Bringing Face It to the Mayo
One of the goals Bill and I set for ourselves in the past was to get Face It to the point where other mental health and medical professionals would see Face It as a “Thought Leader” with regard to helping men who deal with depression. While I think we arrived at that place awhile back, yesterday I had the chance to present on the Face It approach to over 200 professionals at the Mayo Clinic. The response to what Face It is doing from these professionals at the Mayo was overwhelmingly positive!
An obvious limitation to some of the services delivered by amazing institutions such as the Mayo, is that they are constricted by the fact that they only get to work with their patients for a limited time. As I shared with the audience, at Face It we are not limited by time (in fact we have many men who have been participating in Face It activities for years) which allows us to develop very powerful friendships with the men we serve. It is through these friendships that we are able to support (and push!) these men in the often challenging task of reaching recovery. As one audience member said to me, “I feel lucky if I get to see a patient 2 or 3 times which makes it very difficult to build any kind of relationship with them.” This is in direct contrast to Face It where our doors are always open to guys and our ability to build a meaningful relationship is endless!
The professionals at the Mayo are also limited by the fact that they can only provide services within the 4 walls of their clinic. At Face It we are only limited by our imagination. Whether we are at a Twins game, up north camping, gathered around the fire at a retreat, or sitting at Perkins for breakfast, we are able to provide services wherever we might be. The power in this freedom is that the guys get to choose where they want to get their help, which is a really big deal to many!
It was a true honor to be invited to Mayo to speak and it was really fun to see just how our approaches are working to help men overcome depression and to be validated by so many attendees. We will continue to build our approaches to help men and I promise we will continue to share our ideas to any and all who will listen!
Take care!
Mark