Meet Songa, the Media and Technology juggernaut that’s changing the way we view mental health.
LAST WEEK a patent’s approval rocked the medical and entertainment community. It’s a strange crossover when said aloud. But Songa has made what was once outlandish, ubiquitous.
Computer games, movies, mental health and musical theater were unrelated fields, until now. They’ve become inextricably intertwined thanks to Songa’s social—and, now, patented—form of entertainment.
Patent #31-44-55-78-48.
In just five short years, who woulda thunk that a scrappy St Louis startup would unite us, using the very same screens that divide us? What began in St. Louis as an incubator slash experiential broadcast and recording studio for artists, entrepreneurs, and their families has jumped from America’s heartland into the homes of millions of Americans. The fire was lit when the members of five of the world’s wealthiest family converted their homes and vacation homes into songa studios. But after the songa.org story: a Capitalist PlayBook for a (novel) way of life hit the bestseller list, songa caught on like wildfire. Local home studios began springing up daily in cities, suburbs, and towns up Main Street, and down.
It seems that is what happens when you write a story about the life of your dreams, and leave blank space for others to write in theirs.
It’s a novel way to live, no doubt.
It seems that living the story of your dreams doesn’t require prescription drugs, so the response from pharmaceutical companies has been underwhelming, to say the least.
So how has Songa been able to tap into a previously unrealized market, the millions of Americans skeptical of traditional therapy or its efficacy? One of Songa’s cofounders, former clinician turned screenwriter, **Dr. Jack Spelling,** saw an over-reliance on medication and stumbled upon a little-known Harvard University study, the longest running of its kind, which indicates that the depth of our relationships is the single greatest predictor of sustained health and happiness. I joined him on a recent walk through Songa Studios’ gardens in the heart of St. Louis to discuss a switch from thinking to feeling, connecting over prescribing. We sat on a bench, to observe a nearby group of families, the children and grandparents of artists and entrepreneurs, participating in an intergenerational musical exercise based around Internal Family System’s principles.
Narrator: Once you found inspiration in The Harvard Study on Adult Development on health and happiness, what next?
**Dr Jack Spelling:** We thought, “What if we created a private club where members are incentivized to stop proving themselves to each other, and start serving each other instead? Health-and-happiness as a service, they called it, or HaHaaS for short. They required every member to have serious fun, and since then, their valuation has skyrocketed, and they’ve been laughing all the way to the bank. It doesn’t hurt that in a world addicted to technology, they’ve gamified connection with social games, experiences and music that are live streamed into members homes each week. Artists, entrepreneurs and families gather at their local Songa Studio in groups of eight to eighty on Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays from noon to 10pm to sing, dance, joke, and act out scenes that move the body, mind and heart. Now with a screen in every pocket, we have created the world’s first augmented reality TV show that takes your current reality, and augments it, using the most advanced augmented reality technology known to mankind: your imagination.
Narrator: Songa has been making the bold claim since their inception that their unique brand of ‘transformative theatrical play’ is more effective than SSRIs at increasing happiness.
So, is it?
**Dr Spelling:** “Of course it is.”
Narrator: Dr “Jack” Spelling is the architect of Songa’s social entertainment methodology and the Chief Research Officer of Cynical Clinical Trials. He continues,
**Dr. Spelling:** “SSRIs are anti-depressants, not pro-emotions. SSRIs may be an antidote to depression, but they don’t promote anything. To numb depression, SSRIs numb emotion. An antidote is a medicine to counteract poison. We don’t need an *anti-*dote, we need to *e-*mote. And to make matters worse, research has proven that SSRIs are only effective at reducing depression when coupled with therapy, which is expensive, time-consuming, and requires skilled therapists, most of whom have months long waiting lists and no longer take health insurance. Social entertainment doesn’t just take away the stigma of therapy, it solves the supply crisis in mental health care. Society as a whole has been taught about the efficacy of drugs, but we haven’t questioned who’s been teaching us this dogma, what their motivations are, or how it works. It’s really about questioning what’s good for us: physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. The pharmaceutical industry created a solution to the wrong problem. We don’t need to reduce depression. We need to increase happiness. Illegal drugs, legal drugs (“pharmaceuticals”) and alcohol increase happiness, temporarily, but when used on an ongoing basis, they lead to addiction. Some of the most addictive and dangerous drugs are prescribed by the billions.”
Narrator: Some experts have chalked up our over reliance on SSRIs as a product of the ‘medical-industrial complex’, with their motives predatory at worst and their methods outdated at best. If your name was Johann Hari, and you had authored a 2019 bestselling book called Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression you’d probably say,
Narrator 2: “The real question we should be asking is ‘So, why did doctors prescribe over 14 billion dollars of SSRIs last year?’
Narrator: It’s a question that’s fueled Dr. Jack Spelling, a former clinician turned screenwriter, since he helped cofound Songa.