Anonymous
I need somewhere to say it.
Pick a room and vent under a gentle alias — no account, no email, no name. The gentle pause watches over every word.
Trauma-informed, community-led emotional support
Release. Clarity. Renewal.Just Vent is a trauma-informed emotional support platform where you can express what you’re going through and connect with people who truly understand.
“Being heard changes how you heal.”
The Just Vent community
A note from the Just Vent team
“It’s a safe place to let off some steam and have relatable moments, a place where you can feel safe and have access to the resources you need to successfully navigate life again.”
Start here
Five ways in. Whatever you’re carrying today, one of these is the shortest path to the right help.
Right now
988, the Crisis Text Line, the SAMHSA helpline, and 911 — free, confidential, answered by real people, day or night.
Anonymous
Pick a room and vent under a gentle alias — no account, no email, no name. The gentle pause watches over every word.
Coming home
Housing, work, legal help, mental health, education, and healthcare — free, real resources, searchable by ZIP.
Every day
A daily check-in, a private journal, grounding and coping tools, weekly goals, and the community rooms — behind a sign-in.
Partners
Programs, re-entry and recovery organizations, peer coaches, counselors, and funders — here is what the model does.
Everyone
Just Vent stays free for the people who need it most. A gift of any size goes straight to the work.
How Just Vent Works
Whatever you’re carrying, there is a door that fits — from speaking freely in a moderated room to reaching a licensed professional.
Share your feelings in safe, moderated topic rooms.
Connect with people who have lived experience.
Receive guidance from certified peer recovery coaches.
Get structured support from licensed professionals.
Crisis detection, moderation, and trauma-informed design.
Our safety protocol
If the platform detects crisis or abusive language, the user is automatically flagged — grounding techniques and crisis resources are sent right away, and posting pauses until an admin reviews the situation.
A pause, before you go on
You don’t have to have it all figured out to show up here.
Every room is moderated. Every story is met with care. Come as you are — Just Vent will hold the rest.
Who Just Vent Is For
No one should have to carry a hard season alone. Just Vent was made for the people who often don’t have a safe place to say the real thing out loud.
6 ways in
one shared door
Why Just Vent Is Different
Just Vent was created by our founder, Tristen Worthy, after navigating incarceration, reentry, trauma, and recovery — and realizing how few safe spaces exist for emotional expression.
Too often, the people who need a listening ear most are told to stay quiet, be strong, keep moving. Just Vent exists to say the opposite: your story belongs somewhere, and there are people ready to hear it.
“It’s not about being fixed. It’s about being heard.”
A space that understands — because it’s been there.
Every choice — the language, the rooms, the moderation, the silence when you need it — is designed from lived experience, not from a textbook.
The question every director asks
Because the big platforms were not built by someone who lived it — Just Vent was. Founder Tristen Worthy built it after navigating incarceration, reentry, trauma, and recovery, and that lived experience shaped what the others don’t offer: low-bandwidth, so it reaches people without reliable internet; trauma-informed; culturally responsive; moderated; and led by peers with lived experience. Established platforms serve people who can find them and reach them. Just Vent is designed for the person the system leaves behind.
“This is the only platform out there that is designed specifically for this type of circumstance and the people who are affected.”
Tristen Worthy — Founder, Just Vent
The Challenge
Re-entry doesn’t come with a smooth road — these barriers are the ones that turn a fresh start into an uphill climb.
Raised first
The toll a hard season takes on the mind is the first thing people name when they walk in the door.
Raised first
Without a stable place to land, every other fresh start is harder to hold onto.
The cost of the gap
These barriers contribute to instability, unemployment, and increased recidivism risk.
The bridge forward
Just Vent is a scalable, evidence-based model that strengthens community safety, improves behavioral health outcomes, and expands equitable access to workforce and housing supports.
The published numbers
These are not estimates we made to make a case. Every figure below was published by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, SAMHSA, the National Institute of Mental Health or the Michigan Department of Corrections — and each one is shown with its source, so you can check it yourself.
Michigan
Our stateRecidivism — Michigan
21.0%
of prisoners paroled in 2021 returned to MDOC prison within three years, for a parole violation or a new sentence.
Source: Michigan Department of Corrections, 2021 Reincarceration Recidivism Rates report (2025)
Recidivism — nationally
BJS, 9-year follow-up68%
of state prisoners released in 2005 were arrested again within 3 years.
Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics, “2018 Update on Prisoner Recidivism: A 9-Year Follow-up Period (2005-2014)”
79%
were arrested again within 6 years.
Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics, “2018 Update on Prisoner Recidivism: A 9-Year Follow-up Period (2005-2014)”
83%
were arrested again within 9 years.
Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics, “2018 Update on Prisoner Recidivism: A 9-Year Follow-up Period (2005-2014)”
Mental health & trauma
SAMHSA · NIMH · BJS8.5%
of US adults (21.9 million people) had a major depressive episode in the past year (2023).
Source: SAMHSA, 2023 National Survey on Drug Use and Health
22.8%
of US adults (58.7 million people) had any mental illness in the past year (2023).
Source: SAMHSA, 2023 NSDUH
About one half of all US adults will experience at least one traumatic event in their lifetime.
Source: National Institute of Mental Health, PTSD statistics (National Comorbidity Survey Replication)
3.6%
of US adults had PTSD in the past year.
Source: NIMH, PTSD statistics
14%
of state and federal prisoners and 26% of jail inmates met the threshold for serious psychological distress (2011-2012).
Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Indicators of Mental Health Problems Reported by Prisoners and Jail Inmates, 2011-12”
Substance use
SAMHSA · BJS58%
of state prisoners and 63% of sentenced jail inmates met the criteria for drug dependence or abuse (2007-2009).
Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Drug Use, Dependence, and Abuse Among State Prisoners and Jail Inmates, 2007-2009”
17.1%
of people aged 12 or older had a substance use disorder in the past year (2023).
Source: SAMHSA, 2023 NSDUH
Why this is the work
Those numbers are people. Someone coming home with nowhere to sleep, no work to show up to, and no one to say the hard thing to is exactly who this platform exists for — because peer support and re-entry resources are what stand between a statistic and a life rebuilt.
For Partners
Just Vent offers trained peer specialists and a low-bandwidth mobile and web behavioral support platform that delivers peer coaching, appointment reminders, resource navigation, and brief cognitive-behavioral skill modules for people returning from incarceration — bridging the gaps in the continuity of behavioral health care and peer support for people reentering the community.
What partnership delivers
The reach is real: through partners, Just Vent goes further and serves many more people than programs currently navigating these tough times.
The founder’s commitment
“We’re building this pilot for the whole community — with diversity and inclusion at the forefront, so the outcomes serve everyone.”
Just Vent — for everyone
How this is funded
Just Vent grows through partnerships and grants.
That is how the pilot is funded and how it is sustained — real relationships with the organizations doing this work alongside us, and the grant support that carries it forward. It is a deliberate, durable way to keep this space free for the people who need it most.
The pilot, by the numbers we're aiming for
The three outcomes this pilot is built to reach, and how we will know we reached them.
Engagement
01Target
70%
of enrolled participants complete at least 8 weeks of peer contacts.
Employment
02Target
30%
increase in participants obtaining paid work or training placement within 6 months.
Service linkage
03Target
80%
successful warm handoffs to behavioral health or housing services.
Also tracking
Get Just Vent
The app is on its way. Everything here already works in your browser — free, always anonymous, moderated every step of the way. Join the community and we will tell you the moment it lands.
The app is in the making right now — join the community to be among the first to know when it lands.
Just Vent
release · clarity · renewal
How are you feeling right now?
Why We Do This
The belief at the center of everything Just Vent does — held close, in the community’s own words.
That we are trying to better our community.
A member in crisis affects everyone as a whole, not just that individual.
By making some of these barriers easier to cross we are keeping another person home instead of incarcerated, working instead of struggling, and with access to mental health services as needed and no judgment.
We want our communities back and away from the grips of addiction that steals the lives of so many, and not just the addict.
That addict is someone’s child, someone’s parent, someone’s sibling, that’s why it takes a village to raise a child.
It affects everyone.
The Just Vent community
The moment it’s working
The moment they chose freedom over incarceration.
The moment they chose working over bad decisions just to make ends meet.
The moment they chose their life again, over the slow death they were living.
Tristen Worthy — Founder, Just Vent