A new mental wellbeing brand, ‘sidekick’, launched a podcast during the pandemic featuring raw, honest conversations with guests about their mental health journey.
The ‘sidekick stories podcast, which encourages conversations about mental health, is the creation of sidekick’s co-creators and social entrepreneurs James Shrager and Matt Halstead, and their podcast producer Michael Hurcum.
Because its been created during the COVID-19 crisis, all episodes have been recorded remotely featuring a range of guests from all walks of life, as well as trained mental health professionals, sharing their story and advice.
sidekick co-creator James Shrager said: “Our goal with this podcast is to have an open, honest conversation about mental health and wellbeing, which hopefully gives people some insight into what tools and techniques are available to help people.
“So far on the show we’ve discussed a broad range of topics including depression, anxiety, self-harm, psychosis, identity, postnatal depression, grief and divorce.
“We really want to normalise and encourage conversations about mental health and wellbeing, and ultimately help listeners realise that the way they might be feeling is absolutely normal and lots of others experience it.”
Earlier this year, sidekick launched their sidekick app on iOS; a collection of interactive exercises, tools and tips to help boost mental wellbeing.
The app enables users to build a personalised strategy for managing their mental health. By aggregating a broad range of wellbeing exercises and content, it recognises that everyone has diverse needs and should have access to personalised support, tailored to their own situation.
It creates a safe and private space for users to support their mental wellbeing. The app is free for the user and keeps user data completely private.
sidekick co-creator Matt Halstead said: “sidekick was in development for over two years, but recognising the mental strain being placed on us all due to COVID-19, we decided to launch it sooner rather than later to support as many people as possible in such frightening times.
“We believe that a combination of personalised wellbeing exercises, tailored to our own situations, can help us manage our mental health better through this period, and beyond.”
The sidekick stories podcast is available on all major podcast platforms including Spotify and Apple Podcasts, and a video version of the show is available on YouTube.
