☁️🍄 Issue No. 029: Live Near Your Friends

Good morning, and happy Sunday. Great to see you here for another issue of Headlines. I thoroughly enjoyed researching and writing this one. Let’s get right to it.  

LIVE NEAR YOUR FRIENDS

Deep and meaningful friendships are integral to a happy and healthy life. 

Why not live closer to your pals? 

THE FRIENDSHIP RECESSION

As we’ve written about before, friendship and community are essential to our emotional well-being. The longest-ever longitudinal study on human life found that deep relationships hold, by far, the strongest correlation with our health and happiness.

Unfortunately, the last decade has seen a steep drop in adult friendships. Modern life encourages us, writes editor and journalist Catherine Woodiwiss, to atomize ourselves away from each other:

Indeed, the rise of hyperindividualism has fragmented our connections, scattering our relationships across the country. Even today’s modern self-care trends turn us inward, convincing us to “hyperfocus on ourselves at the expense of connecting with others.” 

And the numbers don’t lie: Americans are spending more and more time alone and less and less time with their friends.

Meanwhile, the number of close friendships Americans have has plunged over the last two decades; only 13% of Americans report having 10 or more close friends, down from 33% in the 1990s.

PEAS IN A POD

In a 1935 letter to his lifelong friend Arthur Greeves, author C.S. Lewis wrote: 

Yet our friendships today have taken a backseat to marriage, career, and more. While technology has made it easier than ever to maintain bonds across geographic distances, ease can’t replace depth. 

• Having a friend whom you see on most days, compared to not having such a friend, has the same impact on well-being as making an extra $100K a year. 

• A 20-year multi-generational study showed that living within a mile of a friend who is happy increases the likelihood that you’ll be happy by 25%.

Given the undeniable ties between meaningful relationships and well-being, why aren’t we placing friendship at the center of our lives? That’s a question the live-near-your-friends movement is trying to answer.

Live near your friends. At the frontier of this movement is Phil Levin, founder of coliving community Radish in Oakland, California and co-founder of the car-free neighborhood project Culdesac.

This August, Levin launched Live Near Friends, a site that helps people live within a five-minute walk of a close friend or family member.

Live Near Friends, Levin says, was inspired by his wife Kristen, who would proactively send out listings to friends trying to get them to move nearby. Over three years, she succeeded in getting eight people to rent and buy homes within a short walk of where they live. Now, they help take care of each other’s kids, do regular dinners, and hang out on a whim.

Others in this space include grassroots projects like NYC’s Fractal, a collective of ten living rooms within a five-minute walk from Morgan Ave’s L train station. There’s also SF’s Neighborhood, led by Jason Benn, a multigenerational campus of 200+ people living within a square mile in central San Francisco. 

What if I don’t have friends? A sobering statistic you may have noticed above: 12% of Americans say they have zero close friends. Hoping to help, apps like Saturday and Geneva want to ease the discovery process while dating app Bumble launched Bumble for Friends. 

And, as we’ve covered before, the social prescribing model uses local “link workers” to help nudge people toward nonclinical care via movement, art, and more. Here, orgs like Unite Us, Wider Circle, and findhelp look to power community health and social care systems. 

Even the federal government is stepping in. This July, Senator Chris Murphy introduced legislation to create a national policy to promote social connection.

But, Levin notes, many interventions tend to put too much onus on the individual and not enough on our built environment, adding that: 

A NOTE FROM MEL

This topic is one close to my heart. I’ve moved around a lot these past few years, and my friends are scattered cross-country, from Los Angeles to New York, Austin to San Francisco. 

The pandemic further cemented the slow dissolution of many relationships I wish to rekindle but are complicated by the sheer fact of geography. This year in particular, after moving from LA to SF, I saw many dear friends much less frequently; it had an undeniable impact on my emotional well-being and resilience. 

All this is to say: These past few months have underlined the importance of deep and meaningful relationships to me. Time and time again, when life gets rough, it is my friends who consistently show me the love and compassion I am unable to give myself, gently lifting me back up into the light. 

Punchline: How do we help people build and nurture meaningful relationships? It’s perhaps the most important question we should be addressing in the mental health space. 

Tackling the loneliness epidemic will be no easy challenge—and not everyone can move close to their friends—but it’s a great goal to strive for. The good thing is, the first step can be very simple. A text to an old friend, a coffee with a new one. Little moments of connection spark more connection, and connection goes a long way. 

Thanks for reading ☁️🍄. Want to join the convo? Tag me @melodaysong with your thoughts, or share with a friend below.

QUICK HITS

• Master’s in happiness. Get your degree in happiness, a 20-month interdisciplinary program on the science of well-being.

• Mayday. New study from Little Otter analyzes 11K+ families, shines light on the worsening pediatric mental health crisis. 

• Google it. The tech giant is testing out an AI bot that can offer life advice. [Re-read Issue No. 017: AI Eats Therapy.)

• Sobering stats. About 40% of people killed by police officers are involved in a mental health crisis.

• Ready or not, here AI come. AI-driven chronic health app juli improved symptoms of asthma and depression.

• New name, who this? MAPS’ trademark filings reveal potential brand name for MDMA: RENSANSE.

NEWS & TRENDS

1) Coming of age

New studies from The Lancet Psychiatry and Blue Shield of CA reveal mental disorders are on the rise, and Gen Z is suffering the most. A whopping nine out of 10 Gen Z youth say they’re experiencing mental health challenges on a regular basis, citing gun violence, racial/social injustice, and climate change. 

Meanwhile, with 50% of the world’s population projected to develop at least one mental disorder in their lifetime, the mental health crisis has reached beyond the ability of a single sector to solve. Solutions will require concerted efforts across government, healthcare, Big Tech, and more — paying special care to prevention among young people.→ Read more

2) Bird is the word 

Speaking of the younger generation, there’s a new mental health trend sweeping Gen Z: Bird-watching. Posts tagged with #birdwatching and #birding on TikTok have over 1.4B and 240M views, respectively, while apps like Birda, Merlin Bird ID, and BirdNET have reported up to 30% increases in monthly signup rates. With few barriers to entry (save a pair of binoculars), the trend is taking flight — many are calling it the new meditation. 

Not just a hobby, there’s strong evidence behind the mental health benefits of birding. Studies show that birdsong can help alleviate anxiety and paranoia, while a mere 10% increase in bird species in one’s vicinity increased participants’ life satisfaction the same as a 10% increase in income. Small wonder that spending time outdoors and connecting to nature can be such a boon for our health — this is one TikTok trend we can get behind. → Watch more

DEALS & DEBUTS

🍄 COMPASS Pathways, a psychedelic biotech company, has entered a securities purchase agreement of $125M, including a potential additional $160M, with a group of healthcare specialist investors. The agreement was led by TCGX and Aisling Capital. → source

🧠 MindMed, a clinical stage psychedelic company, secured a $50M credit facility with K2 HealthVentures.→ source

🚺 Visana Health, a women’s health platform that includes behavioral health services, raised a $10.1M seed round co-led by Flare Capital Partners and Frist Cressey Ventures. → source

👗 Kohl’s donated $6M to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) to increase mental health services and resources across the country, with a focus on BIPOC communities.→ source

✨ Glimmer, a guided therapy platform connecting patients to a higher standard of mental healthcare, launched. → source

⚡ ARC Health, a group of mental healthcare practices, acquired Dayspring Behavioral Health (DBH), a practice with four locations throughout the Seattle metroplex.→ source

🌷 Spring Health, an employer mental health platform, launched Sage, a set of self-paced online courses to help managers support employee mental health. → source

📝 Tebra, a practice management tool for independent healthcare providers, launched The Intake, a comprehensive online content hub to help independent healthcare practices thrive. → source // Re-read Issue No. 028: Therapy Tech 

🎮 Healthy Gamer, a mental wellness platform designed for the internet generation, launched HG Institute, providing accredited courses on the latest clinical trends and research to help professionals better address modern mental health stressors.→ source

WHAT I’M READING

• Addicted? Deep Fix is an incisive, beautifully-written newsletter from Alex “Olo” Olshonsky, somatic coach and co-founder of nonprofit addiction program Natura Care. His essays explore all forms of modern addiction—from drugs to screens—as well as psychedelics, culture, work, and spirituality.  → Deep Fix

Thank you, as always, for reading. 🫶🏻 

I leave you with two photos from my week: One of the most magnificent sunsets I’ve seen in recent memory, and a snap of my mom looking cute as heck on her birthday. :)

Until next Sunday,-Mel