![]() Even today, with mental health awareness being seen more receptively than ever before, a suck-it-up-soldier mentality lingers and allows stigmas to remain. There are a lot of eyes watching and a lot of pressure bearing down, and he was candid in telling me, being a silver medalist, there were times early on in his career as an Olympian that “it didn’t stop me from trying to commit suicide.”Ĭompounding the problem, he said, was in the 1970s and ‘80s, you were taught to be tough and not show any sort of weakness. Then if you’re bronze medalist, chances are you’re probably grateful that you even had something to bring home.”Įmotions run the gamut from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows during competition, Louganis told me. “If you’re the silver medalist, then you’re just short. ![]() “If you think about it, if you get the gold medal at the Olympics, that’s what’s expected,” he said of the stratospheric expectations as an Olympian. Louganis described the immense pressure to win essentially being gold or bust. ![]() Being an athlete at arguably the highest level of sport in the Olympics takes a toll on one’s mental health because of the pressure to win big. One high-profile fan of Aura is famed Olympic gold medalist diver Greg Louganis, who told me in an exclusive interview earlier this week via videoconference that mental health is something that’s “really is very important to me.” He called himself “innately shy,” which he attributed to as incongruent for someone who competed in his first Olympics as a 16-year-old adolescent. “We get these kinds of emails every single day from our members,” he said. Daniel even noted the company has heard from people who say they were able to wean themselves off sleeping pills, as well as how Aura has changed the relationships with their spouses and their families for their better. The personalized recommendations are also highly appreciated. Everything someone could possibly need or want is only a few taps away. Daniel said one of the most common pieces of feedback they get is how awesome it is that Aura is an all-inclusive entity. “Personally, I have been working on it every single day myself.”ĭaniel seconded his brother, saying “we truly want to change how the world takes care of themselves through these cultural changes by providing all the knowledge our coaches and therapists provide.”įeedback-wise, Aura has proven extremely popular with users. “I believe that this is really a lifelong journey,” he said. For his part, Steve said he feels, culturally speaking, “people are being much more open” and proactive in acknowledging mental health for the legitimate health concern it is. Both Daniel and Steve shared sentiments about the stigmas of mental health slowly but surely being ripped away, particularly amidst the backdrop of the pandemic. It’s an incredibly poignant topic for me, one close to my heart as I’ve spent my entire life battling mental health episodes with some combination of therapy and medication. I’ve gone on the record many times in this space to say mental health struggles can be as disabling as any physical condition. Daniel said Aura was built partly with this in mind they wanted these experts to have a place in which they should share their knowledge and diverse outlooks on life with the wider world. Many of them were already looking to for ways to do this, so Aura is a natural extension for their aspirations. Topics include hypnotherapy, occupational therapy, relationships, yoga, and more.įrom the coach point of view, Daniel added the idea behind it was to give them a platform atop of which they could augment what they do offline clinical settings and translate it to the internet. In addition to audio content, Aura users are able to schedule one-on-one sessions with their favorite experts. The team has recruited coaches and therapists from all over the world to lend their expertise (and their voices) towards sessions designed to help guide people on their respective journeys to better mental health. There’s no shortage of like-minded mental wellness apps on the App Store and the Google Play Store, but none have the coaching functionality of Aura. “We thought we there has to be a better way for anyone in the world to take care of their mental health,” he said. Of the “billons” of people who “probably” would benefit from some sort of mental healthcare, only 50 million of those actually receive help. Steve said one of the things that stuck out to them is the sheer expense involved in obtaining therapy. Steve told me he and his brother “took a hard look” at the mental health industry when they were getting Aura off the ground.
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