Take This® is a 501 (c) (3) non-profit charity founded in 2013 by veteran journalists Russ Pitts and Susan Arendt and clinical psychologist Dr. Mark Kline, Psy.D. in response to the tragic suicide of a colleague.
Support Take This®!
Mission
Take This®, Inc. seeks to inform our community about mental health issues, to provide education about mental disorders and mental illness prevention, and to reduce the stigma of mental illness.
What we do
Take This® helps those who suffer by letting them know that they are not alone and providing information on treatment options and how to find help.
Take This® provides friends, family and coworkers of those suffering from emotional distress with options for intervention and education about mental wellness.
Take This® educates greater institutions about effective methods of helping employees who suffer from emotional issues in order to promote healthier and more productive work environments.
How we do it
Take This® curates a repository at takethis.org of stories and articles from people who have been there and how they found help or managed their symptoms.
Take This® commissions white papers and scholarly articles from leading clinicians about effective treatment and intervention.
Take This® advocates for mental health awareness and reform at public events through speaking engagements, panel presentations and performances.
Take This® creates "safe spaces" at conventions and expositions, where people who suffer from emotional issues can find peace and regain their calm.
Why it's important
Many who suffer from emotional issues feel like there's no one they can talk to, or who will understand. They suffer in silence, and silence can lead to further symptoms. Take This® offers perspective and hope.
How you can help
You can donate to Take This.
Your tax-deductible donation will help Take This spread more awareness to more people in more places.
You can share your story.
Sharing is the core of what we do. If you or someone you know suffers from an emotional issue, let us share your perspective so that someone else might not feel alone.
You can volunteer with Take This.
Your time and energy will help Take This reach further, faster.
You can shop at Amazon.
Simply go to our Amazon Smile page and sign up to support Take This. Every time you shop, we'll get a small donation from Amazon. It's quick, it's easy and it doesn't cost you a thing. And it helps us out a lot.
Who We Are
Take This Governing Board & Company Officers
The Take This, Inc. governing board provides executive leadership for all Take This activities according to the organization's bylaws. Board members are elected by a unanimous decision of existing board members. The board is designed to be comprised of members from the video game community, video game development industry and the field of clinical mental health.
Russ Pitts, Board Chairman & President
Russ Pitts is a documentary filmmaker; video producer; director; award-nominated journalist; six-time Webby winning website editor; author of the books "How Video Games Are Made", "Sex, Drugs and Cartoon Violence" and "Eagle Semen"; founder and President of Flying Saucer Media; co- founder and former Features Editor of Polygon.com; producer of the documentary web series “Human Angle” and “Press Reset”; and co-founder and President of the mental health education and advocacy non-profit TakeThis.org.
Pitts has worked in media for 25 years, in film, television, theater, radio, and the internet.
Susan Arendt, Secretary and Editorial Director
Susan Arendt has been working in the video game industry since 2007, adding her expertise to sites including Game|Life, 1up, The Escapist, Joystiq and GamesRadar+. She's passionate about mentoring the next generation of game journalists and bringing positivity back into the gaming space. She will happily talk your ear off about Doctor Who, horror movies, and video games...then she'll start showing you videos of adorable animals. Look for her on Twitter: @SusanArendt.
Kate Edwards, Executive Director
Kate is a unique hybrid of an applied geographer, writer, and content culturalization strategist with a passion for global cultures and media technologies. With broad experience in the fields of geography, cartography, geopolitics and cross-cultural issues, Kate is a recognized thought leader in applying this knowledge to 'real world' business solutions and problem solving, particularly in the information industry as related to inclusive representation, content management, and cross-cultural impacts of information and globalization.
As Microsoft’s geopolitical strategist in the internal geopolitical strategy team she created (’92-’05) and now as an independent consultant in her company Geogrify, she pioneered the field of digital content "culturalization" to identify geopolitical and cultural risks and opportunities in corporate products and services. Kate applies her expertise to a broad range of issues related to multinational corporate activity in local markets.
Kate is better known for her leadership and culturalization work in the video game industry, including her most recent role as Executive Director of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA®) from 2012 to 2017. During her time at Microsoft and since, she's worked on many game franchises, including Halo, Fable, Age of Empires, Dragon Age, Modern Warfare, Mass Effect and many others. She's also the founder of the IGDA's Localization SIG and co-organizer of the former Localization Summit at GDC. Kate has been a columnist for MultiLingual Computing magazine since 2005 and she plans to publish a culturalization handbook for game developers in 2017.
Pete Hines, Board Member
Pete Hines is the vice president of pr and marketing at Bethesda Softworks, where he has worked for the last 15+ years. A graduate of Wake Forest University with an MBA from George Mason University, Pete worked in marketing and public relations for several non-profit organizations before his arrival at Bethesda in 1999, and has played various roles in every game the company has published since then. When he isn't working he's an avid soccer player, sports fan, and gamer. He joined Take This in early 2015 as a member of the advisory board.
Take This Staff
Raffael Boccamazzo, PsyD, L.M.H.C.A., Clinical Director
Suzanne Jackiw, General Counsel
Katrina Keller, Operations Director
For more information about Take This, please email: info@takethis.org
TakeThis, Inc seeks to educate, inform, and advocate about about mental health issues in our community. We do not provide mental health services or professional consultations. For information on when to seek dedicated clinical help and how to find it, please visit our "When to Seek Help" page. If you or someone you know is in crisis and in need of immediate intervention, please visit the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline or call 1-800-273-8255.
Take This, Inc.
8311 Brier Creek Pkwy
Ste 105176
Raleigh, NC, 27617
EIN: 46-3882735