Watch: Its Founders Discuss How Mental Wellness Network Frame Got Started

The focus on mental health and wellness has become increasingly more prevalent in recent years. But not only can it be extremely difficult to find the right resources as a patient and a provider, there still exists stigma around the act of seeking help. Mental wellness network Frame seeks to fix that, and not a moment too soon during the pandemic.

In this installment ofdot.LA Dives In, we talk with Kendall Bird and Sage Grazer, the co-founders of Frame, a mental wellness network that seeks to help people find a form of therapy and a therapist.

When Kendall moved to New York City after college, she found herself struggling to adjust to her new life. Identifying a therapist to help her work through those issues was not an easy task, but when she found the right person, she realized how powerful that relationship was.

When she returned to her hometown of Los Angeles, she found herself again struggling to find a therapist. She reached out to her childhood friend Sage Grazer, a therapist herself. Sage was grappling with her own set of challenges trying to run her own practice without any business training.

"I was sharing with Kendall how difficult, as a new therapist, it is to get clients, and she was sharing with me how hard it was for her to find a new therapist. And this was something that me and my colleagues were all experiencing, so Kendall proposed that we build our own platform," says Grazer.

Having started a company before, Bird emphasizes how critical it was to find the right founder fit.

"It was important for me to partner with someone that had a very different perspective, and was also an expert in the field in her own sense," says Bird. "We thought about all the other services that were out there and identified what we felt like was missing. And so we built this unique experience which is now Frame."

What started as an app to connect users with therapists has evolved into a platform to match potential clients with therapists, a "business in a box" to help therapists grow their practices, and as 30-45 minute digital discussions run by licensed therapists that introduce potential patients to the basics of therapy and help dispel the stigma around mental health and wellness.

"What we're trying to do with the discussions is really show you concrete examples of how therapy can be applied in different scenarios," says Bird. "The more we tell those stories, the more people will hear them, and understand how (therapy) is relevant in their specific life and situation."

As remote care becomes more common during the pandemic, Frame has leveraged its toolbox to help clients adapt by making it easier to connect virtually. Not only are they providing training for therapists that have been forced to run their practices remote, but the digital discussions have provided a path for the founders to give back to the community.

"Our digital discussions have been a real gift as a part of Frame to be able to give during this time when people are in lockdown," says Grazer. "Maybe they can't get to a therapist, maybe they can't afford a therapist because they lost their job. So we are able to offer these free workshops and give people actionable tools that they can start putting into play immediately."

While you might think launching a startup during a pandemic would be tough, the co-founders credit Los Angeles as setting them up for success. With how spread out the city is, Frame was already built to be Telehealth-oriented before COVID hit.

"Starting in L.A. really set us up for success when this whole pandemic happened, because we were already built to sustain Telehealth and people being able to work remote," says Bird.

Watch the full interview to learn more - in this conversation, we dive deep into Frame's history, talk about their experiences during the pandemic, and discuss what companies can do to create a more inclusive environment when it comes to mental wellness.

dot.LA Dives In: Frame Co-Founders Discuss How They Built the Mental Wellness Networkwww.youtube.com

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Kelly O'Grady runs video and serves as the chief host & correspondent for dot.LA. Find her on Instagram @kfogrady and email her at kelly@dot.LA.