By Austin Harrison
For most people, passion about a cause grows from a personal, and often painful, interaction with the issue. For me, my passion stemmed from a season of life in which I consecutively dated two women who developed mental health issues.
I entered into college with little to no knowledge about mental health and soon found myself trying to assist someone, whose welfare and happiness I deeply cared about, deal with a mental health disorder. I tried to carry some of that burden and saw firsthand the stigma that follows this issue and felt the confusion and loneliness that it can bring.
After graduating and moving to Nashville, I started looking for opportunities to use my job at a local animation and design studio, Identity Visuals, to educate the public about mental health. A cold email sent to the National Alliance on Mental Illness’ national headquarters later, I had a meeting with their chief communications officer here in Nashville. Identity Visuals has since begun working with NAMI to create short animated explanations of mental illnesses for their non-profit marketing campaigns.
From there the mental health marketing conference I was going to do 'one day' began to take shape. After garnering support from friends, business associates and family, as well as a partnership with Lipscomb University for the event space, dates were picked and speakers were booked.
With this conference we are aiming to equip professionals in the mental health community to de-stigmatize mental illness and to direct individuals with mental health issues to treatment through modern marketing. It's my dream to make this a yearly event and, over time, turn Nashville into a model for other cities in the conversation about mental health.
Advocacy for mental health awareness isn't just a concern for people across the world or across town – it has an impact in our own worlds everyday. Greater awareness of the illnesses can help reduce the stigma, improve the likelihood of recognizing symptoms and unify our communities to assist those in need of treatment. Simple awareness of the magnitude of this issue and the amount of lives it touches can become a catalyst towards directing more individuals to treatment and supporting them in their journey. Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in our country and the second for ages 15–24.
There are both beautiful and unfortunate things about being human. Our minds are capable of extraordinary things, but we are also afraid of the unknown. There is still a lot of fear and lack of information about mental health. Things have improved vastly, but there is work yet to be done.
I believe we can remove the stigma by choosing not to let fear control the way we interact with, care for and treat those with mental illness.
For more information on the May 12-13 event, click here.