Jewel has been a long-time advocate of making mental health support easily available to anyone who needs it – and now she’s taking her mission to the metaverse.
The beloved singer-songwriter has been named co-founder and chief strategy officer of Innerworld, a virtual reality wellness space where people can use anonymous avatars to access expert guides and mental health resources.
Here’s Jewel’s avatar:
And yes, it’s all free, though there are extras such as group therapy sessions which would require payment.
“When I found Innerworld, I knew it was an incredible solution to our mental health crisis. We need millions more therapists in the world to help everyone who needs it. It’s simply not possible and with today’s mental health crisis, we are beyond the luxury of merely raising awareness around mental health,” she says in a release.
“We must turn to safe, affordable, scalable and proven tools to help everyone who needs it. The time for talking about the problem is over- we need solutions.”
Jewel grew up in Alaska but left home as a teenager due to an abusive situation. She suffered panic attacks, an eating disorder, depression and significant trauma and eventually agoraphobia, the fear of leaving one’s home. It took some time for her to develop a set of tools which would help her rewire her emotions and mental state and teach her to not only survive, but thrive.
“Meditation is an important first step to feeling better, but when it is combined with scientifically proven tools that help change behaviours and reframe thoughts, it has the power to be truly transformative,” Jewel continues.
“I’m excited to bring to Innerworld the skill-based peer-to-peer mental health tools that we’ve been developing the last 21 years for high-performance athletes, artists, executives and at-risk youth. Combining these tools with Cognitive Behavioural Immersion™ (CBI) and meditation enables us to provide practical skills to transform lives at a much more scalable and affordable rate than traditional one-on-one models, all without compromising results.”
According to Innerworld’s website, members will have unlimited access to hundreds of events including discussion groups on mindfulness, grief, healing from depression and more.
The platform was founded by Noah Robinson, who developed CBI during his clinical psychology PhD research at Vanderbilt University (as a protege of the creator of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Dr. Aaron Beck).
In addition to Jewel’s musical success, she has been heavily involved in the mental health space, co-founding the Inspiring Children Foundation to deliver life-saving tools to at-risk youth in Las Vegas, as well as creating SELLA, a language arts curriculum for schools that incorporates social and emotional learning and mental health practices.
Check out Innerworld to learn more.
(Feature Image Credit: Featureflash Photo Agency/Shutterstock)