Hello all,
As many of you know, before I wrote Pure I wrote an article about my experiences in the Guardian in 2013. It was the first time my form of OCD had ever been aired in mainstream media.
When I later crowdfunded the book – which you all generously contributed to (thanks again) – I received an extremely generous donation from a stranger. It turned out that stranger was entrepreneur Aaron Harvey, the founder of a successful digital agency in NY. Aaron had been living in silence with the same condition for over 20 years. 'I didn't feel any relief until I came upon Rose's article,' Aaron said, 'she forever changed, if not saved, my life.'
Galvanised, Aaron used his strategy, design and analytics expertise to found intrusivethoughts.org, a groundbreaking new resource for people with OCD. Then it was my turn to be inspired – it's highly technical, highly creative brains like Aaron's that will change the way the world thinks about mental health in the future.
With our common goal to create accessible, beautiful content and products that humanise mental illness, Aaron and I are now working together, between London and New York, exploring new ways to push mental health awareness forward through art and tech.
We want to continue our conversation at SXSW 2017, so we're proposing a two-person panel discussion called It's Here: The Tech Future of Mental Health. It’d be brilliant if you could do me one more favour and vote for us. It takes less than a minute:
Create a SXSW account: https://auth.sxsw.com/users/sign_up
Login to your email and follow the link in the authentication email
Click the thumbs up here: http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/67070
Thanks so much, once again.
Rose x