Taylor Cochran

Insight Counseling Centers recently ended its second year of a new Mood Wall Initiative in Davidson, Rutherford and Williamson counties.

The Mood Walls are intended to “create a conversation around what’s actually going on in people’s lives” according to Taylor Cochran, Insight’s Director of Developing and Marketing. They were also a part of a nationwide Mental Awareness Month. The program began in 2016 when Insight placed 10 mood walls in separate high-traffic locations in Nashville, each wall with 1,000 buttons proclaiming 21 different emotions, all of which are a different color. Each sticker had a different word on it, such as grumpy, sad and joyful. The idea of the program was to have people take a button that represents their current emotions.

“Sometimes in mental health, personally, I jump to the more extreme issues like suicide, depression or heavy addiction, but the reality is ‘everybody feels something,’” said Cochran.

Last year the program went through 10,000 buttons within 48 hours. After a successful campaign, Insight decided to launch the program again in Williamson and Rutherford counties. This time, in addition to the larger walls they included 18 smaller walls with stickers. Insight purchased about 75,000 stickers this year and used nearly all of them. Some of the walls were located at Murfreesboro City Hall, Murfreesboro Center for the Arts, St. Thomas Hospital, Smyrna Library and the Linebaugh Public Library.

According to Cochran, the program got a lot of positive feedback and traction from the community. Organizers now plan on the program becoming a year-long initiative, because as Cochran puts it, mental health is “a year-long need.”

“One of my favorite things has been seeing people wearing their emotions on their chest. It’s fun how these moods walls have become a unifying activity for Middle Tennessee,” said Cochran.

For more information on the Mood Wall program, visit insightcounselingcenters.org.