Before the pandemic, the CDC showed adolescents were already experiencing a mental health crisis. Now, the number of kids experiencing depression, anxiety, and attempting suicide is skyrocketing. Olympic athlete Simone Biles is the latest young adult to publicly express how much mental health matters to our lives and professional success.
According to Cook Children’s Health Care System in Fort Worth, 43 patients were admitted in March after attempting suicide. In 2020, Cook Children’s recorded seven suicide deaths – making it the first year ever suicide was the leading cause of traumatic death at the hospital, exceeding all other traumatic deaths like child abuse and car wrecks.
That is why Sarah Angle founded Better Box. Better Box, which launched in July gives kids, teens, young adults, and people in the helping professions fun (and tangible) evidence-informed products + practices to help improve mental health today.
Better Box was designed to help improve overall well-being and help young people get past that terrible moment in time that seems like it’ll last forever. It uses evidence-informed products and practices based on research to treat mental health holistically.
“I struggled a lot with my own mental health during the pandemic,” Angle, Better Box Founder and CEO, said in a news release. “And I saw a lot of my college students struggling, too.
“Counseling and other medical interventions are critical, but, right now, getting an appointment and finding an available counselor is hard. Everybody needs additional support in this way because of the collective trauma we’ve all experienced during the pandemic. I wanted to give kids, and those beautiful souls in the helping professions, like nurses and teachers, something creative, tangible, and affordable that they could do now,” Angle said.
She said Better Box addresses social, physical, and mental health with three products that work on those areas in the brain. (1) There are greeting cards in the box designed to increase social connection and inspire others. (2) There’s a lavender candle or lip balm to connect with our physical senses using the efficacy of lavender to lower stress and improve mood. (3) And there’s a journal to write down daily gratitude, which cultivates well-being and provides hope.
The boxes can be ordered from the Better Box website at $$34.50 each with discounts for larger orders.
Angle said the Fort Worth-based social impact business is designed to create positive change and social and emotional growth when people need it most.
“Whether I’m working with children, teens, or adults, at some point patients ask for tools they can use in between sessions to help their recovery,” said Odette Tomlinson, a private Licensed Professional Counselor in Fort Worth. “Anxiety and depression have a way of making those who struggle with it feel isolated and powerless. The pandemic has only heightened these feelings in so many of us.”