The Icare Movement

http://hashtagicare.com - is a movement started by Shawn Flynn with his wife Kyley solely as a social media endeavor a few years back after Chester Bennington (Linkin Park) died of suicide. Shawn was listening to the song "One More Light" and the line "who cares if one more light goes out" resonated as an actual question to him and he started answering in his head "I do! I DO! I care!" So, his background being social media, he decided to start something in the social media world to combat depression, anxiety, suicide, substance abuse - and specifically change the negative stigma’s around them and help normalize conversations around those subjects including subjects surrounding help. Since then we've developed followings upwards of 50K (100K if you include Shawn's personal pages that he shares things on) and decided about a year ago to start trying to do more with it. The podcast is basically one of the ways we're trying to extend our reach. One of our more unique resources is a group on Facebook that's grown to about 3500+ people that we've developed over time into a safe space for people to talk about things they're struggling with and not get judged, have people relate to their struggles as well as share victories. We even have professional counselors in the group (who prefer to not share that they are professionals so people feel comfortable talking to them as a friend) who are very active as well. All in all, we want to change the mentality as much as we can when it comes to mental health by talking about it openly, whether you have personal experiences with it or not, and helping everyone understand that they matter, and their lives are beautiful no matter how broken they may feel.