Mental health isn't just the absence of mental illness, it’s a state of total wellbeing and it can have a big impact on the quality of your life. To gain greater awareness for mental health, and to encourage people to learn, talk, reflect and engage with others on related issues, the
Mental Health America hosts Mental Health Month at the beginning of May. Adding to this dialogue, we’re shining a spotlight on
Wear Your Label and their efforts to help abolish the stigmas associated with talking about mental health.
Two years ago, Kayley Reid and Kyle MacNevin met while volunteering at a mental health organization. They were strangers at the time, but quickly found common ground opening up about their mental illness: Kayley was battling an eating disorder and Kyle living with Generalized Anxiety Disorder and ADHD. The connection they found while sharing their personal experiences inspired Kayley and Kyle to start Wear Your Label, a
PayPal powered business that sells lifestyle products to help spark conversations related to mental health awareness.
Wear Your Label’s mission is to create conversations and visibility around mental health. Their product line ranges from clothing and accessories to home items, with a spectrum of subtle to bold pieces that are designed to spark conversation. “We want everybody to feel comfortable wearing our product - not just those personally affected, but supporters too,” said, Kayley.
Kayley went on to add, “to ‘wear your label’ is to take ownership over your mental health. By giving mental health labels a negative connotation, we are dismissing opportunities to create conversations, and this further perpetuates stigmas. Labels like "anxious" and "depressed" are simply descriptors of your mental health, and they're nothing to be ashamed of. At Wear Your Label we believe you should be able to talk openly about your mental health, recognizing that labels don't define who you are.”
In two short years, Kayley and Kyle have made steady progress towards their goals. In July 2014, Wear Your Label sold their first product. By September 2015, they launched a
Shopify e-commerce website and used the
PayPal integration to power payments, started selling orders through affiliate retailers, and made a star-studded
debut at New York Fashion Week. Even through their meteoric rise to success, Wear Your Label has maintained a strong connection to each piece they create – until a year ago, they were still screen-printing and sewing tags on every product by hand.
What’s ahead for this incredibly dynamic duo? They would like to expand their influence and hope to make a tangible impact on the mental health of individuals globally. Working towards this goal, they are building relationships with international bodies to establish on-the-ground programs and mental health-related services in developing nations where mental illness is still extremely stigmatized.
At the end of my conversation with Kayley, I asked if there was anything else she wanted to add. Here’s what she had to say to those who are struggling with mental illness: “You are not alone. It may feel like you are, but there are millions of other people out there who ‘get it’, who have gone through it, who have overcome it. And you can too. I only realized how common it was when I opened up about my own struggles. Once I did, so many people began sharing their stories with me in return. We are all afraid of being judged but at the end of the day we're all going through something and it's so important to start those conversations.”