The World’s First LGBTQIA+ Mental Wellbeing App

myGwork spoke to Daniel Botcherby, CEO at Kalda about the revolutionary new app that is dedicated to LGBTQIA+ mental wellbeing.

Can you tell us more about Kalda?

Kalda is the world’s first mental wellbeing app for the LGBTQIA+ community.

We provide a stigma-free community where our community can access daily peer support in the form of LGBTQIA+ therapist discussions and weekly group sessions covering group therapy, mindfulness, and sharing.

We’re redefining the way we can access mental health support, moving away from the current model of reactive mental health support and into one of proactive wellbeing and self-care.

Accessing relevant mental health support within our community is difficult and expensive, there just aren’t enough therapists with lived experience able to support us and the cost of 1-1 therapy is too expensive. Kalda is doing things differently.

What services do you offer?

We offer a stigma-free community and daily self-reflection questions that you share with the community written by LGBTQIA+ therapists. We also offer a range of group sessions including mindfulness and sharing circles designed and delivered by LGBTQIA+ therapists. Both work hand in hand to support mental health and proactively support your wellbeing. Our community is also moderated by LGBTQIA+ members who are mental health first aid trained.

How was the company founded?

Al, Charlotte, and I met late last year as fervent advocates of proactive mental wellbeing. Each of us had spent the last 4 years working in mental health. Al is a cognitive hypnotherapist supporting the community with group and 1-1 therapy sessions. Charlotte worked for mind and public health England developing ways to evaluate digital health as well as being a crisis counsellor on Shout. As for myself, I developed an NHS approved medical device used to treat and prevent mental health issues. We each had our own experience in mental health and when we met we just knew we could add all of that experience together to build something wonderful for the community.

Why is it important to have LGBTQIA+ specific mental health and wellbeing services?

It’s so important because right now the way we treat mental health is in a general way. Health services take a one-size-fits-all approach to mental health. This approach works pretty well for us physically, like when you break a leg, for example, but our minds are so much more beautiful and unique, developed through years of experiences that we can’t simply approach it in the same way.

The LGBTQIA+ community is 3 times more likely to experience a mental health issue due to stigma, yet when accessing support 1 in 4 of us will experience discriminatory remarks from healthcare staff (Stonewall 2018). This is not to mention the unseen stigma, prejudices or just plain misunderstandings and generalisation that people without our lived experiences, as individuals and as a community, may inflict on vulnerable LGBTQIA+ patients.

This is not acceptable and that’s why we should have services specific to the LGBTQIA+ community that are relevant and stigma-free.

What advice would you give someone that is struggling to ask for help?

That it’s ok to not be ok, and it’s ok to talk about it. Who is a close friend that you could set aside an hour of time and ask them to simply listen, not to give advice, not to make a judgement, but just to listen to how you’re feeling? We often ask in passing “how are you doing” and we don’t wait to hear the full answer. Take the time to have that conversation together, and just listen to each other.

How do mental health and wellbeing connect to the fight for LGBTQIA+ equality?

This all comes down to the fight against stigma, that we are who we are and we have every right to live our lives just like everyone else. We have to deal with assumed negative intent and internalized stigma throughout our lives. Just being different from the cultural majority in terms of life, partner, sexuality and gender identity can be a challenging road, but when you add stigma, discrimination, and even persecution to that, you quickly see that the odds are not in your favour. That is the truth but it doesn’t make it right. Developing proactive self-care and wellbeing only supports us and builds our resilience. It can give us the strength and the power to collectively assert our right to equality.

We’ve seen conversations around mental health change and improve over the past few years – what would you like to see next to take this even further?

I believe the future of mental health lies in community and the conversations that we have with our friends. I would like for all of us to become mental health first aiders and to understand what mental health issues are and how we can support one another. We’ve come a long way to break the stigma surrounding depression and anxiety, yet there are other mental health issues still stigmatised such as EUPD, bipolar, and schizophrenia. Experiencing a mental health issue does not mean that there is anything wrong with ‘you’ at all. Our mental health is like physical health, we all have mental health, and it can go up and down, and that is perfectly normal.

What are the future goals of Kalda?

We’re about to launch our app so sign up for our waiting list and join our active community on Instagram. We’re going to be developing more group sessions and courses surrounding mental health issues, accountability and sharing circles, and more features WITH the community that allow us to support each other and our own mental health, by us, for us.

How can people and organisations support your fantastic work?

Join us on kalda.co - sign up to our waitlist and follow us on Instagram. And most importantly, right now you can join our pilot app on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/groups/kalda