I am doing my best to ensure that Mental Gravity does not turn me into a grifter, a tech-bro, or a self-help guru.
The world of mental health and wellbeing is currently rife with people looking for a quick buck or a moment of attention. We have all seen the simplistic rules for a better life and the easy solutions to complex problems that lack a single skerrick of science to back them up. Often, these ideas are wielded like a heavy hammer, repeatedly hitting a slogan until it wears you down.
On paper, I might look like I am joining them. I am trying to earn a living, I am launching an app, and I am talking about self-help. I even have a podcast. After a decade working quietly in mental health promotion at places like Prevention United and Beyond Blue, have I finally given in to the dark side?
The truth is that Mental Gravity is based on my own pet theory, which is not yet a "gold-standard" evidence-based model. But in the field of mental health promotion, those gold standards are not always available.
The entire field is only about 25 years old. When Betty Kitchener and Tony Jorm developed Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) in the early 2000s, they did not start with a mountain of data. They started with a hunch and a deep commitment to science.
Mental Gravity begins in that same place, it is a well-informed hunch grounded in research ranging from neuroscience to fundamental physics. The next step is to test and evaluate that hunch in a real-world setting using scientific rigor, which is exactly what we are doing.
There is one major difference between my journey and the founders of MHFA: I am launching Mental Gravity as a for-profit enterprise.
When I co-founded the charity Prevention United in 2018, I saw how challenging it was to get a non-profit off the ground without major seed funding or the ability to work for years as a volunteer. I have a young family and am investing my own money into this startup, so while I would love for Mental Gravity to be a non-profit one day, it is currently not feasible.
However, being a grifter is more about how you earn money than how much you earn. It comes down to whether you have checks, balances, and a genuine commitment to the science.
Grifters trust their own good intentions too much. To avoid that trap, I have convened an Advisory Panel of experts to act as guardrails for the business:
Additionally, Professor Brennan Spiegel provides medical and scientific grounding from his work at Cedars-Sinai Hospital. We are working together to develop the field of Biogravitational Medicine, ensuring that Mental Gravity remains a mind-based application of credible scientific ideas.
I am launching a mental fitness app, but I am no grifter. I humbly embrace the possibility that I may be wrong, and I believe that science is the only way to know if something actually works. Mental Gravity is a work in progress, and I am committed to building the evidence every step of the way.