Founding the John E. Martin Mental Healthcare Challenge

An annual competition launched in 2020, the John E. Martin Mental Health Challenge (JEM MHC) invites teams from around the world to explore and develop innovative solutions focused on improving the quality of and access to mental healthcare. This year, Anise Health was invited to participate and awarded "Best in Feasibility" and Overall 2nd Place for our culturally-responsive solution (read more at our HBS news feature). JEM MHC founder, Michael Martin, shares his inspiration behind establishing the challenge:

I would be remiss if I did not share that the inspiration for the mental healthcare challenge is one born of tragedy. On July 6, 2013 my wife and I married in Bansko, Bulgaria before our family and friends. Less than a week later, a truck struck the vehicle my parents, in-laws, aunt and uncle, and family friends were driving in upon returning from a trip to Greece (see article). My father, John E. Martin, was killed instantly, while my father-in-law succumbed to his injuries and died a few days later. Life changed in an instant. A joyous time suddenly became a nightmare.

As I tried to make sense of the tragedy I was reminded of Viktor Frankl's wise words in Man's Search for Meaning: [i]n some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning." As I thought about what my father's life meant, the idea of redemption kept coming to mind.

My father was not perfect nor without issue. He was an alcoholic who followed in the footsteps of his father, just as he had followed in the footsteps of his father, my great grandfather. Fortunately, for me and those he loved, my father found sobriety after decades of suffering. Upon hitting bottom he took the first of the twelve steps, and embarked on a profound journey.

As he put in the work he discovered a new purpose. He went back to school to become an addictions counselor, and more specifically, a counselor for those returning from combat in the operating fields of Iraq and Afghanistan just as he did some 30+ years earlier returning from Vietnam. He transformed a horrendous chapter in his life into something positive...trash became treasure.

It was my father's transformation that gave me and continues to give me the energy, the will, and they want to do the same. In establishing my father's eponymous fellowship and mental healthcare challenge I am enabling his dream to be fulfilled, which was to improve 1) the quality of and 2) the access to mental healthcare.