Women With Impact #42 - Melanie Eckert
Welcome to Women With Impact, a newsletter all about the journeys of mission-driven women and how they have a positive impact in our world.
I’m Clara Richter and this is the 42nd edition of Women With Impact. If you enjoy this issue, please share it with a friend and like it above.
For this edition, I interviewed Melanie Eckert, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of krisenchat, Germany's largest digital psychosocial counselling service for young people in need. The main service is a digital chat available 24/7 to help children and adolescents in need to cope with their concerns and problems. Funded by donations and partnerships with insurances, companies and the German family ministry, 150k+ counselling sessions have been conducted by 450+ active counsellors since 2020. Based in Berlin, Melanie is a psychologist herself and leads the content and continual development of krisenchat’s services. She holds a Master’s degree in Psychology from the International Psychoanalytic University Berlin and is currently pursuing her doctorate.
Wishing you a pleasant read!
Best,
Clara
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The Journey
Who are you and how do you most like to spend your time?
I am Melanie, I am 36 years old and the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of krisenchat. I am a psychologist, I spent 10 years doing research in that field. A lot of my research projects to date evolved around how to best reach people with mental health issues. Within my research, I focused mainly on children, young adults, as well as their parents. Our mission is to build a long-lasting health-tech company in the non-profit sector. Part of my responsibilities as Co-CEO is being responsible for the content for our users; this means for instance the development of approaches on how to reach, especially young, people in crisis situations. I also build the structure and company culture, so that it fits into the overarching German health care and youth care system.
Besides my job, I love to spend a lot of my time with with my family and friends, as well as in the countryside. It’s a big contrast to Berlin, where I live. I also do a lot of yoga and pottery. The latter is something I really found for myself recently; doing something with my hands and focusing on other materials in a very embodied way is what I value in my spare time.
What’s the journey behind founding krisenchat?
I studied Politics and Social Sciences, something that I really like to integrate into my current field of work. I stopped studying to learn something more practical, which helps people in their lives. So I decided myself for the handcraft of psychology.
As a psychologist, I was heavily involved in grassroot work - meaning that I did field trips to India for example, to help those people who are excluded from society, and have many mental health issues. Through these experiences, I really understood the seriousness of their issues and how difficult it was for them to get the help they needed. I accompanied home treatments for young families, went into hospitals and thereby gained a lot of information through this 1:1 work. These experiences now help me to build a digital service with krisenchat, that enables many to receive the help they truly need.
What recent success are you most proud of?
With krisenchat, we have three services at the moment. The first is a consultation service available 24/7 for young adults. The second is a service for Ukrainian and Russian individuals, where we provide consultations in the respective languages. The donations we receive for this project are ongoing and providing psycho-social care for those affected is especially important to us.
Our third service is providing psycho-education on social media and gaming platforms. A success we have achieved recently is that we reached over 1 million people per month on those platforms with our content. It’s so wonderful to see that our content is seen by so many people by low-threshold on these platforms. Our goal is to essentially reach those young individuals and provide information and help on mental health issues’ prevention and address questions on the future, such as how to deal with the climate crisis, shrinking democracies and health crises. It’s especially significant to us that our content and service is easily accessible and where our target group spends a lot of time.
What’s the most exciting and most challenging part of building and leading krisenchat?
The most exciting part is to navigate a field where many contribute in making a long-lasting systemic change. There are many stakeholders in the (mental) health sector who offer high quality services that make a change in the lives of the users, in terms of healing or reversing traumas for example.
At the same time, we are acting in a field, the German health care system, which is hard to get into, and which is highly regulated. Navigating this landscape can be difficult at times, because the system is not always prepared for organisations like ours, which are digital-only. Completing steps on the way to reach our mission - to bring professional help to young people who are experiencing a crisis - is what really excites me.
Anything you'd like to share on your new startup?
Besides krisenchat, we are building an infrastructure for ethical and high-quality mental health products-and services, also many of them in the AI space. I am excited to see what products will evolve from our infrastructure.
The Lessons
From your perspective, in what ways can we as humans create more psychological safety towards others, but also maybe ourselves?
When we start to interest ourselves in our own feelings and our own journey, as well as in the feelings and thoughts of others, we create moments where relationships are evolving. Not only the relationships with others, but also the relationship to ourselves - and from my perspective, this it the key for us as social beings to create more psychological safety.
A good starting point might be to ask yourself: “How do I feel in this present moment? How am I doing? How do I perceive my body?” Doing an inner scan with all of your sensations can be a huge step, a state which can easily be reached during mediation. I am a big fan of mini-interventions, such as sitting in a chair in the office and doing a reflection for a couple of seconds. Doing this will automatically converge in you being more interested in others, as in moments of silence you might start to question your different feelings and states you go through in a day. And this might eventually lead to own inner development and more psychological safety.
The Inspiration
What resource do you think people should make most use of, other than of course krisenchat?
Overall I would say digital tools for your mental health. Beside these, what I think is highly underestimated is nature. There are numerous studies that show the positive impact from being and walking in nature on your mental health state. There are many cost-free resources that everyone should keep in mind when it comes to their mental health, besides of course therapeutic offers. In the 21st century, I also think that finding new formats of social interactions is key, in order for our touchpoints not all being digital-only.
What advice have you shared recently?
I regularly speak with political institutions and individuals who develop programmes to improve the health care system in Germany. One thing I have observed is that the products and services developed are very high-quality by the best and most renown experts. However, the adoption rate of users for these offers are very low. Based on my observations, I tend to advise to use a user-centric approach when developing products so that they also land in the hands of those who need it most. Branding, design, and ease of use should be at the forefront of product development.
Any last remarks you'd like to share with our community, anything on your mind?
I love the title “Women With Impact” and I really want to support all people and women, especially women, who are in a position which they never thought they would be in. For example, as a founder. I would like to stay, be courageous and try out things in your life. The world needs us!
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