Over the years, Google has made strides in its effort to help people track their fitness routines, but staying healthy isn’t always just a physical battle. For Mental Health Awareness Month, the company is introducing more easily accessible tools to help those struggling with their own well-being find the resources they need at a crucial time.
Google has already had certain tools in place to get people access to hotlines or experts, though they weren’t perfect. With its new resources, people will be able to reach a relevant hotline or expert in more accessible ways through searches and YouTube videos. Meanwhile, the company is partnering with different organizations to help them maintain their daily operations.
Some of the partnerships include a donation to the Child Mind Institute, offering pro bono assistance to the Trevor Project, and working with ReflexAI on a tool to help veterans get the assistance they need when they need it.
Knowing that mental health in youth can be difficult to maintain, Google is taking several steps to limit the different types of harmful content young people can watch on YouTube. The company explains that it will be age-restricting videos that focus on eating disorder recovery all while entirely removing content that shows disorders like binging and purging.
Google’s focus on mental health resources will also extend well into its Search function. When a user searches for something related to suicide, the engine will offer a set of text message prompts they can send to the person of their choosing just in case they can’t fully word how they’re feeling. Google hopes this will help reduce the stigma of asking for help.
This isn’t the first time Google has tried to expand the tools it offers to its users to get the necessary resources for improving their state of mind, but it’s another good step towards removing the stigma around mental health. In the past, the company opted against enabling beauty filters by default on its Pixel phones because it claimed they were bad for people’s mental health.