By: Karissa Ketter, News Editor
Seedling Art Co. has recently launched their kickstarter for the Seedling Growth Journal Kit. The kickstarter was launched in October but Seedling Art Co. expects to have their online store ready to launch by March 2023.
The company was founded by CEO Jesika Kula, in collaboration with other SFU alumni. They worked with mental health professionals to create their journals. The Seedling Growth Journal includes guided cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and dialectical behavioural therapy (DBT) practices.
The Peak spoke with Zoë Law, Seedling Art Co. project coordinator, to learn more about their journals. Law noted, “mental health has often gone overlooked in our holistic understanding of medicine and healthcare.” Currently, Law reported “the average wait time to see a psychiatrist that is covered by [BC’s medical services plan] is anywhere from three to six months.” The Seedling Growth Journal was started as an outlet for people to have accessible and approachable mental health care.
“With mental health, it’s not always clear what the next steps should be if we are feeling stressed or down. Some might not think it’s ‘not bad enough’ to see a doctor, or because they don’t have an official diagnosis, they should not seek treatment for mental health,” said Law.
She added, “However, everyone has mental health. It is our emotional, psychological, and social well-being affecting how we think, feel, and act. Without taking care of our mental health like we do with our physical health, we are ignoring physical manifestations of our troubles — such as burnout, fatigue, and muscle tension.”
The CBT and DBT portions of the journal can help students focus on their mental health in times of stress. Law also encouraged students to “take preventative measures for mental healthcare.” CBT aims to address behaviour and thought patterns to “shift our ways of thinking.” Law noted an example of students becoming stressed about an exam. “It can be quite easy to see our test results as very all-or-nothing, success-or-failure.” However, the goal of CBT is to “help us recognize that this thought may be distorted and that our success lies more on a spectrum.”
The design of the Seedling Growth Journals is based around plants and nature. Law noted they made this decision because “a phenomenon called the biophilia effect suggests humans are inherently integrated with nature,” explained Law. “Biophilia means the love of life. In such a digital age, it is so easy to become absorbed in our screens, that we miss out on interacting with nature [ . . . ] that, and it’s also really cute.”
To learn more about the Seedling Growth Journals, visit the Seedling Art Co. website.
