This is Mike, founder of BRICKROAD, and therapy saved my life.
No doubt about it. Without therapy, I would live a lower quality of life, and the weight of trauma, anxiety, and depression would consume me. It goes without saying that without therapy, I wouldn’t be able to live a good life, be a supportive partner, or a decent friend. Life would be gray. Because of therapy, life is in color.
Unfortunately, access to mental health treatment is too often behind gates that not everyone can get through—it is ridiculously expensive and requires a ton of available time. It is a luxury.
When we started building BRICKROAD in 2017, we knew from day one that it was critical that the company somehow make an impact in access to therapy. There is no clever brand tie-in here, no pithy connection between product design and therapy. It’s just important to us.
We looked into several ways of doing this—most routes we looked into were about “raising awareness” or “starting a conversation.” We felt at the time this was good in theory, but it wasn’t action. It was talk. It would give us something to put on our website, but it would likely not actually make a difference.
We eventually found an organization that was willing to help us contribute with actions. Through our partnership with the mental health nonprofit Open Path Collective, we are able to commit 5% of all sales to provide hours of therapy to people that need it.
We were advised more than once by very smart people to commit “profits” or “proceeds”, which would give us the flexibility to, like, buy fancy desk chairs or something. But we felt it was far more transparent to dedicate 5% of all sales, so that there were no blurred lines or clever bookkeeping.
We know we aren’t going to change the world through this program. But if the BRICKROAD journey means a few people get help that they need, it’s time well spent.
We think everyone deserves to be happy. And for some, access to therapy is a critical part of that. Therapy should be made available to every single person who wants it. And we think that means therapy should be free.
Until that happens, we will give 5% of everything we make to give people therapy.
Open Path Psychotherapy Collective is a nonprofit nationwide network of mental health professionals dedicated to providing in-office and online mental health care—at a steeply reduced rate—to clients in need.
If you are in a life threatening situation please call the Suicide and Crises Lifeline, a free, 24-hour hotline, at 988. Your call will be routed to the crises center near you. If your issue is an emergency, call 911 or go to your nearest emergency room.
