"Mental health has gone mainstream – but only the safe parts," how one Swiss coffee brand is smashing mental health taboos

The project didn’t start with inspiration – it started in crisis. In Crazy.

Crazy wasn’t something I discovered later in life – it was my normal. I grew up in the housing commission blocks – 'Houso' – of South Sydney Kings Cross, Australia. My world was shaped by violence, addiction, trauma, instability, and plenty of wild times.

When I was young, my father’s sister was murdered. That shattered any idea of 'normal' in our family. Like many youth I was in a cycle and without intervention my future was crime or drugs. My mother battled what they used to call manic depression back in the day – now known as bipolar disorder – and eventually lost her life to suicide. My younger brother lost his fight with addiction. And somewhere in all of that, I nearly lost myself too.

Now a Swiss citizen, I’ve walked through more than one world – intense highs, dangerous lows, psych wards, rock bottom. Six years ago, I was in hospital, bleeding internally from intestinal haemorrhaging, deep in addiction, and battling undiagnosed bipolar disorder. I wasn’t trying to start a movement. I was just trying to survive.

The turning point wasn’t glamorous. It was 30 days in intensive care and psychiatric care. A young Romanian doctor sat with me and helped me break apart everything I thought I knew about toughness and masculinity. She told me, "You’re not weak for being here. Most people never make it this far." That moment changed my life.

It all started with a brutally honest step: Accepting that I was mentally ill.
Denial was killing me. I had to face my “monkey” – my bipolar – and learn to live with it, not against it.

And from there, I decided to use my crazy fire – not for destruction – but for construction.

That’s why I founded The Mental Health Association Switzerland and later Coffee Foundation.

Not to raise awareness in the traditional sense, but to fight for my voice and the many lost, dismantle shame, and give a voice to the unheard. This project was born in the dark – but it’s built on light. The kind that only comes when you stop hating yourself and hiding and learn to hug the cactus.

We help by doing what few others are willing to do: We start the damn conversation and break the silence.

In Switzerland, mental health never mind, the darker side mental illness is still number one taboo. Perfectionism, privacy, and control keep people suffering in silence. But the numbers speak for themselves.

Through TMHA and Coffee Foundation, we’re breaking that silence. We:

'Call Us Crazy' is a challenge. A reclaiming. A healing move.

The word crazy has been used to dehumanise people with mental illness. I’ve been called it. I’ve lived it. So I said, "Screw it – let’s own it."

If being honest about your mental health makes you crazy, Call us crazy. We’re proud of it.

We use humour, bold visuals, and honesty to spark connection. Coffee is just our Trojan horse. It’s the mood setter everyday, it’s human connection, and it lowers the barriers to difficult real conversations.

Our branding – pill-like coffee bags, pop-art visuals – makes medication normal, visible and approachable. Because if we want to change culture, we need to change how we talk.

This slogan isn’t a gimmick – it’s a movement.

Zero stigma + Zero shame + Zero silence = Zero suicides.

We built Coffee Foundation with intention – from the inside out. We own Coffee Foundation. Any sign of commercialisation in mental health is not part of our values.   

It’s the first mental health project in Switzerland to use branded packaging to challenge stigma. We didn't partner with a commercial name. We created our own brand, our own message, and stayed real from day one.

Paolo was a huge part of this. He gave shape to Coffee Foundation in a way I never could have on my own. Every bold colour, every word, every element of our visual identity exists because he believed in the mission – and more importantly, he believed in me.

We use coffee because it’s Switzerland’s most consumed beverage. It’s our bridge – a simple, familiar way to connect. Coffee breaks give us a moment to pause, talk, and check in. That’s where healing begins.

Every design element – from the pill-shaped bags to the language – is about making mental health less clinical, less distant. Every cup we sell funds suicide prevention, education, and support.

Our goal is to build a world where no one worries alone and we can support each other in our village.

Where we replace shame with support. And where real talk isn’t just allowed – it’s encouraged.

We need to stop playing it safe.

Mental health has gone mainstream – but only the safe parts. We talk about stress and burnout. But we avoid words like bipolar, suicide, psych ward, schizophrenia. Until we talk about all of it, stigma will survive.

We need to:

Put lived experience front and centre. The experts are not getting any results, they are down five goals at half time.

Create spaces where people choose to be vulnerable, not forced to fake being strong.

Move from awareness to action: more services, early intervention, and actual support and prevention – a word not used in Switzerland.

In Switzerland, this means pushing back on deep cultural silence. We need courage, community, and a little creative disruption. Feeling awkward is not a reason to excuse you from supporting the people around you.

Yeah – we’ve helped. We’ve built a village.

From the start, we knew it wouldn’t be easy. Switzerland doesn’t invest much in prevention. Post-Covid, a lot of people feel abandoned. But we never waited for permission. We just started.

We’ve helped people cry for the first time in years. We’ve helped them speak up, reach out, show up. Not because we gave them a cure. But because we gave them space.

We gave them permission to just be human.

So yes – we’ve helped. And we’re growing every day.

We are contacted daily from large corporations with a simple WTF is Coffee Foundation? We are so unique and simple we want to inspire and enable people to take real, practical action in building their mental fitness – every day, in their own way.

Because mental health isn’t a destination – it’s a muscle. And everyone deserves the tools and space to strengthen it.