Building a Mental Health Tool People Actually Use: The Making of HeadsUpGuys.org with Dr. John Ogrodniczuk

[Music] Most mental health professionals have had this thought at some point. If the right resource existed, people would actually use it. But the real question is, how do you build something for the public that people will find, trust, and return to without returning into a clunky psychoeducation dump that nobody opens twice? In today's episode, I'm talking with my guest about the process of building a public facing mental health tool. Specifically, heads up guys.org. And what it took to move from good idea to something that's actually used at scale. We get into how they figured out what to include, what to cut, how to design the experience so it feels approachable, and how they balanced clinical credibility with real world usability. If you've ever considered building a resource, website, course, toolkit, or anything meant to reach people outside the therapy room, this conversation is basically a behind-the-scenes playbook. But first, if you're new here, I'm your host, Dr. Dan Cox, a professor of counseling psychology at the University of British Columbia. Welcome to psychotherapy and applied psychology, where I dive deep with leading researchers to uncover practical insights, pull back the curtain, and hopefully have a little bit of fun along the way. If you enjoy the show, do me a huge favor and subscribe on your podcast player, or if you're watching on YouTube, hit the like and subscribe button. It's one of the best ways to help us keep these conversations going. This episode starts with my guest explaining the origin story. The moment that he realized the gap wasn't just more awareness, it was better access, delivered in a way men would actually engage with. So without further ado, here's my conversation with Dr. John Agrondentjock. That goes back many years. We've been not operating for 10 and a half years already, so I would say a couple of years before that even. Trying to think about how to translate all the good work that we were doing through our research program, but also through our clinical work as well. And what we came to realize is that dudes didn't really want to hear about research and how research findings can be applicable to them, you know, in explicit kind of way. It was more thinking about how can we take what we learn and create something useful for guys. We didn't know exactly what that was. But when I was thinking about it, it's like, okay, well, I'm a dude and I'm a potential target, you know, audience member. So if I'm struggling, what do I do? Well, I try to sort myself out first before you know, I'll share it with anybody my wife or whoever I'll try to sort myself out. What's going on? Well, how do I do that? Well, I go to Dr. Google. A lot of people do that. I start typing some symptoms and try to figure out what might be going on. And it's like, okay, well, I know a lot of guys do that. And so I started just imagining, you know, if I was depressed, anxious, whatever, typing symptoms, what's out there for guys and lo and behold, nothing. There's just nothing out there for guys. Lots of different mental health resources. A lot of them not so great, but there were some good ones out there. But nothing that was specifically targeted toward men. So it's like, I wonder if this is the space that we should be in. We can be there for guys when they're looking to figure themselves out when it comes to mental health. We can be a men's mental health resource. So I'm like, okay, let's do that. I didn't really know what that looked like. You know, you know me. I'm not a tech savvy guy. And I'm still not. But it's like, we can do this. And so we decided to develop a digital resource for men. And from there, we needed to talk to guys. And it's like, what have what's been your experience like looking for help. If we develop a resource like this, what would you need to see from it? So we did a lot of background work learning from men about what they wanted, what they needed to see, what they needed us to deliver to them. And that really shaped how we approach developing heads up guys. And it took the better part of two years to do this work, you know, the background work, you know, market research, if you call it. And then developing the resource itself. And then that work finished in June of 2015. We launched heads up guys. And I had absolutely no idea what to expect from it. But you know, I thought if a few thousand people a year came to it, it's like we're doing really good. But it quickly got traction. We've got a lot of media attention. I think because it's pretty unique thing. And we'll be hold, you know, we were getting a few thousand people a month, let alone a week fast for 10 and a half years. We're getting 10 and a half thousand people per week. So it's incredible. You know, more than six million people have been to this site since we launched it. So we obviously, you know, are filling some sort of need. That's, that's what kept us going. And it's like we recognize that there's a need and we're helping with that. Before we dig too deep into it, could you give us like the 30,000 foot 60 90 120 second kind of overview of like what is heads up guys? Heads up guys is a men's mental health resource. We focus on a few core things with this. One is we address mental literacy. What is that? We're really just educating people about different aspects of mental health. What is depression? What is anxiety? These kinds of things. The core element of heads up guys is helping guys help themselves. So this by and large is a self help tool for men. Learning how they can take care of their health. And then another really important aspect of our resource is helping others be there for guys. Because very often guys, they will come to us after a life girlfriend, partners, mother says, you know what? I found this great resource for you. And then they come and check it out. We understand that others play a critically important role in men's lives in supporting them toward better health. And so educating them about what it is, what kind of signs to look for, how to start a conversation, what providing support looks like, what to do in a crisis and importantly, how to look after your own health in that kind of situation. So that's a very broad overview of the basic elements of our resource. And it's just which probably stay just right the outside here. So it's it's heads up guys dot org. Is that right? Yes. Okay. So just so people have the URLs they can go. So they can get there. So you said that you were talking to guys on the front end in prep for developing the website. What are some of the things that you learned from those kind of what's something you learned from that conversation where you were sort of like, oh, I hadn't thought about that. If you remember, if you remember, I don't put you just go back a dozen years and remember, I'm always curious about like, you know, the things that we think are going to be important. And how some of those things don't end up being important, but then there's some other things that do end up in, oh, I never even thought about that. Well, the one thing that we, you know, I mentioned trying to translate research into something useful. And I thought their research part, having that be somewhat explicit, would still be important to guys that didn't care. They just needed to know that there's science behind it that it wasn't a bunch of fluff and BS. But they didn't need to say, well, this study said this and, you know, they didn't need references to research because they didn't care. They just, they needed to know that what's behind what we were doing was, was solid and based on research. So, so that was important. Another one that was quite important and we somewhat anticipated, but it was really accentuated loudly through talking with guys is that the, and an in-immity aspect, it being anonymous was really important. So if they came and they wanted to make sure they could be incognito, if you will, that no one was recording who came when and what they were doing. And that wasn't our intention at all. So, that was good. But that anonymous aspect was really important. And what was important for us and also for them is that it was free. So this is a free public health resource. There's no commercial aspect. We're not trying to sell a service. We're not trying to sell a product. There's no membership fees. There's truly a public health resource. And that was important to them too. Because there's a lot of stuff out there that may be good, but people are trying to make a buck on it. And that that's not inherently a bad thing. We all need to make a living. But guys were suspicious of things that they needed to pay for. Not entirely. They understood sometimes you need to pay for good things. But the resource being free meant that they could approach it as if we didn't have a particular angle if you understand what I mean. Yeah, your motivation is not financially driven. Exactly. Exactly. And they wanted the resource to be explicitly about guy, like just the imagery, the aesthetics, the language, all of that. So it's like, if I had this up on my screen and somebody saw it, it's like, I wouldn't be embarrassed to have that site up on my computer. Right. Yeah. And that makes me think too of one of the critiques of sort of mental health and psychotherapy in particular is that from sort of a men's lens or traditional men's lens is that there's certain therapy can has been a little can be feminized that certain like if you go to a therapist website and it looks particularly you know lots of flowers and like I have the source of aesthetics that it can sort of like put certain men off a bit. Absolutely. And and a lot of guys talked about that and some of the folks that we talked to that had been to therapy. It was pretty standard for guys to say that they tended to be put off by therapist offices, you know, just even though the waiting room, how offices were, were decorated and they didn't really like it. And they didn't necessarily say it was, you know, feminize or explicitly designed to appeal to women, but they did say it didn't, it didn't resonate with them as a guys and because of that it was less felt less welcoming. And with our site, we wanted our site to be very welcoming to men. Did you like it when you developed it and I'm sure it's changed from when it first started to where it is now, but did you were you like showing it to, you know, kind of the population you wanted to use it and getting feedback from them and iterating and that sort of thing. Yeah, yeah, the iterative process went on for that, you know, year and a half to year length of time that we were developing this, you know, whether we got the right color scheme and we really paid attention to the layouts and, you know, having kind of layered information. And guys want things that they can act on so we wanted to make sure that, you know, whether you're there on the site for 30 seconds, three minutes, three hours, there is always something that you could take away from that. So making, you know, that layered approach, like if you've got 30 seconds, we want to give you something you can go away with. And if you want more, you can dig deeper that kind of thing. So that was really important. So yeah, we went back and forth with a lot of guys over over that whole development period to to fine tune in and we we still are fine tuning. In fact, we're going through a major revamp of the site as we speak and we're hoping by mid year, we'll be able to launch that because it's, you know, by that time it'll be 11 years since we developed it. I think it still looks like a great site and people often comment that, you know, it's it's really clearly laid out easy to navigate. But it's based on a platform that's more than a decade old and you know, technology's changed and even just from the back end, making it easier for easier for ourselves to continue to evolve the site, but also to refresh it and give it a little bit more of a contemporary look as well. Yeah, that's the thing with websites is, you know, you really do have to main, you know, keep keep updating it because it does start to get a feel to it that feels of the time right again feel old and that's going to put people off. And that, you know, you want people to find the user experience pleasant. I will say that in preparation, I did all the preparation for this, you know, spending time on the site on my iPad. And like the, and it worked really well in the iPad and I was really like, oh, this is great. Yeah, yeah. And I think that that sort of speaks to, you know, the attention that was put into it. Yeah, in fact, that's a good point. You know, it is a website, but people will often refer to it as an app, which I take as a compliment because we recognize that more than three quarters of the people who come to heads of guys are on some type of. Mobile device typically their smartphone sometimes an iPad. So we need for our site, no matter what we do for it to be mobile responsive, recognizing that most people aren't actually going to a computer to look at it, but instead on on a smartphone or an iPad. And so that that's critically important. So the fact that you said, well, we're really going to the iPad. That's by design. We really try hard to make that happen. So one of the things you said when you were doing the background is that guys didn't care too much about sort of the nuance of the research. And I think this is something, you know, as researchers were not always the best at. So what I sort of heard you saying was that they wanted to get the sense that this was evidence based. And this wasn't just, you know, some blow hard's opinion, but they didn't want the nuance. So they sort of wanted. So so it sounds like in some ways your job was to communicate to them. To an extent like your experts, right, like you had to communicate we're going to use an evidence base to and make that clear and have them feel that without beating them over the head with it. Exactly. And so we we do. So we have a report and report citations or references to our work. But but those those aren't front and center. We have a research section for site to again, to, you know, let people know like we're doing we're doing the hard work on on the background to bring you the best of what we can. I think, you know, based on, you know, more than a decade of feedback, we've never ever had anybody said, you know, is this evidence based? I'd like to see more research behind this. It's been the opposite people. If they've mentioned anything about research or an empirical basis. And it's like love that this is supported by, you know, science by research. But even those comments are few and far between people don't, people don't really focus on the research part. I think by virtue of that the work we do we make sure we, we cite research supporting what we're doing. We have a research page. I understand my own personal role in this as well. So people look up the team, me, you know, my, my credentials, if you will, my experience. I think help people feel that there's a solid base that we're working from. One of the other things you mentioned was that the importance of this being anonymous. That was one of the things that popped in my head is I did a couple of the self guided courses on the website in preparation for this. And that is something that, you know, you definitely feel in doing it is that there's no, you have to put in your email address, you have to put in some sort of identifying information. I think that that, yeah, that feeling of anonymity definitely like plays out in doing it. Yeah. And with the redevelopment of the site that we're going to have, we're going to give guys an option like if they want to create kind of like a profile where they can do the course, they can do a bunch of self checks. And then you can have a place where all of that information for them is available so that they can kind of keep track of what they've done, what they're, what their health journey has been like it's available to them. It's not necessary. But if they, if they want that, it'll be there for them. And that's the sense of guys who use the site, what are the most common reasons they're using it or what they're trying to get out of using it. A big part of what they are coming to the site for are the self checks. And I think it's a great way for them to engage in their own health by taking these tests and getting a sense of where they're at. And it's not uncommon for guys to know that, you know, I know I'm not doing well. I don't feel right. Something's off. But I didn't might not know what that is so they'll come and do the depression screen. They might do the anxiety screen. And it might in a sense of validate what they already know or maybe it'll give some clarity to this general sense of being off or something like that. And it's a launch pad then a launch pad into next steps, whether that's reaching out to a friend and colleague family dog, maybe one of our self health courses, perhaps the therapist directory. So that that's a critically important sort of touch point for guys when they come to the site. They're there guys who are sort of coming to they folks who are like coming to it repeatedly to sort of like sort of continued like self monitor where they are with things these one time shots. What does it look like? Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure. And that's our hope is that people will come back to the site repeatedly to you because we got a lot of stuff on there and it's literally impossible to take it all in on one visit. So people do come back so they might do a self check come back later and learn about one of the courses that we offer or learn about what the difference between a psychologist and a psychiatrist is because they're curious about maybe reaching out and getting some help. And then also we have a lot of stories. So guys who have struggled and come out on the better end sharing their stories with other men about their journey, things that helped. And so this is guys helping other guys and this has also been a very, very important aspect of the site and the contribution of those stories in particular because one of the most common things. And the most important aspect of the site is that I am so relieved to know that I'm not alone. I'm so relieved to know that I'm not alone. So when you're struggling, it's a really scary and isolating experience and very often guys feel like they're the only ones going through this. And then come upon a site that's all about helping guys just like them and then seeing stories, reading stories from other men who have gone through something very similar and it's like, I'm not the only one. And it's like there's a sense of relief that comes with that. And I'm sure you've had this experience like working with men in person in therapy, you know, that's very common. I think they're the only ones when I said, you know, this happens to a lot of guys. You're far from alone. This is actually quite common. And it's like you can see the relief, you know, their shoulders and their head and their chest. And it's like, really, I'm not the only one. And they feel lightened by that and inspired. There's a sense of hope that comes from you like that. And I'm sorry on the website, there are a lot of men's stories that they wrote themselves about their experiences with mental health and their their challenges and their successes and their continued challenges and all these sorts of things and some of them are very, you know, very raw. And I mean, I felt, you know, in going and visiting the site a couple of times preparation for this, you definitely, you know, it is one of those things where you do sort of go down the rabbit hole of the site, you know, where it's like, oh, wait, there's more here. Oh, there's more here. Oh, I could do it. And so yeah, it's a yeah, but some of those stories are very compelling. Yeah. Yeah. So one of the things that stood out to me is the self-guided courses on the website. So I was curious, you know, I mean, because that's a lot of work, obviously putting those on and putting those together and making sure that they're palatable to the general public. Um, was that there from the inception of the project? Is it developed or it, you know, what could you tell us about those? Yeah, they were not there from the inception. They are more recent addition to the site. People asked for it and it seemed like a natural next step. And so we in the last few years have been developing these courses and that will continue to be one of the major folk eye, if you will, for us moving forward is doing these courses. The next course or the most recent course that we developed was a peer support course, like how to help other men in your lives who might be struggling. And so there's been a lot of uptake with that. And in fact, all the courses we've, we've had, I think like around 3000 completions of the courses so far, which, which is fantastic. It's quite incredible really. So feel quite proud of that and look forward to developing more. Yeah, so what goes into, you know, one of the reasons I want to talk to you is that I think that a lot of mental health professionals want to develop materials or, you know, in all sorts of different contexts and capacities to reach the general public and to talk to you to get a sense of kind of that peak behind the curtain of, you know, what it takes with that process is like. And so like what is it like, well, can you tell us a little bit about the development, perhaps of the peer support course, but it doesn't have to be what goes into that. It's, yeah, it's not easy to develop these courses. We've learned, you know, when we set out and just talking to people about putting these together, brevity is really, really important. And in fact, just so we knew that which we tried to keep all the courses brief, but they're not all exactly the same length. And sure enough, the shorter courses are the ones that have higher completion rates. So if you're going to think of something right off the bat, it's, it has to be brief because people just don't tend to stick with it otherwise. The other thing is that there's, there's got to be some tangible aspects. As I said before, guys like being given things to do, tell them what to do. So being rather directive, do this, do that. And it's like, give them something to sink their teeth into because it's a very easy to, and this is something I struggle with developing it. Sort of getting into background stuff, concepts and theories and not approaching it like an academic paper, even trying to talk to other clinicians, but I guess in a way giving too much background, because it's, it feels like it's really important to be there. No, just guys don't want that is it's too much. Sure, there's going to be some, but it's like give what is necessary to get to the next step. And then, you know, we have little quizzes embedded into the courses just as a way to create a pause to think about consolidate and it's part of the structured approach to the courses as well. So those are useful and guys like them. And it's also not easy to think about it's not easy to take everything what we do in therapy and create a self-guided course. And then, you know, in the back most of the things we do in therapy, I find we can't it's just it's just not going to stick. It's not going to be natural. So you got to think about concrete kind of things that you can put in a how to kind of manual. It's essentially what these courses are and have them sort of directed or directive and structured in the way that I described a few moments ago. And I'm curious about what it takes to kind of weekly. What is it do or monthly? What does it take to keep this thing going? A lot of human resource power and money to pay those people. I've been shocked at just how much it costs to do something like this. So what's your team? Like what is your team consists of? So we have a team of five people right now. So my program managers been there from day one. So he kind of he kind of helps coordinate day to day activities. So, you know, focusing on on on content and we're constantly adding to the site. So that's a that's a big thing. We've got two guys that are, you know, they they'll help with you know minor graphic design. I'll give you example of the self-check suite. That took a huge amount of time to put together. So we've got two fellows that are really good at doing stuff like that and writing articles. So all all members of the team are involved in writing articles. We have another fellow who looks after community engagement and partnerships because every morning we open up our input heads up guys account and there's dozens of messages and many people. Different groups throughout primarily North America, but globally as well. And it's like love what you do want to partner in in different kinds of ways. So we have to hire somebody to kind of manage that stuff. We have the therapist directory. So that has to be managed. We've got our social media guru who looks after all our different social media channels because that's a it's a really important mechanism through which we engage people. Not only just to necessarily to drive traffic, but it's another way to connect with people to do the same things as our site. So in a way it's it's parallel to the site doesn't just serve only to bring traffic. It's recognizing that not everyone's going to go to a website even if it's a very mobile friendly they they engage with us for social media. So that's the team and you know I could go on about all the minutia involved you know I spend time. You know kind of looking after you know bigger picture kind of things you know what direction are we going with our with our courses and content development. A lot of fundraising. Oh my god fundraising takes a lot of time. So so there's that so you know collectively that it's you know we're a small team but I like to think we punch well above our weight class. People are often shocked to learn how small our team is they think that we're this gigantic organization and you know I take that as a compliment but there's a lot of hard work behind that. So we have to talk about the funding thing so just yeah disclose how you know obviously disclose whatever you want to disclose here. I'll ask the questions then you can decide how to answer them. So like first of all how like how did you get the funding at the outset. And then how is that evolved over time. The funding from the outset was provided through a grant by November. That's a wrap on the first part of our conversation as noted at the top of the show be much appreciated if you spread the word to anyone else who you think might enjoy it. Until next time.(gentle music)