Removing the Stigma of Mental Health

A simplified model using a 3 legged stool

William Lennan
6 min readApr 21, 2021
Image courtesy Chairish

At HAERT, we’ve been looking for a simply model to explain mental wellness that anyone can understand.

We teach people how to manage stress, be inoculated against depression and anxiety, and how to succeed at life. We finally created our own model because existing models didn’t meet our needs.

5 blind men

Do you know the story of the 5 blind men and the elephant? How each touched a different part and described the animal differently? They were confused and frustrated as each described it differently.

Stigma and confusion around mental health is caused by the same challenge. The stigma around mental health happens because people don’t have a good framework for understanding how mental health works.

When we don’t understand how things work, it is easy to stigmatize them and this leads to a further reduction in understanding because most people avoid being curious.

For years, people outside the mental health field have struggled for a way to understand mental health and people inside the mental health field have struggled to explain it. Unfortunately, like the story of the 5 blind men and the elephant — everyone had a singular view and no-one came from the…

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William Lennan
William Lennan

Written by William Lennan

Mental wellness fan. Ardent believer in effort. Parent, partner, persistent, physical. Co-Founder The HAERT™ Program. DBT is awesome :-)

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