HeartSupport started as a person at a table in a music venue.

Jake Luhrs, vocalist of world famous metal band, August Burns Red, would stay after he performed to have conversations with his fans at the merch table. They would open up about the struggles they were facing in life and with their mental health, some for the first time.

It worked, and music was the key.

Fans would come back the next year and share how they had made it through because of his encouragement. They stopped ideating about suicide, had gotten rid of their drugs, or stopped self-harming.

Venue

  • Music created a common space that Jake and his fans shared. They would come to a venue to watch his band play, and he would use that venue as a way to reach them.

  • Music helps people access their feelings; there’s a song for everything we go through. People might not know how to talk about their mental health, but we can all talk about how a song affects us and why.

Table

  • Jake would find a spare table in the venue, put a HeartSupport table cloth over it, and stay up until 1a, 2a, 3a talking to fans every night.

  • Jake didn’t have these conversations in a VIP line or ask people to go through his manager. He made it easy for people to find him, approach him, and start conversations. Some people who might not have otherwise opened up did because it was easy.

Person

  • Drenched in sweat immediately after the show, Jake would hop off stage and head over to the HeartSupport table. He had no mental health credentials but had common interest in music and a willingness to show up for his fans.

  • Some people may not be willing to talk about their struggles with a therapist but are willing to have conversations with normal people they feel will understand them. Jake didn’t offer advice but focused on listening and offering care and compassion, and it worked.

Fans were struggling without seeking help.

One of the things that struck Jake over time was that many fans were opening up about these deep issues to him without having told anyone else in their life. This is consistent with the statistics we know about mental health - 3 in 5 people who struggle with their mental health do not seek help for their issues. Jake started HeartSupport to reach more of these people and change the statistics.

HeartSupport uses music to start conversations about mental health with people who might not otherwise seek help.

We started with the same blueprint Jake had and used it to help over 50,000 people.

HeartSupport has had many different “venues” over the years. We’d show up and bring our own table and reach people who might not have opened up otherwise.

Festivals & Tours

  • (1/5) The Tent

    In 2013, HeartSupport started attending festivals and traveling on tours across the country.

  • (2/5) Support Wall

    We built a “Support Wall” that was a space where fans could write down the struggles they were facing, and others at the show would come by offer them encouragement.

  • (3/5) Impact

    People would come by at the end of the day and leave in tears because of how much love and compassion they experienced.

  • (4/5) Results

    We’ve traveled over 124,000 miles on 300 tour dates and started 25,000 mental health conversations.

  • (5/5) Life Change

    Through these conversations, people’s lives were changed. They chose life over suicide, stepped away from addictions dumping their alcohol in the parking lot, and found hope for their lives. Photo: Julie 1 year after deciding to choose life over suicide. Watch Julie’s story here.

Social Media

When Covid hit and the world went online, we needed to make a way to bring our “table” to the online “venue”. So we innovated technology that let us go to where the fans were gathering - social media. We added our Support Wall into the comment sections on popular platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and more, and fans could comment about their struggles, and we’d connect them to volunteers who would write the same kind of encouraging replies.

We’ve established over 200 partnerships with bands that have led to over 27,000 mental health conversations through social media.

Lives that have been changed

👇 Testimonials

  • Someone wrote on an Instagram post: “I fantasize about the end of my life almost daily, and I wish I could articulate why.”

    After our reply, they wrote: “thank you for helping me articulate my feelings. It is extremely frustrating to not know “why do you feel this way?” And that is why I rarely talk about it. It is easy to forget that I don’t have to pretend my negative thoughts don’t exist. It normally comes out in the form of morbid humor. I hope you have someone to talk to the same way you responded to me.”

  • By meeting people where they are, we can reach people who aren’t opening up elsewhere. This person wrote, “I haven’t done anything like this, and past me would have never thought I would do something like this. I keep wanting to reach out to something or someone, but I don’t feel like I can talk to anyone. All my friends don’t even like me or want to talk to me. I feel like I’m alone. I just want it all to end.”

  • A user originally wrote about losing their father unexpectedly and the grief and guilt they experienced processing the pain. After our replies, the user wrote back, “Holy crap, you nailed everything. Reading this is bringing actual tears of relief and a sense that people get it.”

HeartSupport Fest

Part of the natural evolution of our work with bands to reach their fans and our work in the festival space was to create an event where mental health wasn’t just something that happened in one tent in a sea of other vendors, but something that was saturated through the entire venue.

Location
Orlando, FL

Year
02/18/23 to 02/19/23

Goals

Band Support Forum

Imagine bands owning their own HeartSupport forum. They encourage their fans to open up and support one another, and the bands themselves reply. We want to equip 15 bands with these forums in 2024.

2X Our Forum Replies

We’ve built the ability to get 10k people to open up, but we need to be able to scale our reply teams to support the demand (50k replies).

HeartSupport Fest 2024

We would like to do another festival in 2024, and we want to deepen our on-the-grounds impact and help 40% of attendees engage with their mental health.

Re-Launch Action Groups

After people open up about their struggles, they need support in rebuilding their lives, healing, and progressing. Groups add depth to the support we offer, and we want to launch 20 community groups in 2024.

Contribute to the mission

Joining the Team

We’re recruiting 360 new monthly donors and 180 people to join our reply teams. How would you like to contribute?

Become a Monthly Donor

  • Support HeartSupport’s sustainability monthly

  • Help people talk about their struggles for the first time

  • Fund supportive replies that change lives

  • Expand partnerships with bands to reach more fans

  • Receive monthly reports of your impact

  • Receive monthly testimonials of life change

All donations are 100% tax-deductible.

Join one of our Reply Teams

  • Meet with other compassionate people every week

  • Write replies that change lives

  • Grow in your empathy and listening skills

  • Receive regular training to continue your own education

  • Feel charged and purposeful by supporting others

  • Receive heartfelt “thank you” messages from people you impact

  • Receive monthly emails with stats on your own impact