A MOTHER’S LOVE

Pop superstar Lady Gaga and her mother, Cynthia Germanotta, are on a mission to make the world a better place for young people through compassion and acceptance, a cause that is particularly timely: October is National Bullying Prevention Month, and October 3-9 is also Mental Illness Awareness Week. Here, Purist speaks with Germanotta about the Born This Way Foundation’s important work.

Cristina Cuomo: Mental health issues are at an all-time high in the U.S. right now, so your Born This Way organization is more important than ever. We talk about mental health as a disease often in Purist, we have lots of doctors contributing, and throughout quarantine and COVID we talked about escalating numbers and what people can do to help their loved ones and friends get through this crisis. How did the idea for the foundation evolve? Cynthia Germanotta: The actual origin was from my daughter. I feel like it’s an idea that was evolving from her childhood. As she grew up and entered those difficult middle school years, she encountered bullying and many other things that led to her developing anxiety and depression. It turned school into a very difficult situation for her, and it continued through high school. It led to destructive behaviors that she talks openly about. And ultimately, it affected her so deeply, that when she gained a platform to speak, it became an even stronger passion of hers to share her story based on her struggles, and also to better equip young people who may encounter the same issues in their lives.

We all go through things developmentally, and she has a very deep passion for equipping young people early. So we come at this from a preventive position. If we can prepare young people as soon as possible, they will have proper resources and tools to handle their struggles, and that is what we are all about. We’re founded on that, and our mission is to build a kinder and braver world that is youth-led, and at the core of that is mental wellness. Our goal is making kindness cool. We do this every day, validate the emotions of young people, and work to eliminate the stigma around mental health. Kindness is the inspiration for my daughter’s life’s work, as well as her art. It’s why we created the foundation and why we build programs that validate the emotions of young people and create what is truly the transformative power Lady Gaga and her mother, Cynthia, of kindness. aim to eliminate childhood mental CC: That’s so wonderful health issues that to hear. And the different Gaga faced during initiatives and health her youth. programs you’ve set up across the country in schools before COVID, like the Channel Kindness Platform, how has the back-to-school initiative changed since 2020? CG: I’d say it’s upside down, you know? Even before these incredibly challenging years, we were seeing an increase in youth mental health conditions on many fronts—anxiety, depression and many other issues. And when faced with a global crisis, we had to adapt as advocates and leaders and work even harder to listen to and support the youth in this nation and beyond. We do have a digital platform; I and many members of my team have been able to speak out. We’re doing our best to meet young people where they are, and quite often, it’s online. We’ve seen a growing trend of young people being more willing to talk about their mental health.

We’ve been focused on and fostering these conversations. You can see the urgency, and a lot of them want to help and be helped. But the reason they don’t go for help is they don’t know where to turn. That’s where we come in. They face significant barriers to getting the help they need, including the cost and the stigma, but fortunately we are seeing them turn to online resources

now. There’s a lot of wonderful apps out now, like Calm for anxiety, 7 Cups for online therapy (7cups.com), and of course there are apps for crisis situations, including 211 and the Crisis Text Line.

The youth, their parents and their teachers have had to adapt to this new schooling environment, and we all need to be mindful of that and help one another. It’s new to youth; a disciplined environment with a schedule has been knocked off the table now. And teachers weren’t used to teaching online. It’s a world that has been completely upended. But we’re seeing it work as best it can. A concern is that despite this, there’s been a continued increase in the rates of anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation. We’ve responded to that, particularly in the area of suicidal ideation, in partnership with an organization called Find Your Anchor on a pledge called pleasestay.us. This app shows you how to find anchors in your life, whether that’s breathing for 30 minutes, going to therapy, exercising, walking in the park...whatever can anchor you for a particular day. A CDC study came out last summer concerning mental health during the pandemic, and it found one in four people between the ages of 18 and 24 had contemplated suicide in the past month. Those numbers are astounding and completely unacceptable. That’s why we really wanted to reach out to young people and assist.

CC: You did a wonderful talk at Léman Manhattan in January 2020. CG: We love Léman!

CC: And my friend Dr. Kelly Posner Gerstenhaber, who also spoke, leads the charge in suicide prevention in our country. She developed the Columbia Protocol, a collection of resources to provide people with the tools and information they need to help others. When you talk about anchors, can a person also be an anchor? CG: Yes. In fact, we’re very much a research-based organization, so the programs we develop are informed by our research. And one of our past studies indicated that in times of crisis, young people prefer to turn to a peer. Peerto-peer support is vital and urgent. So we partnered with two organizations. One, jack.org, has an app, bethere.org, which teaches young people how to mediate these tough conversations. It can be used by parents or children, peerto-peer, to learn how to have those conversations and be there for yourself or others.

We also partnered with the National Council for Mental Wellbeing to introduce an educational curriculum for grades 10 through 12; it teaches a young person how to recognize and respond to someone in a mental health or substance abuse crisis. We introduced this initiative into more than 84 schools in the first few months. Then the pandemic hit. Fortunately, the program continues to expand, and we’re looking at a virtual version.

CC: Absolutely. My daughter launched a project for the Columbia Protocol called Just Ask. She did the social media for it, which involves this notion of peer-to-peer, talking to someone in your life. As a teenager herself, constantly challenged and stressed by school and friends and boys, she understands the value of her peers. CG: We see youth rising to the occasion. There’s a brother/ sister team that we’re so fond of, Charlie and Hannah Lucas. In their early teens, they developed an app called notOK. Charlie is a tech person, and his sister was really struggling, and basically with a push of a button on your phone you can alert five people that you’re in emotional distress. And they’re there for you; you can come for help. Young people are responding to their community’s needs with these apps. It’s just so wonderful to see.

CC: I love the book you came out with last September, Channel Kindness. Tell me about how that evolved, the inspirational stories and the contributors. CG: We are all so proud of this book. It originated with my daughter’s courage to share her own story, that I didn’t really understand, when she first started performing around the world. During her concerts, she would start talking unscripted about kindness and the struggles she went through and the need to be brave and the need to have resources. And I used to ask her why she was talking about such private issues, but I came to realize that she was healing and young people were healing. She and her fans really grew up together, so it really resonated with them and they would say, “Gaga, how did you do it? How did you overcome what you faced? And if you did it, how can we get involved in something?” And other young people shared their incredible stories with us as we traveled the world.

That was true bonding between my daughter and her fans and how they were leaning on and helping each other. We started collecting stories as she would perform around the world. That led us to introducing channelkindness.org in 2017 so young people could submit their stories. We train them—we call it “adult scaffolding.” We coach them with weekend sessions where reporters and journalists come in to talk with them about how to do this. We’ve collected thousands of stories and put together a compilation of these stories in the book. It also features a story and notes of empowerment written by my daughter. She shares the beginnings of a lot of the difficulties she had. She was brave enough to share her stories, and made other people brave enough to share theirs. And now, through Channel

Kindness, we invite the world to share their stories. Since the book’s launch we’ve seen readers of all ages now, inspired to engage in acts of kindness, encouraged to share, and it marks a movement led by young people. I invite you to read it, learn more about it, and your readers can purchase it almost anywhere, including our website, channelkindness.org/book.

CC: It’s so important, because we have to nurture and prepare our children to become stable, confident young adults. The constant reminders to do that for parents as well is really important. We appreciate that. So you partnered with Chegg on a study concerning student food insecurity. Tell me a little bit about that. CG: In one study we did with Chegg, which highlighted the challenges youth in schools were having, 56 percent said they were moderately or extremely worried about their mental health; half reported experiencing anxiety; a third had experienced depression; and a quarter said they knew someone experiencing suicidal thoughts. Those are dire statistics. More recently, our study focused on food insecurity, and almost a third of college students have missed a meal once per week since the pandemic. That’s too many. And we’re committed to expanding our research to support the well-being of young people and ensure that youth have the resources they need. CC: You’ve also pivoted into that virtual space—you recently held a conversation on the topic of creating a kinder and braver world that is youth-led. You had people like Chelsea Clinton speaking on how the power of kindness can change the world, but how do you get that message out there virtually? CG: It’s not just getting it out there; it’s also inviting and directing people to where they can participate in their communities. We do it in two ways. One is our digital platform, and we also host a number of Born This Way Foundation talks to learn how mental health affects many communities. We also publish our research to be sure that it’s also understood. For example, we know through our research that young people living in “kind” communities are generally healthier and have higher mental health inventory scores. These are very specific things that schools and businesses can do to adapt their environment to be more kind. So we provide these resources. For example, in high school, saying hello to a student can make a difference in their environment

and mental health. It can help with absenteeism and productivity. These are simple things that can make young people feel like they belong. The second way is through our partnership. Our team has developed an extensive network of partners to collaborate on this issue. We tapped into this network during our holiday campaign, and developed our #ChannelKindnessHoliday campaign with Together Rising and other organizations to support communities Lady Gaga and her mother that are disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. We also have a campaign called #BeKind21. Research shows that if you do something for 21 days it becomes a habit, so this is campaign that invites people to engage in acts of kindness daily for 21 days. This is our fourth year of the campaign, and globally, we’ve had almost 4 million acts of kindness generated this year. We have tool kits for schools and the corporate world. One of our partners is Deloitte, and kindness is integrated into the fabric of their business.

You can be a very strong and effective leader, or teacher, or student, and do it with kindness, compassion and empathy for other people.

CC: It all sounds doable when you create this step-bystep process of change. Statistically, have you noticed its efficacy?

CG: We have. From the beginning, we recognized that this will be a multiyear process. We’re trying to build a generation that’s better equipped, kinder, braver. My daughter said that this was her aspiration and she knew it would take time; she says, “Well, Mom, if it was easy it would have been done already.” From the start, we collaborated with partners who were experienced in this space to help us build a multiyear initiative that started with creating awareness around this, that would shift people’s attitudes and compel them to action. We’re coming up on our 10th anniversary and I’ve definitely seen the efficacy of the reach of this. It’s been very exciting.

CC: Is there a message you often share with a young person you meet who’s struggling with their emotional confidence?

CG: We often talk with young people in terms of scope and aspiration. We’ve seen success stories; we’ve seen young people come from the depths of darkness and turn their lives around. We always try to point them to resources. Their feelings are real, and we let them know someone is here for them. bornthisway.foundation