Mind your Wellness: Supporting Mental Health and Emotional Wellbeing for Mental Health Awareness Month

Pinterest is committed to advancing emotional wellbeing and deliberately engineering a more inspiring internet for all. To celebrate and inspire during Mental Health Awareness Month, Pinterest is elevating the voice and work of our inspirational Creators, Purpose Partners, and launching our newest Pinterest Havens, “A Whole Mood”, inviting everyone to “Mind Your Wellness” both online and in real life. 

“We see emotional wellbeing as core to everything we do at Pinterest, and essential to our mission of bringing people inspiration to live a life they love. That’s true not just during Mental Health Awareness Month, but year round – both on-platform and offline. And that commitment cuts across so many parts of our company and platform – including not only the remarkable efforts of nonprofits and NGOs through our Purpose Partnerships, but also the incredible work of Creators and Pinners to promote nourishing content that supports emotional health and wellness across communities.” – Ari Simon, Head of Social Impact and Philanthropy at Pinterest.

Pinterest is a resource for Pinners to find ways to relieve stress and anxiety. Searches about learning and improving mental health started to rise during the pandemic and have continued to grow throughout the past year.* 

People turn to Pinterest to find encouragement and alleviate stress or anxiety:

• struggling mentally quotes searches increased by 9X
• feeling stressed searches increased by 8X
• anxiety affirmations searches increased by 4X
• tough day quotes encouragement searches increased by 3X
• positive quotes lockscreen searches increased by 3X
• how to support someone mental health searches increased by 3X

Pinners are discovering wellness techniques that work:

• emotional awareness searches increased by 22X
• self soothing techniques searches increased by 3X
• healthy mental health art searches increased by 9X
• yoga for stress searches increased by +74%
• meditation garden ideas searches increased by 3X
• mental health bulletin board ideas searches increased by 13X

Throughout May, we are answering Pinners’ desire for  more content about mental health and emotional wellbeing from a range of creators and world renowned experts who will be highlighted on Pinterest surfaces and our Mind Your Wellness group board. 

We’re also partnering with organizations like the Mental Health Coalition (MHC) in the US, a Purpose Partner, to amplify informative and inspiring content.The organization will join dozens of Creators in sharing their ideas and best practices on mindfulness, living with intention and digital wellness. This content can be found in our Mind Your Wellness group board, including our newest Pinterest Havens: A Whole Mood.

Beginning May 9, Charitha Chandran who plays Edwina Sharma in Season 2 of Bridgerton will launch “Mind Your Wellness with Charitha Chandran,” a five-part Pinterest Original series focused specifically on mental health for the South Asian community. Each day, the actress will share how she intentionally cultivates emotional wellbeing through food, gratitude, therapy, exercise and reading.

In addition, actress Marsai Martin will take people along on her own wellness journey as she tries new wellness practices and learns from experts on Pinterest TV. 

“It’s been empowering for me to speak up about my challenges with mental health. That’s why I’m teaming up with Pinterest for Mental Health Awareness Month to encourage people to check in with themselves and discover new ways to take care of their mental health. I love that Pinterest is focusing on mental and emotional well-being, and that’s why it’s the perfect place to engage with my community and share a few ideas that have inspired me!” - Marsai Martin

Offline and in-person, Pinterest and MHC will host Pinterest Havens: A Whole Mood, an immersive experience that explores color and mood to build emotional awareness and resilience. The activation, which takes place on May 3 and 4 in New York City, will showcase six different installations and will feature speakers including iconic fashion clothing designer and Mental Health Coalition founder Kenneth Cole, Stop the Shame founder Shanti Das, and experts from wellness concept HealHaus, to name a few. This experience was brought to life by brand consultancy/experiential agency hybrid Verb.

“MHC is excited to partner with Pinterest, a like-minded organization that is committed to designing products and policies that focus on emotional wellbeing services and resources, both on and offline. As part of Mental Health Awareness Month, we appreciate the opportunity to collaborate with Pinterest on ‘Pinterest Havens: A Whole Mood,’ an initiative to create a space that helps people identify their emotions while promoting emotional awareness and resilience.” Kenneth Cole, Chairman & Chief Creative Officer, Kenneth Cole Productions; Founder & Chairman of the Board, The Mental Health Coalition.

May is also Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month. To hold space for these two important moments, Pinners will find creator content on the Mind Your Wellness group board from the diverse API communities throughout the month. From Michelle Hanabusa, founder of Hate is a Virus and UPRISERS to lifestyle content creators like Krity S. and Leighann Kamifuji, these creators will share ideas centered on how they take up space and practice being present, particularly in the wake of violence and hardship.

Pinterest continues to make resources for emotional wellbeing available to even more people around the world. We are now doubling the reach of our compassionate search feature, which offers a collection of interactive activities to help Pinners safely access supportive resources to improve their mood if they are feeling stressed, anxious, sad or trying to manage difficult emotions. For example, if Pinners search for content that indicates they may be feeling down like “sad quotes” or “work anxiety’, they will see a prompt asking if they’d like to be guided through steps to practice self-compassion.

Currently available in 12 countries (including the US, UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, Singapore, India, the Philippines, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Brazil and Germany), this feature will roll out to 11 more countries in the coming weeks, including France, Italy, Spain, Austria, Switzerland, Japan, Sweden, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia and Chile. Compassionate search activities can also be accessed any time by searching #PinterestWellbeing.

How We Feel app, now in beta

In support of the nonprofit The How We Feel Project, Pinterest volunteers have dedicated time to building the How We Feel app, now available in beta in the App Store for iOS. How We Feel’s mission is to help individuals spot patterns in their emotions as they appear over time, learning new ways to help themselves in the moment. The app, grounded in research by Dr. Marc Brackett from the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, also a Purpose Partner, helps people tune into their emotions and be more intentional in their responses to them.

Expanding our social impact through Purposeful giving

In 2021, Pinterest made a philanthropic commitment to fund organizations that are focused on increasing awareness of mental health and wellbeing challenges, advancing innovation in the field and explicitly tackling racial inequalities and other disparities in access. 

To date, we have invested $6M with 26 Purpose Partners leading the field in mental health and wellbeing, whose impact spans locally and around the globe. These include The Trevor Project, which has been at the forefront of the response to recent anti-LGBTQ legislation, and rising community-based stars like Our Own, which transforms unused classroom spaces in low-income communities of color into Wellness Spaces. Recently, we have been pleased to see school mental health bills pass in states as diverse as Alabama and Illinois–milestones made possible by the efforts of partners like Inseparable and their Hopeful Futures Campaign—and increased attention on youth mental health by the White House and Congress. President Biden was the first president in over a decade to discuss mental health in a State of the Union address and Congress recently enacted a $95M increase in the federal budget for school mental health. See the full list of our Purpose Partners here.

*Methodology: Global; February 21st, 2022 to March 20th, 2022 vs February 21st, 2021 to March 20th, 2021