Lady Gaga's Born This Way Foundation on raising awareness for mental health and wellness
Cynthia Germanotta, President and Co-Founder of Born This Way Foundation and Ash Lopez, Channel Kindness Author and Reporter for the Born This Way Foundation, joined Yahoo Finance to discuss mental health awareness.
Video transcript
- May is Mental Health Awareness month we want to bring in our next guest. We have Ashley Lopez author of Channel Kindness and also a reporter with Born This Way Foundation. We're also joined by Cynthia Germanotta president and co-founder of Born This Way Foundation which you found it with your daughter Lady Gaga. So Ash and Cynthia thank you so much to both of you for being here. Cynthia I'll start with you because you guys just published a new survey that's out and you looked at how kindness has really impacted the mental wellness. And impacted really how everyone thinks and goes about their daily lives I'm curious what you found in your latest survey here, especially coming off of a year when we've all been under so much stress because of the pandemic.
CYNTHIA GERMANOTTA: Yes, thank you for having us. We partnered with the Harris Poll. And surveyed about 2000 young people about how they define kindness, where and if they experience kindness. And how it's impacted both their mental health and their resilience. And it's been extremely validating to our work and excitingly, we found that nearly all 92% of young people actually say kindness helps get them through. And 93% say that it's the path forward and the way forward defining it really as something that's actionable that it's not just something it's nice it's it's a need to have. And it's also been inspiration for a lot of our new work. Because many young people or I should say very, very few reported that they strongly agree that they regularly receive or witnessed acts of kindness or even kind to themselves. So it's really been an eye opener in terms of how young people are receiving and experiencing kindness.
- When we talk about kindness Ash, what are some of the ways that the foundation is helping get this message out. And on the ground how it's making a difference not only with kids but with adults.
ASH LOPEZ: Well one way the foundation is helping out with this mission is giving a voice and a platform to someone like myself. They really helped me tell my story, helped me tell a story about my struggles, what I've done to help me get out of my depression for example. And we do a lot of campaigns as well we work with Channel Kindness where we report on kindness in our communities, which is really really important and we talk about mental illness and mental health. So that's one of the ways we really mobilize and try to spread the word. And you know try to make sure that folks are being kind to themselves and are taking action in terms of mental health.
- And Ash going off of that and [INAUDIBLE] in terms of the approach has that changed at all over the past year are you finding different ways or new ways in order to address some of these issues.
ASH LOPEZ: You know young people have really mobilized to address these issues online I think that's a huge difference. Folks can gather in person as they used to. But they've really been sharing kind stories online, they've been checking in with one another, they've been sharing resources online to make sure everybody's mental health is OK.
- Cynthia do you find through the research through the foundation different communities more accepting of the need to be conscious of mental health and mental illness.
CYNTHIA GERMANOTTA: Yes, we have found that different communities experience kindness in different ways. So it's really been important to to address those you know differently certainly in our programming and we're hoping that others do as well. So it's really an urgent issue. We also have learned that more than half of young people interestingly enough are also turning inward like some 53% are turning inward toward themselves for inspiration for kindness or also toward their peers. And we've also heard from the LGBTQ and non-binary community that also if you introduce yourself by your pronouns that it has a huge like a big and moderate improvement on their mental health. So so very, very interesting findings in different communities.
- Cynthia Germanotta president and co-founder of Born This Way Foundation and of course, our thanks as well to Ashley Lopez author of Channel Kindness and a reporter with Born This Way Foundation. Thanks to both of you for joining us here at Yahoo Finance today.
