Simple Mental Health: The ROI of Vulnerability - Unleashing Performance While Transforming Lives

When Adam Nemer strolled into his colleague David’s office one Monday morning, he just
thought it was another rainy day in Oregon running the operations of a multi-billion-dollar health
plan.

He had absolutely no idea that he was reaching rock bottom after nearly seventeen years of
severe, yet undiagnosed, depression and anxiety.

Earlier in life, when Adam was twenty-nine and getting groomed to run his family business, he
found his dad—his best friend, business partner, the guy he always wanted to be just like—after
he died of suicide.

Unfortunately, at this crossroads of his life, where Adam needed it the most and would have
prevented so much pain down the road, paralyzed by the myths and stigmas of mental illness, he
only had a few therapy sessions and went off into the world.

He got an MBA, got married, and grew a successful twenty-year executive career at Kaiser
Permanente. On the outside, it looked like he lived a dream life. But on the inside, he was always
so sad and so scared—moving through life with the feeling of breathing through a straw while
running upstairs with ants crawling out of his skin. He couldn’t control his emotions and didn’t
know why.

Thankfully, his colleague, David—who had recently taken a mental health literacy class at his
church—noticed the signs that Adam might be struggling with his mental well-being, and in a
five-minute conversation that Monday morning helped Adam get on the path of recovery.

This is surely not your typical leadership book. It’s a heartfelt and authentic exploration of one
man’s journey, and what he learned along the way.

It’s a book for all sorts of leaders. From board members and corporate executives to small
business owners and factory supervisors. From partners in law firms to nonprofit professionals.
And it’s a book for all the informal leaders out there—those who lean in and participate in their
organization or their community regardless of title, hierarchy, or how much they get paid.

Simple Mental Health speaks to leaders looking to build resilience and address burnout among
their teams, leaders looking for more holistic, empathetic, and psychologically safe approaches to
improved organizational performance.

You’ll put this book down as a more compassionate leader—with an inspired perspective on
mental well-being, the prevalence of mental illness among colleagues, family and friends, its
impact on individual and team performance, a simple roadmap to do something about it, and the
motivation to take the first step.

Adam Nemer is the founder of Simple Mental Health and a former CFO and senior operations executive at Kaiser Permanente, where he worked nearly twenty years while unknowingly struggling with mental illness. His life shifted when a compassionate colleague encouraged him to seek help—a simple act that revealed the profound impact leaders can have on their colleagues' well-being.

Today, Adam partners with organizations across the Americas and Europe spreading mental health literacy and building cultures where both people and performance thrive.