- Speaker #0
How is your mental health today? How do you tend to it and stay on track during turbulent times in your life or the world at large? And how do you utilize your creativity to help you move through mental health challenges? Today's guest will bring you her knowledge of storytelling and how you can use it as a tool to help your mental health and the mental health of others. Welcome to Unleash Your Inner Creative with Lauren LaGrasso. I'm Lauren LaGrasso. I'm a Webby Award-winning podcast host and producer, singer-songwriter, public speaker, and multi-passionate creative. This show sits at the intersection of creativity, mental health, self-development, and spirituality, and it is meant to give you tools to love, trust, and know yourself enough to claim your right to creativity and pursue whatever it is that's on your heart. Today's guest is Erika Soto-Lam. She works with companies, organizations, and culture leaders to drive positive change on the toughest social issues. Erika was the founding head of social impact strategy at Comedy Central and now leads multi-platform campaigns for Showtime and MTV Entertainment Studios at Paramount. She's also a co-founder of Power the Polls, which is the first national campaign to recruit the new generation of poll workers that saved the 2020 election. And she also founded Vote Early Day, amongst many other social impact movements and organizations. Throughout all of her work, Erica leverages the power of brand shows and talent that she works with to engage audiences to move toward activism. She's been at the... forefront of integrating mental health awareness into various media landscapes, including the Mental Health Media Guide. This is so amazing. It's an interactive tool that presents the best practices and evidence-based recommendations to help storytellers and content creators like you listening portray mental health in a sensitive and accurate manner. This is an amazing tool that all of us can use as creatives, and I'm excited for you to learn more about it today. So from today's chat, you will learn effectively. active ways to support yourself as well as friends and family who are struggling with their mental health, the importance of storytelling for social change, how to find the courage to share your mental health story, and the power of talking openly about your mental health with your friends and community. Okay, now here she is, Erica Soto-Lam. Welcome to the show, Erica. I'm thrilled to have you here.
- Speaker #1
Thank you so much, Lauren. I'm excited to be here.
- Speaker #0
Me too. And one thing I really believe about creativity and our life's purpose is that it's often almost always connected to our younger self. So I'm just so curious, what put this passion for advocacy in your heart when you trace the lines of your life? Were there first signs that you'd go in this direction toward social change?
- Speaker #1
Yeah, of course. You know, our origin stories have such a... important and forever role in shaping the rest of our lives. And so two things to know about me that I think are really core to my work and every part of who I am are that I'm from El Paso, Texas, from a border community. I always say people ask me where I'm from, and I say I'm from El Paso. They say, oh, you're Texan. And yes, that's true. But El Paso is a really interesting place. If you haven't ever been there, it's the far western tip of Texas. So... I like to say it's barely even Texas. It's on the border where Mexico, New Mexico, and Texas meet. And literally, it is closer geographically and culturally to Albuquerque, Phoenix, even San Diego than it is to Central Texas, which is where people envision Austin, Dallas, Houston. And it's a majority Mexican-American community. My family... is actually multi-generation American. But because we're on the border, the sort of immigrant culture, even if I'm, you know, third, fourth generation American, and I'll say for most of my grandparents, they didn't cross a border. My family heritage, the border crossed us. But that a lot of the cultural core values of being an immigrant and achievement-oriented definitely prevail. It's also, you know, a really poor community. I should say I have come to understand a lot about equity and economic opportunities, both from having been raised there and from having lived in other parts of the country. The second thing I'll say is that I have a neurodivergent brother. I knew from a very young age the differences in our capacities. And that actually really drove me and has been like the biggest fire of my life to. use my skills, my intellect, my talents as best I could because I've always had the sort of empathy and understanding in that context that we don't all have the same, but we all deserve joy and love. Those very core identity things are really at the heart of my life being both a storyteller and a change maker, somebody who comes from a place and a family that is different and that sees a lot of value in those experiences and wants to work towards creating more equity and understanding for the people in places who aren't always represented.
- Speaker #0
So beautiful. And speaking about the culture raised in your heritage, I watched a speech you gave last night. I found it on YouTube. And you were talking about how Spanish was really not passed down to you. And it brought me to tears. It reminded me recently, I think you listened to the Joe Piazza episode, but reconnected with my Sicilian cousins. And so I never knew my whole life. My dad never told me that we had first cousins there. My grandpa had left a brother there when he came over to America. So I like showed up on their doorstep and was like, hello, my name is Lauren LaGrasso. I think I'm your cousin. And this whole beautiful relationship ensued. But when I went with my parents this last time, they asked us, why don't you speak Italian? And it cut me to my core. I actually started crying. And when I watched your speech, I felt the same because you talked about how it wasn't passed down. Would you mind? And I know this is taking a sidestep, but it just touched me. Would you mind sharing about that and how having that part of your identity and culture kept from you affected and affects how you interact with the world?
- Speaker #1
Absolutely. Well, first, thank you for finding that and watching it. Yes, I think, and I referenced it before, being part of an immigrant community, and you know that, being Sicilian, that there's such a focus on achievement and assimilation. My story as a... relates to not being fluent in Spanish is that my parents always say you were fluent bilingual up to age four. And the summer before kindergarten, my parents stopped speaking Spanish to me entirely with a mission towards making sure that I wouldn't have any confusion between the languages before going into kindergarten and that I would be confident in my English, which they achieved. And I'm very grateful to them for having done that. And they were coming from a place of, you know, when they were growing up, they're baby boomers. When they were in elementary school, they were still that was of the age where they might get, you know, a ruler slapped on their hand for using the wrong language, which is obviously a very horrible corporal punishment example. But I think even more than that, I know that there was a sort of hesitancy of raising your hand, even if you knew the answer, if maybe it would come out wrong, or if you, you know, had an accent. And they really wanted to make sure that I didn't have that. And they achieved that, but something else was lost at the same time. I understand it. I have a lot of empathy and grace for it. You know, I think when you come from a community that is focused on first surviving, and then thriving that the orientation makes it harder to hold on to some of these, the cultural roots that I think I recognize. And I, I both want to perpetuate the success of my previous generations, but I'm doing a bit of the work now to go back and appreciate and understand who I am, who we are, where we came from and pass that along. to my children and, you know, really break those trends or extend what's helpful and also go back to grab what was left behind.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. It is so powerful because the truth is it's safer for us now. Like I do, I look at why it may not have been passed down, which I'll never know like the full reason, but I think a big part of it was to your parents'point, like it just wasn't safe. It wasn't safe to be different back then. But yeah, it's still heartbreaking. But it's beautiful that you're reclaiming it and now sharing it with your sons.
- Speaker #1
You talked about travel and that really resonated with me. Maybe through the silver linings of the pandemic, I have been able to spend more time in Mexico working remotely and brought my family with me. And I can't tell you what a great experience that's been that my husband, he's white. We first landed in Oaxaca, which I don't know where I have. my cultural roots. I did the DNA tests and sort of, unfortunately, there's not a lot of data. So they basically told me, you're Mexican. I'm like, well, I already knew that, but no real specificity. And we're in Oaxaca and my husband says, I don't know if you can realize this, but you look like people here. And I said, no, I feel it. I do. I feel at home, even though I had never really lived there before. It's been very cool to see my kids. be really proud of their Mexican heritage in a way that, you know, it's not that we weren't proud of being Mexican. It was that it wasn't a central focus. And it took me a really long time to celebrate and see all of the beauty of that part of my history that my kids are expressing in ways that, you know, took me a long time. And there are, you know, a teen and a tween who will say. We're Mexicanos and I'm like, I would never have said that and I think that's really cool that they're proud of it.
- Speaker #0
So beautiful. And I definitely want to get into your kids and how you're talking with them about mental health. I also loved in your bio that you wrote, again, I'm a very emotional person, clearly, but it made me almost cry when I read mother to two perfect sons. That was just so sweet and beautiful. But let's get into the professional trajectory. I want to know what that's kind of been like, just even like a broad strokes and how you ended up where you are now.
- Speaker #1
Sure. Well, you know, I've always felt a passion for creating positive change. And my original career path was in politics, related to, you know, being from an immigrant culture and with certain ideas about achievement and the career paths of what it takes to be a successful, to have a successful career were like lawyer and doctor. And I thought, you know, maybe I'll be a lawyer. Maybe I'll fight a through line is always looking out for the little guy kind of. being from a little guy community and having, you know, a neurodivergent brother that has always been core to my identity. And then I, you know, went to off to school and thought it was we didn't have a pre law major, but I took some courses was like, I don't know, this is for me. I'm very glad I didn't become a lawyer, I think it would have been a terrible lawyer. But then that led into an interest in politics. And I worked for, you know, the first and still do a lot of work in my community. kind of side hustles on politics, working for the candidates and causes that I believe in. And I worked for campaigns on different issues. I worked for a number of years at public affairs firms, which means that my clients were candidates or nonprofits or companies, but really focusing on how to do good on their behalf. One of those clients that I had was an organization that is now known as Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action. They were one of my clients when the Sandy Hook shooting happened. And so I almost overnight went from being their communications consultant to being their chief communications officer and, you know, had the great opportunity to help build that strategy and build that team. Even though I wasn't planning to focus on that issue for a number of years, it was really In that work, Leading Comms for Every Town for Gun Safety, that I began to understand that while we were primarily focused on political and policy changes, that real change won't come unless we also work towards changing culture. You know, some of the small ways that I experienced that were, you know, the tactics of working on a political campaign of press conferences and polls and going to. DC or state capitals or city halls, depending on what you're trying to change. Those are all worthwhile and necessary. But the moment that we were able to work with the writers and the show team behind Keeping Up with the Kardashians, exponentially more people understood that we can create change, that we don't have the basic laws and policies to try to prevent gun violence. You know, that came about because Kim Kardashian, you know, had an experience with gun violence in her life that then made the subsequent season of Keeping Up with the Kardashians focus on it and brought in survivors of different experiences of gun violence to talk about it. And I will fully admit I had never watched Keeping Up with the Kardashians, but I really appreciated how integrating into popular culture shows. working with artists, actors, athletes, expanded the reach of understanding on an important social issue, actually came to Comedy Central, which is a part of Paramount. First, I could see also that when we were able to land a segment on The Daily Show, how much more that resonated, how that made the same argument that we were simultaneously, you know, working with the New York Times or the Washington Post to tell the same story, make the same argument of the change we seek. I came over to work in media as a result of that understanding that we need policy change, we need political change, but we also need culture change. And so being able to work on tough issues through the bullhorn of a big media company, the networks and the shows and the talent that we have access to is a really core part of creating change on our most pressing social issues.
- Speaker #0
Wow. So when you came over to Paramount, was that role something that they were already looking for? Did you pitch it? Because this is such an interesting thing to me. I've never heard of a role like this. And I think it's something that a lot of people would be curious about.
- Speaker #1
I was first brought in to work as the first head of social impact for Comedy Central. But that had actually happened a few months after I had taken a contract with MTV. Now I work on MTV and Comedy Central and a bunch of other awesome brands. I had just left Everytown for gun safety and worked at an educational nonprofit. And a friend of mine called me within a day after the Parkland shooting and said, my friends over at MTV need someone to advise them on how to respond. You know, they MTV is always focused on young people. And, you know, the major issues that affect them, and they'd love some advice, can you take this contract, which I did for a short period of time, I told the job I had just started, you know, this is going to be a short term project, but I really loved it. And it did end, but it put the bug in the ear of the executives. at Comedy Central, which had never had a role like this. You know, MTV has been doing pro-social work for 40 years, really from its beginnings. And Comedy Central execs started to think, well, how do we show up in the world? How can we create change? How do we leverage comedy for that? And I had done this work before in, you know, fits and starts from my role at Everytown and on other issues that... I really jumped at it. It felt like an awesome opportunity to think about how comedy as one format, but really culture can play a role in creating change and reaching our audiences, motivating them towards action, towards the cultural changes that I know we seek.
- Speaker #0
So beautiful. So mental health, because you make the transition from gun safety into mental health, you've done a lot of different advocacy in your life and in your career. But I believe we teach what we most need to learn and our work often revolves around that. And you've been open about coming from a culture where mental health was kind of not really at all talked about. How have you found the courage to start to confront your own mental health and tell your own mental health story and then also make this like part of your life's work?
- Speaker #1
That's right. I can't say that I grew up in a culture where emotional well-being was out in the open and talked about. And that has been a real struggle, was and is even now as I try to create that change in my own family and community. In a way, I think I have become a different person and have embraced my own creativity as I have been able. to explore my emotional well-being and get the support that I need and give it to others in ways that I wish that I had been able to receive that. I feel like I was reborn as a creative almost in my 30s, in my mid-30s, in a way that I wish that I could have had, I could have been if I had grown up in a culture that really embraced our full selves. I'm hoping to affect now by doing work that is about shifting our mental health culture. So at MTV, the brand on many social issues, whether youth civic engagement, people know Rock the Vote is a partnership that MTV did 40 years ago, or LGBTQ issues or racial justice or teen pregnancy. Mental health is also one of those topics that the brand has worked on for almost 20 years, you know, before it was popular and before it's always been one of the causes that has been. part of the stories that we tell going back to, and I can remember this when, you know, MTV News was covering the suicide of Kurt Cobain, or watching, you know, early seasons of The Real World and seeing cast members live their life in real ways that, you know, we had been working on this for a long time. But in, you know, early pandemic, all of the reports, the rates, the anxiety, depression, suicide, they were getting better. And not only because of our efforts, but because of our cultural understandings and what work was being done, that I think we realized we need to turn the page and have entered into the universe, this idea, the big idea that mental health is health, that we should be treating our emotional well-being the same way that we treat our physical well-being. The same way that we know, you know, diet, exercise, sleep, by the way, all of which affect our mental health too. Those are things that we talk about that is more out in the open and mental health isn't there yet. And it's something that we want to be able to have be a part of our cultural comfort that people can share with each other and not feel alone. That is about more than just, you know, the suicide prevention. end of the work that needs to be done and continues to need to be done, but is more about the everyday culture that we're living in and how people feel comfortable sharing and responding to it. Because while there are major systemic changes that are needed, you know, policy and insurance coverage and a lack of mental health professionals, and also of the mental health professionals that we have. accessibility in terms of cost or that the mental health professionals, are they diverse enough to have the lived experiences to understand all of us? All of that work is needed, but also it's going to take time. And so I'm really proud that some of our major campaigns are really reflective of knowing that the cavalry isn't coming. And it's not coming fast enough. What can we do right now to help people get the support that they need and feel comfortable and to really realize the mental health is health culture change that we're trying to affect?
- Speaker #0
So much to break down from what you just said. One thing is if somebody is listening and grew up in, you know, a similar environment where mental health wasn't really talked about, I grew up in that environment. I mean, in Italian culture, it's very much like that. secrecy, shut it down, you know, protect the family name. Everything's fine. You're excelling. You're doing great. So if somebody listening grew up in a similar culture to that and is trying for the first time to share, hey, I'm not doing so great, actually, what would be your advice to them on how to start to tell their mental health story and bring people into what's going on?
- Speaker #1
Well, Lauren, one of the reasons why I was so excited to talk to you and with your audience of creatives is... because we believe that every story is a mental health story, right? Every story is about a personal journey or relationships. And we all have something to share. And I think what we're hoping to do is shift from mental health stories that may not be hopeful to more that are, that share a better way of accepting and understanding the personal journeys that we all go through. and creating the space for people to see helpfulness versus, you know, a stigma that has been a big part of the way that mental health stories have been represented. That's been a major focus of our content work and of our campaign's work to lead people towards resources or towards a different understanding of what to do when both they're struggling or when somebody in their life is struggling.
- Speaker #0
So what are some of those resources? What are some tools we can give people? I know you have Ask. Maybe we can go through that.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. So Ask is our latest campaign. It was born out of research that we did. Honestly, research that we did because we really wanted to focus our efforts on what's not being done or what is needed out in the landscape for youth to address the youth mental health crisis. crisis, but also it's not age specific. I think a lot of the work that's being done and targeted towards young people is really needed for all of the generations because this is like a lot of first time efforts to shift our culture. And one of the things that we found was that while young people want to help each other, nearly 70% of young people said they don't know what to do when somebody in their life comes to them. Also, Young people, all of us, we're more likely, most likely to turn to a friend or a peer when we need help. But we don't know what to say. We don't know what to do. And that felt like a really big number, nearly 70%. How do we help bring that down by teaching people what to say or in some cases what not to say that is already a part of the cultural norms? And so we went on a journey of learning about in the mental health world, this category called peer support. And there are a lot of incredible programs and organizations that work on this from Mental Health First Aid, Lady Gaga's organization, Born This Way has a certification called the Be There Certificate. But both of those and a number of other programs require a lot of time to be certified. And I've done them. I think they're fantastic. But we realized we need something. like stop, drop, and roll. I learned it in kindergarten and it is just the most catchy, memorable, actionable steps of what to do if you're ever on fire. But that is quite honestly a rare occurrence. I hope it's a rare occurrence. I hope you've never had to use it. I hope you never have to use it. And yet we don't have a cultural equivalent for what to do when somebody in your life needs you, which is if not daily. Every few days, whether it's your friend, your colleague, your partner, your kid, people in our life need us, but we don't know what to do. And so we partnered with this incredible nonprofit organization, one of the leaders in youth mental health called Active Minds, which has hundreds of chapters in colleges and high schools across the country to develop ASK, which is a word in and of itself. And that's important. But. Even more meaningfully, it's an acronym and it stands for acknowledge, support and keep in touch. So we launched less than a year ago and are taking it. everywhere we can, across our airwaves, across our social platforms, working with our shows and, you know, shows even on other media companies to really integrate this new idea, this new stop, drop, and roll for what to do when somebody in your life needs you. And so the opportunity to socialize, ask with your community of creatives is really exciting. It's another way that we are Doing what we're doing to change mental health stories and to change our mental health culture and help us be the change that we're seeking by entering what it means to acknowledge, you know, to truly give your full attention, how to actively listen and validate other people's feelings and experiences, ways to be curious and ask questions, letting your friends take the lead in telling you what they need. And. really importantly, that last letter K, as I've been told by, you know, the mental health experts and professionals who advise us that it's really not a one and done situation, that it's so important to check back in, you know, to send a quick message or schedule time to hang out and circle back that this is really a continuous activity to support the people in their lives when they need us.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, so true. And to your point, like you have this really cool interactive video series that I participated in last night. This is not age specific, whether you're young or old. I highly recommend checking this out because I was surprised by like how many questions I had around like, oh, would that be acknowledgement? They'll give you like a scenario. And then at the end, there's four different options you can choose for what you would say next. And it really made me question like, what does acknowledgement look like? What does support look like? And like how it I want to keep in touch or like how would I wish somebody kept in touch with me when I was actually struggling because I do think one thing that you know a lot of friends will do is they give that initial support but then there's not like a check-in which I understand some people are probably trying not to be annoying whatever but like when you're in a deep struggling moment that keep in touch piece is really everything because I mean it can literally be life-saving Totally. Well, I'm so glad that you have done the Ask Digital experience at asktohelp.com. It was designed to help people learn how to ask, acknowledge, support, and keep in touch. So you'll find yourself, it's not a typical website in that at asktohelp.com, you find yourself immediately in like a YouTube, choose your own adventure game. And it was designed that way because again, our focus is on young people. And so we want to meet them where they are. And I know the creatives here know young people, they're on social, they're on YouTube. And so we wanted to show up with this animated experience where you're transported into the shoes of Charlie. They're a young person navigating how to support a friend, in this case, Luna. And as you said, you're presented with, once Luna tells you what she's going through, what to say. And in the process, you practice the stop, drop, and roll, the A, S, and K, acknowledge, support, and keep in touch. And as much as you're learning what's more helpful to say, I'll speak for myself. I've, in this process, learned a lot about what not to say and why not. Some of the things that have been said to me and that I have said to others I know now aren't the most helpful thing to do. Like saying, oh, it's all going to be okay, which, you know, you might think is positive. an encouragement, but is not really acknowledging and creating space for a person to talk about what they're going through. Or something that has also been done with me when people share their own experience, like, oh, this is how, it's not to say that that's not helpful, but that that can often de-center the person who you need to support and keep central. This program is meant for, you know, that. every day and not intended to make anybody feel like they need to solve the problem. It's not our role to solve the problem, but it is our role to be there for the people that we care about and love. And in a lot of cases, help lead them towards the resources and further support that they may need depending on the situation.
- Speaker #1
And I think that my biggest takeaway from it is curiosity and compassion can do a lot. I think a lot of times the reason it feels overwhelming to talk to somebody going through something is you think you have, I mean, I do, I think I have to solve it. And actually, most of the time, that's not what people want. They just want to be heard, understood and seen. And then if they ask for help solving it, then you can like kind of co-create that. That was what it was a good reminder for me of. And even something that just happened yesterday, I'm thinking of like, I tried to solve that. I should have just like said, how are you doing? How can I help? I'm here for you. You know?
- Speaker #0
Absolutely. Just create that space, ask those questions. And I do believe that that makes a difference in supporting the people in your life.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. And speaking of my little creative cuties listening, you have this amazing storytelling initiative. I'm obsessed with this. It's so cool. Can you talk a little bit about this sector of what you're doing with mental health? And I'm also specifically interested in the mental health media guide.
- Speaker #0
Absolutely. So the Mental Health Storytelling Initiative is something that we've done in partnership with USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. It's convened a coalition of more than 70 mental health experts and leading entertainment companies. I'm talking about Amazon, NBC, Sony, Disney, like the big guys, to really help shift the stories that we tell. And as a part of that, A few years ago, in May 2021, we launched the Mental Health Media Guide, which is a first of its kind online resource with comprehensive best practices to help storytellers, creatives, content creators, expand positive mental health portrayals. Because as we always say, every story is a mental health story. It depends on where you take it. So we're really proud to both do this work in-house, to have developed this guide. You know, I think the most important work we do is sharing it and not being, you know, being open source about it. This isn't only for MTV shows or Paramount shows. This is really done in partnership with others to help change and improve the mental health stories that are being told. And we're so proud that it's working, that some of the latest studies, both by Annenberg and the Norman Lear Center. are showing an increase in just a few years. Again, this was launched about three years ago. We can already see an increase in mental health representation with greater sensitivity within portrayals of mental health and more emphasis on help-seeking and positive mental health actions that have come about from our work and the work of the many other mental health storytellers, whether you are at a big media company or... you know, you're a podcast host or you're on TikTok. Like all of those are places where we know young people and people of all ages need to see and hear more positive representation and help seeking stories being told.
- Speaker #1
Anyone can access this, right?
- Speaker #0
Yes, you can access it. It's the mentalhealthmediaguide.com.
- Speaker #1
Amazing. Hey, creative, if you love the show and it has meant a lot to you, could you do me a favor? Rate and review on Apple. Give it a review on Spotify. Share it with a friend. These things all make a major difference in a podcaster's life and in growing their show. And I really want to build up this community of creatives who love, trust, and know themselves and love, trust, and deeply know others. So if you could do that and share the show with someone you care about, that would mean so much. All right. I love you. As people are like creating these new stories through either their social channels, a podcast, a song, whatever it might be. Is there a way to like pitch these things? Because I'm always thinking of the indie creator, right? It's so difficult for an indie creator to be seen. And they, I believe, often. are telling the most powerful, raw stories. Is there a way for an indie creator to get in touch with you where they can pitch you some of these amazing things that they make from the media guide?
- Speaker #0
Yeah, we would love to know. In fact, part of our work is knowing whose work is being influenced and changed by the incredible resources that have come together. So I would love to be called up and told like this story that I told. was influenced by the guide and more helpful resources and action taking that can be shared. Because we are tracking that, you know, across the various stories told both from our company and the other partner companies. But I agree with you that more and more in the decentralized media environment that young people are opening up their TikTok or their Instagram or Snap and hearing stories all the time. that we would love to be informed and to include those examples of how the stories that individual indie creators are telling to be a part of our overall understanding of the shift in mental health storytelling.
- Speaker #1
Beautiful. And would they get in touch via the same website or is there a place they could go?
- Speaker #0
Probably the best outreach would be to the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. Okay. Because while we've... started the Mental Health Storytelling Initiative, we've actually ported it over to Annenberg, which I think a lot of people know Annenberg, one of the top tier of media studies and understanding does work like this across social issues and was really the best home for this work to continue and to continue to reach media creator, creatives of all kinds.
- Speaker #1
Beautiful. And I just wanted to circle back because I feel like I want to try to give people more tools. When you first started talking about your own mental health, how did it start coming out and how are you doing with it now?
- Speaker #0
Yeah. Well, I want to say I have been so inspired by younger people. One of our other campaigns that I'd like to talk to you about called Hidden Healers was born out of having worked on this topic and having learned from others who had worked on youth mental health for many years before me, was the realization that, wait a second, I'm in all these rooms with brilliant, creative, and smart people who are not the demo. We're in our 30s, 40s, older, I should say, than the teenagers and 20-somethings that we're trying to reach. And so one of the projects that I'm really proud of is a couple of years ago, we decided to convene 30 of the leading youth mental health advocates, activists, and creatives. And we worked with them for a number of months and culminated in the first. Mental Health Youth Action Forum, which ended at the White House with these young people who we brought together and worked with over a series of months. They had basically come together into teams. And what we created was sort of like a shark tank of ideas of how young people need to receive the best practices. Because I realized we need, if this is for young people, it should be by young people. And we always went in with like, all right, these young people are going to work together. They're going to come up with ideas. They're going to advise us, but also advise many of the other media companies that we partner with on mental health. And we knew like we want to buy one of these ideas. Like we want to have a campaign that was developed by young people to reach young people on our brand, our social platforms where young people are following along. And the idea that we picked up was called Hidden Healers, which is really about centering culturally grounded healing practices from BIPOC communities and really elevates and uplifts traditions, whether dance or food or comedy. You know, I think we all understand yoga and meditation. That is actually a culturally grounded healing practice that has sort of become so popularized that a lot of people forget the roots of that. And there's so many other practices that come from tradition and cultural practices that is in line with the idea that what can we be doing right now, especially with mental health care being inaccessible, unaffordable, not coming from people with our shared lived experiences, that we wanted to create space. And four young people came up with this idea. that we loved. And we worked with them for more than a year to create a digital video series that you can watch at hiddenhealers.org and paired their idea with musical artists, with actors who really expressed their cultural practices that help their emotional wellbeing. And so I've been empowered by people younger than me to talk about my own mental health in a more open way than I ever had before. You know, I... I never really understood why my days would be offset if I didn't have my morning time. I don't meditate. I don't do some of the things that I know work for other people. And I think that's also one of the beautiful things is that you have to find what works for you to help, you know, get yourself in the right state of mind and emotional well-being to be creative. And we want to identify those practices. as ones that we should own and celebrate and communicate about in the same way that we might talk about going to the gym for our physical health.
- Speaker #1
100%. That's beautiful. And speaking about the youth, I know you've got a 13-year-old and an 11-year-old. I'm curious how you talk with your kids about mental health and how they also share with you.
- Speaker #0
Since launching the Ask campaign, it has really changed the way that I show up for them. Same is true for my friends and my partner and my colleagues. But, you know, creating the space when, as any young person, teenager, tweenager feels, how to acknowledge how they're feeling and support them. I can't help but keep in touch with them. They live in my home. I can see how it has influenced my parenting, especially, like you said, Lauren, when somebody in our life needs us, you want to like fix the problem. But some things like, you know, friendship dynamics in middle school aren't, I can't go in there and tell that kid to be nice or stop being a bully. But what I can do is create the space for my child to talk about it and process it and understand it differently in the way that as we all were young people and even now have experiences that I didn't have when I was in middle school. And sometimes atypical experiences that are. you know, this is the first generation growing up with social media. We don't have the playbook for how to respond to what they're receiving. through social platforms. And I think it has changed my understanding of how to show up for them and how to create space for them to feel comforted and cared for.
- Speaker #1
Wow. I love it. Okay. You've got so many things going on, Erica. Power the polls. Well, first of all, what is it? And then second of all, how is that happening with the upcoming election? How is it going with the upcoming election?
- Speaker #0
Yeah. Well, topic switch. One of the other major social issues that I've worked on throughout my career and is a major focus of our work at MTV, which has a long legacy of youth civic engagement, is called Power the Polls, which is a first of its kind campaign to recruit a new generation of poll workers. And it was born out of what happened in the 2020 election. I hate to take you back there. But if you remember, you know, March, April, May 2020. In that time machine, way back machine, even as we were responding to, you know, the early days of the pandemic, it was actually also when the states were doing the primaries. One of the things that we were seeing was we've been relying on older people to be poll workers, to be there and tell us where to go, cast our vote, give us the folder, give us our sticker. And for very good and understandable reasons, they weren't showing up in. the early days of the pandemic. And the result was that election administrators couldn't have as many polling locations. And when you don't have as many polling locations, you get longer lines because more people are going to the same place or people aren't even coming to vote. They're being disenfranchised by the amount of time that it takes or the travel that it requires to be able to go and vote. And so we realized after the primaries that that was a problem we needed to fix. by the time of the November election. So we, along with a number of other companies and nonprofit organizations, came together to found Power the Polls and reach out to young people, healthy people, to staff polling locations, and really also to promote early voting, to not wait to the last moment. And while the November election was complicated by many other factors, it works. There were enough polling locations. We didn't see the long lines that we had seen that disenfranchisement did not happen. And we realized this wasn't only something that we need to do in response to a pandemic, but that we need younger people to be a part of this foundational act of democracy in voting, to participate. Going to vote can feel like a very governmental thing, and there's a lot of lack of trust in institutions, including our government, probably for some good reasons. But when you show up and you see somebody who looks like you, who speaks your language, who can help you vote, that can really make a difference in expanding who we reach and who we have participate in this project called democracy.
- Speaker #1
I love it. And I mean, I think the beautiful through line of your entire career is creativity, most directly storytelling for social change. And I'm so grateful that you came on the show today. to share that perspective because I think it's something we really, really need right now. I know people do it every day in small ways, but to see that it can be such a through line and a guiding light in somebody's life, it really inspires me to want to go write songs about the things that I care about, do more podcasts about the things that I care about, tell more of these stories. And I know that people listening today have gotten that same kind of charge. So thank you for doing what you do. And just for... you know, being yourself out in the world. It's powerful.
- Speaker #0
Thank you so much, Lauren. I really appreciate being able to speak with you and with your community of creatives and know that it will lead to more positive change-making stories and art. Yeah.
- Speaker #1
Thank you so much, Erica. Thanks for listening and thanks to my guest, Erica Soto-Lam. For more info on Erica, you can follow her on X. at Erica Soto Lam and visit her company website, mentalhealthmediaguide.com and asktohelp.com to learn more about the amazing work she's part of. You can also check out mentalhealthishealth.us where you can find all kinds of resources as well as that Hidden Healers First of Its Kind digital video series. It is so good. Definitely check it out. Thanks to Rachel Fulton for helping edit and associate produce this episode. Follow her at Rachel M. Fulton. Thanks to Liz Full for the show's theme music. Follow her at Liz Full. And again, Thank you. If you like what you heard today, remember to rate, review, and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Share the show with a friend and post about it on social media. Tag me at Lauren LaGrasso and at Unleash Your Inner Creative, and I will repost to share my gratitude. Also tag the guests at Erica Soto-Lam so she can share as well. My wish for you this week is that you feel empowered to share your own mental health story and to listen with an open heart to the stories of others. Let's work together to create a world where mental health is understood, supported, and cherished just as much as our physical health. I love you and I believe in you. Talk with you next week.
