At the end of 2018, we began our first series of “SameHere Sit-Downs.” It was meant as a trial run of MH programming for colleges – we took submissions & selected 15 campuses we’d visit for an hr & a half discussion.
We took the angle of lived experiences, pop culture references to what MH was erroneously perceived as thru media stories, what campaigns actually moved us further away from understanding this topic, what the science behind stress & trauma is/was to our body, & a small sample of exercises we can begin to use to take back control of a dysregulated nervous system no matter where we were on the MH continuum.
Maybe not surprisingly – since we had the help of sports personalities to promote it on their socials – the submissions were all from athletic depts at big schools. So, we ended up on a wild ride of 15 campuses from Cornell in the east to Indiana in the middle of the country to USC in the west. We learned a TON.
And it was the testing grnd arnd which we were able to build programs in our other areas of focus: K-12, Offices, Sports Teams/Leagues, Service Depts.
From that work, we had to dive in to what programming already existed, so we could attempt to improve upon it & add more necessary education. Surprisingly most of the popular programs were “curriculum in a box” – w the recommendation of a presenter for a single presentation. The curriculum focused on disorder & how to recognize it. It did not focus on life challenges we all face, culture change, understanding we’re all part of this MH equation/community, etc.
I/we don’t pretend to have all the answers…but the existing answers weren’t cutting it. So we built our own – bringing directors to schools to customize.
To then go to Mauldin HS in SC yesterday, 2,400 students – in a district of 75K!! & see what they did w this collaboration is so awesome. Separate breakouts w diff student groups like the football team here…doors decorated arnd the school (➡️slides) to show a connection btwn their “Mavs Matter” & Same Here (it matters for ALL of us), was awesome.
We gotta break from “generic” clinical programming. We need collaborative culture change.
