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Burrell Behavioral Health employees Mandy Vela, Denise Mills and Lacey Slagle are helping run the event today.
sbj photo by wes hamilton
Burrell Behavioral Health employees Mandy Vela, Denise Mills and Lacey Slagle are helping run the event today.

Burrell hosts Depressed Cake pop-up shop in Springfield

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Burrell Behavioral Health is hosting its first Depressed Cake Shop event, coinciding with Suicide Awareness Month.

The first ever in Missouri, the pop-up shop is scheduled to operate 10 a.m.-8 p.m. today at the downtown 319 Event Center. Organizers are inviting interested parties to pop in at 319 W. Walnut St.  to purchase unique baked goods with a point.

“We are very excited to bring something new and different to the community,” Burrell Administrative Assistant Lacey Slagle said. “You don’t think of a bakery of gray being appetizing and aesthetically perfect, but with these gray baked goods, there is a touch of color in them.”

Originating in Europe, Depressed Cake Shop is a nonprofit with a platform designed to raise awareness for mental health. The baked goods are gray and feature rain clouds, sad faces or words like “Help” or “I’m fine.”

Organizations can partner with Depressed Cake Shop, Slagle said, to host an event, with the pop-up concept providing branding and promotional content and the host bringing together the baked goods and event space. The next scheduled pop-up shop is Oct. 7 in Seattle, according to DepressedCakeShop.com.

“Anybody can do this actually,” she said. “They want you to be involved and get the word out and they help with the PR side of things. They’re just happy anyone is jumping in.”

Partnering with Burrell are local restaurants, bakeries, home bakers and vendors to create baked items that will raise money for local suicide prevention efforts. Businesses on board include The Urban Cup, Tea Bar & Bites, The Coffee Ethic, B + B Boulangerie, MaMa Jean’s Natural Market, Metropolitan Farmer, Gilardi’s, Prairie Pie and Kim’s BBQ Shack.

“Any of the staff members at Burrell are providing any type of cake, cookies, cupcakes,” Slagle said. “We have one assistant who has made a massive Mad Hatter cake.”

Slagle said the event has no cost to Burrell since the baked goods and event space were donated.

While the event is meant to be enjoyable, Slagle said the goal is for consumers to walk away with a better understanding of mental health and suicide.

“We hope that they take away the seriousness of suicide. It is OK to have a conversation about it and it’s OK to be depressed,” she said. “It’s not a bad thing and there are resources out there to help people. And we have ample amounts of ways to help with that.”

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