Active Minds at Bradley hosted a men\u2019s mental health seminar on Wednesday, where featured speaker David Romano told his story and gave advice on dealing with depression in all facets of life.<\/p>\n
The organization\u2019s president, Gabi Necastro, wanted to put on this event so that men, who are a minority in their group, know that it\u2019s okay to seek help.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe men we know personally have gone and sought help and then been rejected or told what they\u2019re feeling wasn\u2019t validated,\u201d Necastro said. \u201cSo we really wanted to bring in a men\u2019s mental health speaker to show men that what they\u2019re feeling is validated and they are more than welcome to reach out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Romano, who is a part of the Active Minds national chapter, talked about his pursuit of perfection and that, as an athlete, that pursuit was detrimental to his mental health. He would pray to get hurt before games so he wouldn\u2019t have to deal with the failure of not being perfect.<\/p>\n
Eventually, he got diagnosed with depression. Seeing it as a weakness, he refused to tell anyone and sought professional help, to no avail. At one point, he tried to take his own life.<\/p>\n
Some time later, he sat in his counselor\u2019s office and saw his dad, who he thought of as \u201cSuperman\u201d, balling his eyes out. To Romano, this was his turning point.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s when I realized what it meant to be strong, what it meant to be resilient, what it meant to be a man,\u201d Romano said.<\/p>\n
Small words of support made the biggest difference for Romano, and he pointed out three things that can be done to make a difference in mental health awareness: self-care, normalizing the mental health conversation, and connecting with each other.<\/p>\n
One audience member, freshman kinesiology major Daustin Perez, resonated with the self-care aspect.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really remember what he said about \u2018you can\u2019t light yourself on fire and warm other people up,\u2019\u201d Perez said. \u201cBeing aware that you need to take more care of yourself and actually opening yourself up to the fact that that\u2019s a possibility.\u201d<\/p>\n
Romano added that he still struggles to this day, and told an audience of mostly men that they are heard.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s ok to not be ok,\u201d Romano said. \u201cIt is not ok to suffer in silence.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also encouraged anyone struggling to start the process now, before it\u2019s too late.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you fill up your gas tank when you\u2019re out of gas and you\u2019re on the side of the road or do you fill it when it\u2019s a quarter empty?\u201d Romano said. \u201cThat\u2019s the same thing with mental health because you want to be more anticipatory than reactionary.\u201d<\/p>\n
When it\u2019s all said and done, Necastro hopes everyone learned what Romano was trying to teach.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope people just realize [that] what they\u2019re going through and what they\u2019re feeling isn\u2019t completely abnormal and isn\u2019t something they should be ashamed of,\u201d Necastro said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Active Minds at Bradley hosted a men\u2019s mental health seminar on Wednesday, where featured speaker David Romano told his story and gave advice on dealing with depression in all facets of life. The organization\u2019s president, Gabi Necastro, wanted to put on this event so that men, who are a minority in their group, know that it\u2019s okay to seek help. \u201cThe men we know personally have gone and sought help and then been rejected or told what they\u2019re feeling wasn\u2019t validated,\u201d Necastro said. \u201cSo we really wanted to bring in a men\u2019s mental health speaker to show men that what they\u2019re feeling is validated and they are more than welcome to reach out.\u201d Romano, who is a part of the Active Minds national chapter, talked about his pursuit of perfection and that, as an athlete, that pursuit was detrimental to his mental health. He would pray to get hurt before games so he wouldn\u2019t have to deal with the failure of not being perfect. Eventually, he got diagnosed with depression. Seeing it as a weakness, he refused to tell anyone and sought professional help, to no avail. At one point, he tried to take his own life. Some time later, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":357,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,12],"tags":[249],"class_list":["post-3125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-campus","tag-bucom360"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/com.bradley.edu\/newslab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/com.bradley.edu\/newslab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/com.bradley.edu\/newslab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/com.bradley.edu\/newslab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/357"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/com.bradley.edu\/newslab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3125"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/com.bradley.edu\/newslab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3126,"href":"https:\/\/com.bradley.edu\/newslab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3125\/revisions\/3126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/com.bradley.edu\/newslab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/com.bradley.edu\/newslab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/com.bradley.edu\/newslab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}