The pandemic has weighed heavily on the nation’s mental health, and as marketing chief of LifeStance Health, one of the country's largest providers of outpatient mental health care, Ashley Anderson has an important role to play in helping people seek treatment.
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Anderson, 37, joined the company, which facilitates both virtual and in-person appointments with doctors and psychiatrists, in late 2020 after six years at Equinox.
Tasked with building out LifeStance's marketing function from the ground up, she also set out to destigmatize mental health treatment with the brand’s “No Face” campaign. Created with portrait photographer Mark Seliger, it highlighted the disparities between an individual's external appearance and internal experience. The campaign encouraged people to post selfies on Instagram and tag themselves with #Not1Face; it reached more than 10,000 followers, increasing brand engagement by over 200%.
“One of the primary barriers preventing patients from seeking treatment is stigma,” says Anderson. “When you’re walking down the street, you might have a stereotype in your mind about what anorexia looks like or depression, but that might not be true in some cases. Anyone can suffer from anything and we wanted to bring that to light.”