The Crisis Narrative of Mental Health is a macro socio/cultural narrative that has been quietly evolving and driving much of our shared experience over the last 20 years. This powerful narrative is shaping people’s experience of mental health, institutional responses, intervention outcomes, and even help-seeking behavior. This dominant cultural narrative frames mental health challenges in society as urgent, persistent, overwhelming, and persistently negative – prompting institutions to adopt reactive measures rather than long-term solutions. While the narrative has succeeded in highlighting key systemic gaps and facilitated important changes, it is also contributing to the pathologizing of normative human experience and consequently contributing to unsustainable demand for services and unrealistic expectations on traditional mental health systems. Additionally, institutional responses are often hampered by the narrative’s lack of definition, differentiation, and goal setting. Finally, institutional initiatives and next-gen mental health support systems will struggle to achieve necessary adoption levels due to population-wide help-seeking behaviors that are also shaped by the crisis narrative. Awareness of the crisis narrative’s presence and consequences is a critical step for any institution seeking to implement successful long-term mental health strategies. We will then discuss the critically important combination of de-pathologizing human distress and building next-gen services capable of supporting whole populations using Togetherall’s clinically moderated peer support as an example. We’ll discuss the importance of balancing scale with humanity, the role of 24/7 safeguarding by licensed clinicians, integrating the ethics of licensed practice into next-gen services, and working hand-in-hand with traditional services. In this session, attendees will benefit from Togetherall’s Dr. Ben Locke’s unique background, experience and perspective while exploring: Social and cultural factors feeding into the Crisis Narrative Crisis Narrative impacts and the evolution of the demand/supply challenge Reframing and challenging people and systems operating within the Crisis Narrative Reimagining service offerings in alignment with this knowledge NOTE: I have done more than 6 presentations on the crisis narrative of mental health over the last 2 years across a range of sectors ranging from 20 minutes to 3 hours. If it is possible to explore a presentation longer than 15 minutes, my sense that the congress would benefit from a deeper dive.