Pinterest has announced a new slate of events and activations for Mental Health Awareness Month, including an expansion of its in-app mental health support tools and an IRL life ‘Pinterest haven’ in NYC.

First off, Pinterest is launching a ‘Mind Your Wellness’ group board, which will highlight content focused on mental health and emotional wellbeing.

Creators from around the world will contribute to the board, providing a breadth of resources to help Pinners in need.

Pinterest is also partnering with the Mental Health Coalition (MHC) to highlight additional resources and 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.”

The latter is also the focus of a new, immersive experience in the real world, with a Pinterest bringing its haven to life in New York.

“The activation 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.”

Pinterest has experimented with various real world installations, but this is the first with a focus on mental health, addressing rising demand from Pinners (‘feeling stressed’ searches have increased 8X over the past year) and ongoing need for additional resources and assistance, where possible.

Finally, Pinterest is also expanding its compassionate search tools to 11 more markets.
Compassionate search, which Pinterest first launched in 2019, provides links to a collection of interactive activities and tools to help Pinners connect with supportive resources when they go searching for related terms.

“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.”

Up till now, the option has only been active in 12 regions, but from this week, the feature will also be available to users in France, Italy, Spain, Austria, Switzerland, Japan, Sweden, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia and Chile. Users can also find the same resources by searching the hashtag #PinterestWellbeing.

Mental Health Awareness Month is an increasingly important event, as we work to remove the stigmas associated with mental health, and help more people find the help and support that they need. Many mental health concerns have been exacerbated by the pandemic, and with social platforms becoming an increasingly important connective tool, they can often become people’s primary link to the outside world, and are therefore increasingly influential on this front.

As such, all platforms have a duty of care, to at least some degree, to provide links to resources and assistance tools to help people get help when they need.

Pinterest has been developing its systems on this front for some time, and these new additions and expansions are another positive step.