Robert Mason, founder and CEO of Letters Against Depression talks about ways to handle and communicate about depression. As well as resources and ways to reach out for those currently afflicted by the rise in depression and anxiety resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.
How did you get the idea for Letters?
Mason: It actually came about from my own experiences and my own struggles. So, I went through a very bad spiral of depression many years ago, and when I finally started to come out of it and getting better I had this overwhelming need. I needed to reach out to others. I needed to be able to let people know things that I was hoping to hear during that time.
And do you mind telling me a little bit about your struggle with depression?
Mason: Yeah, actually, I’ve battled it for my whole life. And between depression and anxiety and other mental illnesses I’ve just had a lot of ups and downs and nothing really triggered per se or caused my big spiral down. It was just everything happening at the same time and the perfect storm of events. And I didn’t know how to get out of it. Part of my personality, I have social anxiety so it’s hard to reach out to people to let people know how I’m doing. So, I was constantly hiding it, pushing it down which just kept making it worse.
When people don’t experience depression and when they’ve never experienced it can you tell me what that feeling is like?
Mason: Lost. For me, it was having no energy, no motivation, always just trapped inside my head, thinking ahead of all the bad things that are going to happen and then just this overall feeling of dread. I am just not wanting to get up or do anything or just trapped is the best way I can describe it.
When you think about the negative voices in your head and what they would say of bad things that would happen, what would be like three examples of that?
Mason: So, the biggest one is that I was alone in this. That I really was. No one cared, that no one needed to be a part of it, that I was a burden on people. That was a big one. Also, that I didn’t matter, that you know really I was inconsequential. Like people would be better off without me which again I know are all lies. Things like that would go through my mind constantly.
And so, then what helped you through your depression?
Mason: For me the biggest thing was writing. I found a love of writing that I never knew I had. I started off by writing myself – writing in a journal. So, I was keeping kind of track of how I was feeling each day, just getting things out – because not being able to talk to people it was hard to get those out. So, the first step was writing in a journal.
And you’re a numbers guy so you didn’t link that you’re a writer.
Mason: Exactly. And I’ve always been pushed to the numbers side. That was my solace before. And then when I started to keep a journal and I really started to keep it for the wrong reasons. Really I wanted a way to explain to people in a way that I couldn’t tell. So that was my voice. So, I wrote that. And then I started writing letters to myself. I started to write a letter and it would be like to my past self or to my future self to kind of give perspective and help myself through it. And I was writing pages upon pages hours per day as I was finding it was a way to help me. It was helping me heal through it.
And then so letters helped. Your writing helped you. And was that the big a-ha moment for you?
Mason: Yeah. So, once I started with the writing it was helping me break that spiral. I was coming out of it. I was feeling better and I was able to see the lies that my brain was telling me that I was alone in this. I didn’t matter. That people would be better off without me. And once I started to see those lies as what they were, lies, I really wanted to find a way to reach out to other people to let them know as well. Because if you keep that hope and you make it through, you’ll see that a lot of what your brain is telling you is a lie. And I needed to come up with some way that I could tell people. I didn’t want to do something on a community level. I didn’t want to do something on a state level. I needed to do something that anyone that was struggling would have an ability to reach out and be able to hear you know hope and support coming through.
How did you find the first person to write a letter to?
Mason: When I decided what I wanted to do, I’m very organized, and I wanted to make sure I did it right. So, I kind of came up with the framework of what I wanted to do. I planned it all, out created the organization and then I simply created a Facebook post and asked my friends and family to share it. It was my first announcement to almost everybody of what I was doing. We had a website set up. We had a way to go about this. And at the time it was just me. I was writing all the letters. And I just let anyone know if you were struggling and needed to reach out, go here and request a letter and I’ll write to you. And that night we had our first person who was a friend of a friend who had seen a friend, a family member share it, went on to sign up for a letter. And we’re still writing to that person today.
Do you remember that letter?
Mason: I do. I do. I was so nervous because here it was. I had been planning and prepping. And then it’s like now I need to put this into practice. Because one of the things that we do, it’s not a form letter. We’re not writing the same thing to every person because everyone is different. We want to take your story so when you request a letter you tell us about yourself, your healing journey, your anything you want, your likes, dislikes, so that we can use that in a letter to make it more personal. Every letter is meant for you. So, when I got that first request in I’m looking at it like OK. It’s a little bit different than what I’ve gone through. How can I take what I’ve done and try to create hope and support to be able to get to them? And I wrote I think it was a four or five-page letter. And when I was done, there was so many things I still wanted to say. Once I started writing I just didn’t want to stop. And then we started that night getting more requests in. And within a week it had crossed over the Atlantic Ocean. We were getting requests from Europe just from people sharing on Facebook. It was absolutely amazing.
How many years ago was that?
Mason: It was just over five years ago, October of 2014.
And how many people now have you written a letter to, not you personally, but total?
Mason: We have sent out letters to just over 2,000 people to date from all over the world. I think we’re at 60 countries now around the world.
How many volunteers do you have writing?
Mason: Almost 2,000 as well which is amazing. At first it was just me writing because I had to find some way to keep the information private. You know one of the things that we do is everyone has to write a personal letter but how do you do that and get it to them if I can’t give you their address or last name? I was able to create a process that works that people are able to go read the stories without the personally-identifiable information so it’s just first name and information like that and then send it to us so we can send it. So, once we found a safe way that we can get volunteers to join in, people connected to this. People that we wrote letters to wanted to write. And then people just wanting to reach out and talk about their experiences or just give hope and support.
Of those 2000 volunteers how many probably volunteered after they received a letter?
Mason: Right now it’s probably about 15 to 20 percent have received a letter before. And they’ve received multiple letters when they finally have said hey these are really helping me. And I want to help others the same way and kind of return the favor and write as well.
What do you think it is about getting something that’s not a text and not an email? What’s the special part about it?
Mason: There’s so much meaning to it and multiple pieces. One, writing letters is a lost art. We don’t get good mail a lot of times unless it’s an Amazon package in the mail. And it means so much that someone sat there, they wrote it out, no matter what your handwriting looks like, you’ve written out this letter meant only for them. You’ve spent the time and then mailed it. And that whole process I think speaks volumes in terms of the impact that it has for people. It is a lifeline that I think we just don’t get anymore. We don’t write letters. So, it makes it special. And then the fact that it’s personal and meant only for you. We’ve taken your information that you’ve given us in your bio, and we’ve been able to tailor this letter to you. So you know whether it’s giving you specific hope and support around what you’re doing or just talking about some of the loves that you have to again help you find some of that happiness and joy that you’ve been missing for a little bit.
So, the main goal with letters is not really therapy but hope.
Mason: Absolutely. It’s about hope and shared experiences. A lot of people like myself don’t talk to others about what they’re going through. They feel it’s a personal issue. They’re going to seem weak or it’s none of the above. Because we’re not able to share in that we don’t get those shared experiences. I don’t find other people that come and say I’m going through the same thing and then be able to lean on each other when needed. And I think it helps so much to show you’re not alone in this. People are going through a lot of the same things over and over that we can connect those people. And you can see tangibly in that letter someone else went through this. They’re doing great. They’re thriving. And now they’re trying to help me. And that gives me that light at the end of the tunnel that I can get to. I can reach that point. It’s tangible and right there.
You were saying that, and I was thinking you know probably especially, I mean just stereotypically, men do not share feelings. Women, we get together we can share a lot. What do you feel like your demographic is? Do you know?
Mason: Absolutely. It’s skewing heavily towards women. And it has been since the beginning. But more and more now men are able to talk about it. It is becoming a normal conversation which is amazing to see. When I started this, incidentally the first person that wrote in was a guy. And again, it was one of those couldn’t talk about it to anyone else. It does give you that ability to kind of have that conversation on your own terms with a stranger almost that you’re not being judged. So, I think that helps. But it still is very hard for men to reach out. For myself, I mean I was going through so much and my family didn’t know. I held it in so much. I would, anytime that I was away from them, struggle. And then I would put on this blank face when I was with them just trying to pretend like things were okay. And so, I know exactly what that’s like. And I do say any of the guys that are struggling, don’t be afraid to reach out. You know there’s no – you’re not weak. You’re – none of that is true. You know everyone needs that help sometimes or just that ability to connect with someone that’s going through the same thing.
Have you got an increase in people coming to your website since the whole pandemic?
Mason: We have a lot of extra people or a lot more people that are requesting letters since the pandemic began. There is a sense of loneliness right now. People aren’t able to get that social connection that kind of helps. It doesn’t fix things, but it does help. And without that right now it’s becoming a lot more obvious that people are struggling. We’ve seen a lot of people reach out for letters. But at the same time, we’ve seen even more people reach out wanting to write letters, people wanting to do something while they’re sitting at home that can help people – to help give that hope and support.
I think what was cool too was Yasmin’s letter, different colored lines, decorated over the top. I mean that just feels good when you get that.
Mason: Absolutely. We encourage artistic as much as possible in that. Colors are great. It stands out. Everyone has their own style which I think makes it unique as well. For myself when I write I like to write in regular pen and then I go through and color with a marker highlighter and try to bold out the important words, hope, support, things will get better, to help drive that message across. Writing their name in color at the top is a great way as well. It personalizes and shows again this is a form letter. This isn’t some generic email that you’re getting or something. This is specifically tailored for you, your name big, bold, right at the top.
Now once you get connected with somebody, let’s say I write, and Yasmin connects me and writes me. Can I request another letter from Yasmin or does it come from other people?
Mason: Typically, it comes from other people. Once you have a letter written to you, you kind of go back into the portal for people to peruse, find and then claim to write to you. But depending on the information that the person that wrote the letter included you can become pen pals. So, if Yasmin in this case felt comfortable giving her email address or her regular address, then when the recipient gets that they have a way to contact them back. And then they could write if they wanted outside of the system or they would still get the letters as well from other volunteers. And if Yasmin wanted she’s more than welcome to claim that person again to give a second letter if she just wants to touch base again or make sure everything’s going well.
Now where can you go to get a letter? How long do you usually have to wait? What if you’re never chosen and then I get even more depressed?
Mason: We do write to absolutely everybody. So, you can go to Lettersagainst.org and there’s a simple form to request your letter. From there what we do is that we have two kinds of letters we send which is the initial letter, the first letter that you would receive, and then the continued contact or the follow up ones. We have a core group of people that work on initial letters. These are the people that are writing the best, most amazing letters that we want to have as that first contact. So, your story and everything goes right to the top when you’re brand new. And we match you with the perfect volunteer that we can find at that time to write to you. So, we definitely would write to absolutely anyone. Typically, it does take a little bit depending on where in the world this initial letter writer is. If you’re requesting – we’ve had people request letters from New Zealand where the person that’s writing to them is Australia. So that letter goes from Australia to here in Florida. We then turn around and mail it out to New Zealand. So that could take you know a couple of weeks, three weeks, four weeks sometimes to get to them based on the mailing time.
So, do all letters come to you first and do you look at all of them?
Mason: Then proofread every letter to make sure first of all that it’s safe. We don’t want to send anything that’s going to be detrimental to the person. Sometimes people have the best intentions. And then you’re reading it over and you’re like that’s not good. That’s not appropriate or not a valid response to this. So, we do check to make sure first. We also want to make sure that your information is safe. So, your address, your last name, things like that we don’t want to give to the recipient. So, all of the letters come to us. We’ll proofread and then mail it out.
Do you do any training for the volunteers?
Mason: We have a set of instructions both through email and on our portal that we have. The volunteers go to a portal to find who they’re going to write to. There we have all the information. We try to keep it as generic as possible though because we want the letters to be unique. We don’t want to tell you we want this, this and this in there because then they all become the same. It’s kind of they follow the same model. So, we really want it to be open-ended. You write whatever you feel or want to convey at that moment to that person and send it in. And then we give feedback. So, once we get it we’ll read it. And then everyone once their letter is read and we mail it, the portal will send them an email back that gives them feedback on their letter, let’s them know, maybe they wrote in pencil, and we’re like, ‘hey with the mailing process it smudges so you might want to use pen.’ We try to give as much constructive feedback as we can to make them as good as we can but then not go through and script what they’re going to write.
And is this all volunteer for you? Is it volunteer for everybody?
Mason: This is volunteer for absolutely everybody. We don’t have employees. We don’t pay salaries. A 100 percent of anything that we get donations wise goes to stamps and costs. So, everyone that’s involved in this is donating their time 100 percent to helping people in need.
How much does it cost to run a year?
Mason: Right now stamps alone are a few thousand dollars. We’re probably running roughly about seventy-five hundred dollars in expenses right now per year. But that includes the mailing. We do birthday cards for everyone throughout the year. So, one of the things when you send in is the month and day. We don’t need to know the year. But the month and day that you were born so we know to send you a card on your special day. And then we also do holiday cards in December for everyone just again as another point of contact to say someone is thinking about you and wanting to send best wishes.
That’s really nice. Did you ever think that it would get this big when you started that first letter?
Mason: No. When I started it, I expected it was going to be a very intimate small group of people that I would be able to reach out to. I never envisioned having 10 volunteers. You know the first time someone asked to volunteer I was kind of shocked. I’m like this is kind of my burden to bear. I don’t want to be a burden for you all. So, I don’t know. We tried to make it work with the few by emailing just random assignments and saying, ‘hey would this work?’ But more and more people really connected, and it’s just taken off with the people that connect to it. The more people that are able to see the power of what we do, getting some of this feedback, people will reply and say, “your letter saved my life today, that I was going through the worst of times and then out of nowhere, I didn’t expect this lifeline and this person that reached out that meant so much it changed the course of how I was feeling.” And it’s so powerful. We keep getting that message over and over. We haven’t gotten that two, three, four times. We’ve had it dozens of times over the years. And it’s just amazing to see that it is growing, and that the conversation is changing because that means people are feeling they can reach out. And we’re able to help people in ways that you can’t go and see a therapist for. You know this is helping on a different level.
Perfect. Thank you.
Interview conducted by Ivanhoe Broadcast News.
END OF INTERVIEW
This information is intended for additional research purposes only. It is not to be used as a prescription or advice from Ivanhoe Broadcast News, Inc. or any medical professional interviewed. Ivanhoe Broadcast News, Inc. assumes no responsibility for the depth or accuracy of physician statements. Procedures or medicines apply to different people and medical factors; always consult your physician on medical matters.
If you would like more information, please contact:
Robert P. Mason
Letters Against Depression
Sign up for a free weekly e-mail on Medical Breakthroughs called First to Know by clicking here
