How are you doing?
Leapers exists to understand and improve the mental health of the self-employed, but we can't do it alone. Our focus is on "understand", and collaboration with the ecosystem will deliver "improve".
It’s a simple question, but when you’re freelancing, it’s less common for you to have a team-mate who you bump into in the morning, over coffee, asking how your weekend was.
72% of freelancers said they felt isolated, lonely or disconnected at some point during 2024 - 33% said this happened frequently, which is three-times more common than the national average in employment.
71% don’t feel their mental health is supported at work, and 70% don’t know where to find that support. A large proportion of freelancers say improving their mental health is a reason they went self-employed, but 45% saw their mental health decline last year.
Better mental health doesn’t magically happen - you’ve gotta work at putting things in place: awareness, behaviours and connection, but if you’re not sure where to start, it can be hard, especially whilst you’re juggling finding work, doing the work, chasing late invoices, and dealing with everything self-employment can throw your way.
Leapers exists to understand the challenges facing the mental health of the self-employed, so freelancers can be better equipped to put things in place to take care of themselves; and so that the support ecosystem (everyone connected to the self-employed, from hirers to communities, policy makers to platforms, fellow freelancers to government) can also do more to support its freelancers. We’ve done this since 2017, and so far have helped over 250,000 people.
If you’ve signed up to this newsletter - you’re probably a freelancer who want to put things in place to improve or maintain their mental health.
Good for you.
We’ll be sharing insights, tools and techniques for taking care of yourself, along with stories from fellow freelancers and advice from experts.
But let’s start with the simplest but perhaps most important question.
How are you doing?