Mental Health Matters: Backline’s Hilary Gleason On How The Organization Is Helping Support Those Affected By The LA Wildfires & How Self Care Can Build Resilience

When Pollstar caught up with Backline Co-founder and Executive Director Hilary Gleason she had just attended the soundcheck for Green Sky Bluegrass’ Jan. 24 gig at The Wiltern in Los Angeles, with the band donating all of their merch proceeds to Sweet Relief’s Disaster Fund. As Gleason explained, nonprofit Backline is partnered with over 100 different organizations including a joint fund with Sweet Relief called Music’s Mental Health Fund that offers therapy grants to anyone with a financial need in music.

Backline – which connects music industry professionals and their families with mental health and wellness resources – is encouraging those affected by the Los Angeles fires to reach out to the organization via its case submission form for assistance.

The organization also has virtual support groups that meet on Zoom every week, along with access to online wellness modalities such as yoga and meditation.

Pollstar: How is Backline helping with L.A. fire relief?
Hilary Gleason: We moved a lot of money into Music’s Mental Health Fund, which is the joint fund that we have with Sweet Relief so that anyone affected by the fires or even just living in Southern California and witnessing this can access grants for free therapy. And then also bringing on more case managers to field the intake of submissions that we’re getting for help.

Case management is our primary program we’ve been running since we launched five and a half years ago. And that offers one-on-one support in navigating resources. You fill out a quick form on our website and then automatically get a link to schedule time with one of our case managers, all of whom are licensed mental health providers that understand the music industry. And once you get on that initial call, your case managers are basically doing a deep dive into what insurance you have, whether you’re hoping to pay out of pocket, if you need a specialist for a specific type of trauma or substance use [or] if you want a provider of color or a queer provider. So that we can then go up against our databases of providers.

We have 1,100 providers now across all 50 states. … Case managers basically take what you say you’re looking for and what resources we know are available and only send you ones that you are directly eligible for.

How has the response been?
We generally see about 18 submissions a week to our case management program and we have been averaging closer to 30 calls a week in January. … We are offering [our case management program] year round but it’s certainly ramped up a lot right now with the fires and I think having there be a mental health professional that will get on a call with you and talk through the resources is really helpful in a time like this when people are also looking at insurance forms and trying to find a place to stay and everything else.

How can folks in the music business take care of their mental health in times like these?
We like to say there’s no one-size-fits-all here, but I really encourage the exploration of self and of different modalities to support the self. I get a lot of value from my meditation practice and feel it’s helped me become a lot more resilient to have that solitude … that commitment to the practice really has had a ripple effect through the rest of my life. And for friends of mine, that might be a support group or going to AA or, whatever that might look like. … There really are so many different ways to build a healthier, happier lifestyle. And we like to think of Backline as open source information on how to do that within the context of a music industry lifestyle.

And I think the pandemic certainly highlighted this, but just seeing self-care as actually an effort toward building resilience has been really helpful for me because sometimes self-care feels frivolous or, as busy as we all are in the music industry, it’s easy to bump it to the bottom of the list. But when you can really dedicate time and energy to that, it turns out you can become more resilient, which then improves how you show up in your job and in your relationships and in the music industry as a whole.