PHOTOGRAPH BY ALANA HOLMBERG FOR TIME 101
It wasn’t one suicide note in particular that jolted
Amanda Johnstone into action; it was what linked
them all. “They all thought they were a burden
and it was too hard to keep reaching out,” says
Johnstone, 33. Growing up in Tasmania, which has
Australia’s highest youth suicide rate, she had three
close friends and nine people from her wider social
circle take their own lives.
In an attempt to harness her own grief, Johnstone
began getting her friends to routinely check in. Each
day at 4 p.m., they would grade their own mental well-
being on a scale of 1 to 10 in a text message sent to
the group. This flagged when individuals were feeling
low without having to actively seek help.
More than 300 million people around the world
suffer from depression, according to the World Health
Organization, but fewer than half of them receive any
treatments for depression. So Johnstone decided to
take her simple scheme global. In November 2017,
she launched a free peer-support app, Be a Looper,
to let people check in with five friends daily and
give themselves a numerical rating for their mental
well-being.
“We are all on our phones all the time so it made
sense to create something that’s already in people’s
hands, which gives them that nudge to reach out and
take a little bit of care of each other,” she says.
With a staff of 35, Be a Looper has spread to
76 countries—Australia, the U.S. and the U.K. are top
for users—and nearly 20,000 people have flagged
suicidal feelings to their loop, allowing their support
network to rally around. It’s a simple routine that can
save lives. “It’s more of a burden to bury someone,”
says Johnstone. “You can never forget those people.”
Amanda Johnstone
Innovating to stop suicide
By Charlie Campbell