Bailey Kuzma
Special to The Leader
This year there is a new club on campus: NAMI. NAMI stands for the National Alliance of Mental Illness. It was started by Tyler Gross, a junior biology major.
“I wanted to start the club because I’ve always been passionate about helping people with mental illness and I came across NAMI, which is actually a big national organization, [when] I stumbled upon their website and I saw that one way to get involved was to join or start a club on campus,” he said.
Gross has also had some personal connections with mental illness, dealing with it within his family. This was a major reason he wanted to bring the organization to Fredonia.
“There’s mental illness in my family, I know people with mental illness much like everybody. I feel like most people are either personally affected by it or know somebody who is,” said Gross. “One in five adults in America have [a] mental illness, so I believe that everybody is personally connected to it.”
Gross fell in love with the main goal of NAMI, which is to eliminate the negative stigma associated with mental illness. He also believes the club will help open people’s eyes to mental illness, motivate them to raise more awareness to these problems and help those struggling to know that they are not alone.
“I think it’s important that [we have a] presence on campus so that [if] somebody [is] struggling with their own mental illness, and they’re feeling that they’re the only person dealing with that, [a club on campus] with 50 members, whether they’re super involved or not, [still shows] that they care,” said Gross. “That person is going to feel a lot less alone, and they’re [going to] feel like we have a campus community that’s there to help and support them.”
Gross has a few main goals that he wishes to achieve throughout the first year of this new club. A major thing Gross wants to focus on is fundraising, whether that be through a cookout or a car wash.
“We’re hoping to use [that money] to go into the second aspect of what we’re trying to do, which is spreading awareness,” he said.
Gross wants to spread that awareness by ordering t-shirts that will highlight different mental illnesses.
“We were thinking that we could sell [the shirts] for very cheap and have a tye-dye night. There’s different colors that correspond to different mental illnesses, [so] I would like to host a night where people can come in… and tye-dye the shirt with the color that means something to them,” he said.
Other than fundraising, the club also hopes to have movie nights where members would get together and watch a movie associated with mental illness, and then have a discussion about it afterward.
Advocacy is also important to Gross. He wants NAMI to be able to improve services for those dealing with mental illnesses on our campus. Students can look forward to Gross setting up peer advocacy groups.
“Nobody in our club is a licensed therapist…[but] somebody’s peers can be just as useful in terms of helping them get through their mental illness as people in LoGrasso or the Counseling Center,” he said.
The advocacy group would be completely anonymous and anyone attending will have to sign a form stating that they agree to keep whatever is said in the room, in the room.
“I just think it’d be a good way to get a sense of community, knowing there’s always a place you can go,” said Gross.
Those looking to join the club can contact Tyler Gross through his email at tylergross.nami.fred@gmail.com