Our Mission & History

We believe that traditionally in society, mental health concerns have been stigmatized with people often expressing both prejudice and discrimination toward those with a mental disorder diagnosis. Furthermore, people with mental health concerns often have nowhere to turn for support online in a caring and safe environment. What happens during a temporary, financial difficulty in your life? There’s often nobody to turn to.

That’s why we created the community fund drives, the founding predecessor to the Help & Heal Mental Health Fund grants. The fund drives resulted in small, personal grants made to individual members on an as-needed, emergency basis. These grants offer a small financial safety net to members of the Help & Heal Mental Health Fund.

Since that time, the scope of the Help & Heal Mental Health Fund has grown. We now offer not only small, one-time personal grants to members of the Help & Heal Mental Health Fund, but have taken on two important projects of Project Beyond Blue — the Beyond Blue Grants Program, and the Project Beyond Blue Community. We hope to expand our program offerings further in 2016.

We hope our mission here will be to help people stop falling through the cracks of society by providing them with a much-needed financial safety net when most in need. We do this because we believe in the importance of giving back to the community and to help others when in need. It’s a simple yet powerful idea that can make a life-changing impact — and has.

About the Beyond Blue Grants Program

The Beyond Blue Grants Program joined the Help & Heal Mental Health Fund in 2015 as Beyond Blue Foundation Founder Therese Borchard made the difficult decision to close the Foundation, but continue its projects. As Therese noted:

Having exhausted almost every treatment offered by both the medical world (more than 50 medication combinations, years of psychotherapy) and holistic world (supplements, meditation, specific diets, acupuncture, yoga), she wondered how she would be able to endure another 40-plus years with such a strong desire to die.

Drawing on the wisdom of her heroes– Mother Teresa and renowned psychiatrist Viktor Frankl — she tried to turn her pain into service, to connect with other people experiencing the same debilitating thoughts, and to see whether it was possible to transcend her own suffering by lifting someone else from darkness.

The Help & Heal Mental Health Fund is proud to oversee both Beyond Blue’s Grants Program and its Project Beyond Blue Community.

 

Staff & Board of Directors