response isn’t available and we have had to encourage people to seek professional help in times of a crisis. We remind our audience that our role on Mentalwheath is that of mental health advocates, not of professionals. As a result of this, we decided put a disclaimer on our page so that people can seek other help such going to the nearest emergency room or calling 911 during a crisis. On the bright side, we are grateful that people are opening up to us during difficult times in their lives. It means that they trust us and shows how we’ve built great rapport with our followers.
Being exposed to many people with suicidal thoughts is not easy. Nevertheless, we learned how to manage it. We would rather see people reach out than not. Reaching out is important and it could potentially save someone’s life. We want to encourage people to also reach out to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or the Crisis Text Line at 741741. All you have to do is text: 741741 and a counselor would be assigned to you. We’ve utilized these services ourselves and it makes a difference.
Furthermore, one of the hardest moments we’ve had was when someone told us that one of our followers, who we had encounters with via direct messages and who participated in our “You Are Not Alone” video, took her own life at a very young age. We still think about this girl till this day even though time has passed by.
As much as we wish we could put all our time and energy into Mentalwhealth, we are also very busy people. Mentalwhealth is something we do on the side and it is a lot of work, but we love what we do. Despite all the struggles, we appreciate the fact that people are listening to us and enjoy our posts. At the end of the day, we just want to spread the message that people are not alone in their mental health struggles.
Mentalwhealth – what should we know? What do you do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
A characteristic that sets Mentalwhealth apart from other influencers is that we don’t just take any business inquiries/offerings. We’ve have been hit up multiple times with lucrative incentives, but if it doesn’t fit our followers, we don’t promote it. That’s something we’re both proud of.
Another characteristic that makes Mentalwhealth unique is our “Meme Therapy.” Meme therapy is a collection of hilarious memes related to mental health issues. We created this segment on our Instagram to give our followers some humorous relief from their daily mental health struggles. We believe that laughter is an amazing coping mechanism and a great way to combat depression so we do our best to create original memes in order to make our followers laugh.
Additionally, because we also struggle with mental health issues, this distinguishes us from other pages. Being open about our own struggles allows people to relate to us on a more personal level. This is probably one of the reasons why so many people enjoy our page.
We do sell Mentalwhealth merch and have done a giveaway with our products. We have two shirts and two hats available for purchase on our Etsy. As we continue to grow, we hope to release more merch.
One of the things we are proud of is our original content. Our biggest audience at the moment is on Instagram with 32.5k followers. We have a Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Snapchat by the same name in which we also push out our content.
Mentalwhealth is a very young project at the moment. We have high aspirations and many unfulfilled ideas in the works. Due to our busy schedules, we don’t have a lot of time to pursue all of our ideas However, we hope to expand our movement/brand further as the years go by. As for now, we are still building our empire.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
Our proudest moment is the fact that we are impacting people all over the globe, such as people from other countries where mental health services are not accessible. For instance, people from Indonesia have told us that we’ve inspired them to become mental health advocates in their country. These types of messages mean a lot to us. We feel so happy when people come up to us in person or in our DMs just to tell us how much our posts help them throughout their day. We’re just so glad to be having a positive impact around the world.
Pricing:
- Mentalwhealth Brain with Bandage “Mental Health Matters” Dad Hat (One Size) for $17
- “You Are Not Alone” Black Tee for $17
- Red Mentalwhealth “Mental Health Matters” Long-Sleeve T-shirt for $17
- Mentalwhealth Blue Teardrop White Dad Hat “it’s okay to cry” for $17
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.etsy.com/shop/Mentalwhealth
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: @mentalwhealth
- Facebook: Mentalwhealth
- Twitter: @mentalwhealth
Image Credit:
Photo of Mentalwhealth with black background by: James Bang
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