PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – Morgan Reid, a University of Pennsylvania graduate and mental health provider, wanted to create something to relieve everyday stress and anxiety.
Now she has three types of AroDough, short for aromatherapy dough, with her Black-owned company A Little Mental.
“The soft touch of the pastel, the look of the colors, it’s all scientifically proven to help you naturally reduce stress and anxiety,” Reid said.
Reid created AroDough for adults as a way to manage her own stress and anxiety without having to take medication. The dough can be smelled, pressed, sculpted or simply rolled in your hands. AroDough is “made to go wherever your stress takes you.”
“I’ve had people use it on planes or in traffic to calm down, and I’ve personally used it when I had panic attacks,” Reid said.
Reid is a Philadelphia-based mental health professional and surgery specialist. She received her master’s degree in counseling and mental health counseling from the University of Pennsylvania and her bachelor’s degree from Villanova University.
With the events of 2020, Morgan struggled to cope with the emotional toll of lockdown.
“I was like, ‘I have a master’s degree and I’m running out of healthy coping mechanisms’ to deal with a lot of the big feelings and emotions I was having. I’m a ’90s kid and I like to go back to that nostalgic feeling, and I also know how useful aromatherapy is. I wondered if I could combine these two elements.”
From there, AroDough was born. Marketed as a way to “smell and squeeze away your stress” with comparisons to fidget toys such as fidget spinnersAroDough has three different scents, each with unique benefits: lavender, spearmint and crèmesicle.
The product was a natural extension of Reid’s company’s overall mission of supporting mental health care.
With AroDough, “you discover your inner child and your imagination… it helps bring you back to the present moment. They’re all subtle ways you can actually address your mental health, and that’s really the bigger vision of A Little Mental Reid said.
Reid started A Little Mental in 2020, in the middle of lockdown when people in her community, especially minorities, were looking for answers about their mental health.
“I wanted to be able to provide the tools because they didn’t know where to go, they didn’t know a safe place to ask certain questions, and they didn’t know places to find resources that matched their identity.”
Without the label or stigma surrounding mental health, Reid gives customers an entry point to take care of themselves – through a $10 jar of dough.
Chandler Lutz
