Shared voices, shared experience, shared hope. Everyone’s mental health journey is different, but by sharing your voice, your thoughts and your suggestions, you can break down the stigma, normalize conversations about mental health, and help others find practical solutions to common challenges. Sharing your voice can encourage others to seek support when they need it, and SAVE LIVES.

What coping mechanisms work for you and might help others? What resources have you found helpful? What resources would you like to see in your college, school or workplace? What challenges have you encountered when seeking support? What changes do you want to see in the way mental illness is addressed in our schools, hospitals and communities?

Sharing your experience can help us to identify the support services that young adults really want and need, and to advocate for those services to be prioritized in our schools, colleges, medical centers and communities. Administrators are very aware of the need to address mental health issues in their institutions. Together, we can help them turn that awareness into an empathetic culture and real, practical, support.

Use this form or email us to share your voice. We will use the BrightLove platform as a safe place to make your voice heard and change lives.

We plan to build a network of peer-led BrightLove Clubs in colleges, schools and local communities, with in-person or virtual meetings, social media groups, events and activities, all aimed at:

• fostering emotional well-being;
• bringing to light shared experiences and challenges;
• providing opportunities for supportive social interaction and friendship;
• sharing information about available resources for help and normalizing the use of those resources; and
• hosting therapy dog visits, concerts, and music therapy events on campus.

The BrightLove Project would provide guidelines, suggestions and materials, access to advisors, and a small grant to cover club costs.

We know first hand the incredible comfort that dogs with the right temperament and training can provide in stressful situations. We would like to see therapy dog visits become a regular part of campus mental health services:

• Therapy dogs visits during orientation can and do help freshman students dealing with homesickness.
• Regular therapy dog dorm visits would promote ongoing emotional well-being and encourage vulnerable students to engage and find support.
• Therapy dogs hanging out in designated spaces in the library or other departments during midterms and finals week can help diffuse stress and improve academic outcomes;
• Therapy dogs can bring a very special kind of solace and support to students and staff impacted by a campus emergency.

We will work with college administrators, students, and therapy dog owners and organizations to facilitate and fund safe visits on a regular basis or as needed.

Share your voice and help us fight stigma using any form of creative expression that works for you! From opera to nail art, let your creativity tell your story and help us raise awareness that, however lonely someone’s mental health journey feels, they, like you, like so many of us, are truly not alone.

Use this form or email us to share jpegs, pdfs or videos for us to showcase on the BrightLove platforms.

You can also take the fight against stigma into your communities with on-stage performances – concerts, open mic nights, dance, theatre, poetry slams, improv, art exhibitions and installations. We’d like to help! Let us know what you are planning and let’s find out how Tommy Cable’s BrightLove Project can support your effort.

For many freshman students, accessing and managing prescription medications on top of all their new routines and responsibilities can be extremely challenging – yet failure to take meds correctly, or to identify and resolve the side-effects of a new medication, can have devastating negative effects on physical and mental health, and undermine a student’s ability to thrive in their new community.
We will work with colleges, prescribers, pharmacists, students and families to identify and implement strategies to support students trying to manage prescription medications in the college environment.

Our goal is to ensure that young adults can find and safely access effective mental health support and psychiatric treatment on campus and in their doctor’s office. We will:

• Advocate for more mental health staffing and education in schools and colleges.
• Collaborate with college administrators, student representatives and parent networks to mobilize demand and find funding for better provision of services on campus.
• Research existing college mental health support programs to identify best practice solutions.
• Lobby local, state and national representatives to prioritize community mental health services and stop incarcerating people for having an untreated mental illness.
• Highlight the critical shortage of qualified pyschiatric providers which is fuelling the treatment gap. Explore solutions, and advocate for them.
• Find funding for grants and scholarships for students and health professionals pursuing careers in young adult mental health.

Because of the undeniable therapeutic benefits that pets can provide, students diagnosed with mental illness are increasingly bringing dogs and other pets to college as Emotional Support Animals, only to find that the restrictions and responsibilities make their ESA more of a burden than a support. It doesn’t have to be like that. We will:

• Advocate for, and help facilitate, campus ESA support networks that create a pool of student volunteers (especially students who miss their own pets) who would be willing to help walk, feed, and hang out with ESAs as needed when the ESA owner is not able to be a full-time pet parent.
• Advocate for ESA owners to be allowed to designate a “backup” student who can bring the ESA into their room if necessary, and
• Advocate for dorm leadership  to be allowed to designate an ESA dog-friendly common area and time if other students are agreeable, so that ESA dogs are not entirely confined to their owner’s room, and can share the love.

If we can make it happen, which we will, The BrightLove Project’s Dog-Walking program would link young adults in our peer network with local elderly or incapacitated dog-owners to provide free dog-walking. The concept is a win-win: vulnerable dog owners get their dogs walked for them, and dog-walking volunteers enjoy the myriad mental health and physical benefits of getting outside, getting exercise, interacting with dogs and knowing they are adding value by helping someone in need in their community.  

We would like to bring mental illness awareness education into our middle and high schools. Programs like the Understanding Our Differences disabilities awareness program show us that when K-12 students are given an opportunity to address our differences as part of the curriculum, they learn to view them through a lens of empathy and support instead of fear and prejudice.
More than 1 in 2 adolescents live with mental illness. Education is key to recognizing warning signs and getting early diagnoses, potentially saving lives.