Jumping into the Parade: The Leap of Faith That Made My Broken Life Worth Living by Tim Brown

Author:Tim Brown [Brown, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781940363486
Publisher: BenBella Books, Inc.
Published: 2014-10-20T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

Growing the Big “S”

“Be careful how you live. You may be the only Bible some person ever read.”

—William Toms

WHEN THE STATE OF COLORADO CUT FUNDING for its suicide prevention hotline and other mental health programs in 2011, Joe Conrad was one of the few people who actively stepped in to help fill the void.

Joe is the founder and CEO of Cactus, a large advertising agency in Denver. He and his company led the efforts to create Man Therapy, a clever web-based program that provides men with resources for dealing with depression and other challenges of life.

Joe had no idea of the personal struggles I was going through when we had breakfast at Racines in early 2011 and he shared the vision for the Man Therapy project. I was on the board of the Anschutz Foundation at the time, so he was simply seeking advice on how to gain support for the startup nonprofit. His company was doing the work pro bono, but there were additional hard costs and he needed funding partners. I helped arrange the introduction, and the foundation ultimately decided to offer seed funding to help Joe get the project up and running.

Joe’s team at Cactus eventually created a campaign and program around Dr. Rich Mahogany, a fictional front man for the Man Therapy website. Dr. Mahogany—picture Anchorman’s Ron Burgundy, but as a therapist—would cut through the stigma and become the go-to expert for men struggling with issues when they no longer had access to social services.

It may surprise you to know that working-age men (twenty-five to fifty-four years old) account for the largest number of suicide deaths in Colorado. These men are also the least likely to receive any kind of support. We don’t talk about it with our friends. We don’t share it with our families. And we sure as heck don’t seek professional treatment. And as Dr. Rich Mahogany is the first to say, we are the victims of problematic thinking that says mental health disorders are unmanly signs of weakness.

As you might imagine, the project became even more personal a few months later after my experience at the Bentley. Although I kept my experience in New York to myself, many of the people working on the Man Therapy project didn’t have the kind of firsthand experience with a psychological crisis that I’d had, so I felt that I could make a contribution. I gave small input to the various concepts and donated the printing for the production set used in videos that became part of the program in 2012.

As I went about the process of building spiritual muscle, I got more involved in the project. My father-in-law, as well as the foundation’s executive director, continued to support me in raising money for the development of Man Therapy and for the outdoor advertising expenses we used to promote the initial launch. It was highly rewarding to watch the concept quickly catch fire and grow; now it’s being considered for use in the United States outside Colorado, and was launched in Australia in 2013.

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