You:Flourish, a new mobile platform made by and for the LGBTQ+ community, launched earlier this year and is available to folks in Colorado for free until next year.
The app is the brainchild of Steven Haden, a therapist and founder of the nonprofit Envision:You. Haden is a member of the LGBTQ+ community and spoke candidly about his reasons for creating the platform.
“I spent many years living in D.C. and New York as a management consultant,” he said. “I ran into my own personal mental health challenges, including a pretty significant substance use disorder. When I came out of that, I started thinking about how I could take my lived experience and my compassion for the LGBTQ+ community and turn that into something good.”
Haden then moved to Denver where he completed graduate school and became a social worker. It became clear to him that there wasn’t a singular organization focused primarily on the mental health of the LGBTQ community in Colorado, which is what led him to found Envision:You.
“Envision:You does a variety of things. We train mental health professionals, have public awareness campaigns and are engaged in advocacy. We do a lot of research centered around the mental health and well-being of LGBTQ folks,” Haden explained.
“Through that clinical lens, there are significant disparities relating to the mental health of members of the LGBTQ community. If we look at young people growing up in America, particularly LGBTQ youth, they’re subjected to bullying, discrimination, harassment often, sadly, or not supportive home environments,” he continued.
He said that trauma at an early age can set people up for a lifetime of chronic and mental health conditions, which can impact the quality and longevity of a person’s life.
Discussing the new platform, Haden said that the idea came from one of their research and outreach efforts. A troubling data point stood out — members of the LGBTQ+ community reported difficulty finding resources such as healthcare providers that affirm their identity and generally lacked connection with their peers in a “wholesome and mutually supportive” way.
Making the app free in Colorado for its first year will help generate additional research. This is the beta version of the platform, and users answering survey questions will help prepare You:Flourish to launch nationally next year.
“It’s an equity question. We want folks joining our community early on to have no barriers to accessing the content,” Haden stated. “The value to us of giving folks access to the platform at no cost is that we hope people will give us the benefit of a couple of minutes of time when they log in to check in. All that user research will be critical to building out You:Flourish in a way that offers many more resources, services and features as part of our long-term business strategy.”
Everything on You:Flourish is framed around the social determinants of health, which include but are not limited to economic policies and systems, social norms, social policies and political systems.
“For us, addressing social determinants of health requires a wellness directory that addresses some of these inequities and promotes health equity for all of our users. As you log in and tap into those wellness resources, they’re designed around key social determinants of health. Whether it’s community, culture, finances, education, employment or health, they’ll go and find resources centered around each of those topics,” Haden explained.
Examples of resources that can be accessed through the platform include Point of Pride, Denver Element, Green Jobs Board, The Queer Trans Project and more.
For information about You:Flourish, visit you-flourish.com