When one of your friends doesn’t seem like themselves, when life seems bleak or when you want to talk to someone but the conversation seems too difficult or too awkward, these are the things we don’t say. But Hope for the Day encourages this discussion and faces it head-on with its workshop The Things We Don’t Say.

The Things We Don’t Say is an educational program run by Hope for the Day, a non-profit organization centered around open and honest conversations about mental health, mental health education, and proactive suicide prevention.

The Things We Don’t Say is at the core of Hope for the Day’s mission — having the tough, honest conversations about mental health and stigma. The peer-led, clinically backed program is designed to teach people about proactive suicide prevention and how to look out for their own mental health and those around them.

The program has been around in some form since 2016 but its current format came about in 2018 when Hope for the Day’s Education Director Mike Vinopal came on board. Vinopal leads the programs and trains others to do the same so they can continue to spread the message of hope.

“Through peer-to-peer proactive prevention we can disrupt the highest risk factors before the crisis stage and that just draws it all back to our core mentality that if we make it ok to talk about mental health we can prevent further loss of life,” Vinopal said.

During the hour-long sessions, the presenter breaks down why mental health matters and how to help ourselves and others. But to start that conversation, they need to address what’s holding people back from talking about it — stigma.

“[Stigma] continues to perpetuate an inclination to be silent when you’re struggling for fear of judgment or shame or guilt or whatever it happens to be keeping you silent,” Vinopal said.

The Things We Don’t Say makes the discussion on mental health accessible, according to Vinopal. It strips away the medical vernacular and gives people the tools and vocabulary to have these conversations on their own. As it’s free and only an hour-long, there’s no cost barrier and a minimal time commitment.

Due to COVID-19, there’s no location barrier either — Hope for the Day adapted the program to be completely virtual. Once a month participants can join a Zoom call to learn more about mental health meaning anyone with a device and internet connection can be a part of the conversation.

Before the pandemic, Vinopal said they were “restricting ourselves to in-person education opportunities,” but the shift has given them “more opportunities to be in more places” without having to leave the house.

With a new level of accessibility comes a variety of people contributing to the conversations. Although it’s the same information with each presentation, Joel Frieders, Hope for the Day’s head of Public Policy and Development, said each one is a unique experience.

“Every single one is slightly different because you’re talking to a different group of people [with] different feedback but you’re always hitting those main points,” Frieders said.

Frieders teaches The Things We Don’t Say as well as a specialized version of the program designed for those in the food and beverage industry called 86 The Silence. The specialized experience differs from the original in that it incorporates the industry language into the presentation. Using the vernacular people are already familiar with allows them to be more comfortable and the information to make a bigger impact.

In addition to 86 The Silence, Project RED Team is designed for veterans, active duty and their families and Spark the Conversation is for those in the cannabis industry. Each is led by those in the specific communities.

“Being able to have that background and have that peer-to-peer conversation with people and talk about it they're more apt to understand and internalize that information,” Alia Reichert, who leads Spark the Conversation, said.

Reichert is a surrogate for Hope for the Day. A surrogate is the highest level of the agents of impact, the community of volunteers representing Hope for the Day’s work in various ways around the world. This makes her just one of many starting these peer-led conversations. Vinopal said the surrogate track is for, “If someone is at a specific intersection of a community that they’re passionate about impacting or they’re just passionate about championing our education [and] sharing their lived experience.”

Each individual who teaches the program adds their own experiences of mental health making it personal and vulnerable. This gives the participants an example of vulnerability so they can absorb the information differently.

“What makes the education impactful is when you take your personal experiences with mental health and suicide and you impart them with the curriculum that we’ve got at Hope for the Day,” Frieders said.

Those interested can register for a The Things We Don’t Say workshop here.