Mutual MENtal
Mutual MENtal
S2 E1. Youth of the Nation (w/Guest Kevin G)
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In this episode, Hassan and Pat return to Mutual Mental for the start of Season 2! They chat with their first guest, Kevin Guinan.
Kevin is a 21 year old college student, who happens to be Hassan's future brother in law. Kevin has experience with mental health through lived experience and with loved ones. We chat about stigma around mental health with the younger generation and how online presence has impacted connections over the past few years along with highlighting resources and support systems.
And we're trying to break that. Even though our goal is to have men opening up, everyone is welcome to listen and learn a thing or two. So let's end this silence, break the stigma, and normalize mental health.
SPEAKER_03Hey everyone, welcome to Mutual Mental Season 2. Episode one. This is Pat.
SPEAKER_00This is Hassan. How's everyone doing? How are you doing, Pat? I'm doing good. How have you been, Hassan? I've been pretty good. Thank you. Um, actually, I just walked uh in the door from work, pretty long day. And um, in the middle of the day, I had a deep cleaning for the at the dentist, and they had to numb the whole right side of my face. I was like talking to the doctor. She's like, any questions? I was like, I have a Zoom meeting with like families for the first time after this. Like, am I gonna be able to talk? She's like, Do you want a mirror to like look at yourself? I'm like, I don't really care how I look. I was like, I have to talk to these people. Like, like I was kind of stressing out, but the meeting, the meeting went okay. And um, my I have feeling back in my mouth now, and uh ready to go. How are you doing?
SPEAKER_03We I'm good. We'll let you know if you're drooling and you you're not aware of it. You know, but yeah, I I'm glad you're here and and you made it. I'm doing good. I completed uh a new training, mental health first aid instructor training. It's a class that we provide to uh any type of organizations, it can be in the community, public libraries, big corporations, and it's for the public. It's like a CPR for mental health. So we equip people, the general public, to be uh become you know good at uh identifying the symptoms if somebody is not feeling well mentally, how to approach the person, what to say, uh resources, etc. So it's super easy, and people can become certified as a mental health first aider. So I'm I'm super excited to get this started uh this year, and um that's uh basically the main uh main thing I wanted to uh brag about.
SPEAKER_00Well, that's great. No, I think we need more of that in the community, and like the more awareness there is around this stuff, and like the more people can like support each other, like you said, if it's available to the public and organizations, so like more people can come together and really recognize these signs and provide the right kind of help. Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_03So I think enough about ourselves because we have a guest for our first episode of season two, and uh I'll let you uh introduce our guest tonight.
SPEAKER_00Thank you, thank you. I am honored to have our first guest on this season, uh, not only because um he's the first guest of the season, somebody very special and dear to me, Kevin Gaynan, 21-year-old young man, Yukon College student. And we're gonna ask him some questions and learn about um his story and some of the mental health things that are going on and just have a conversation together. Um, welcome, Kevin. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01Thanks, Hassan. Thanks, Pat. I'm honored as well to be a guest on the podcast, to talk to your audience, to provide my expertise as someone a little bit younger. You know, maybe I'll resonate with some of the more social media age kids as I know I was. And um, I also have the honor of being Hassan's brother-in-law, too. I also had a busy day, but I did not have a teeth cleaning or deep cleaning or whatever that was. So I think I I think I had the easier brother, brother day today.
SPEAKER_03Nice, nice. Awesome. Welcome, Kevin. We're excited to have you and uh and you you kind of answered it a little bit, but first and foremost, how are you doing? How are you doing for real? Not just the typical answer, I'm doing good.
SPEAKER_01I don't know. I'm feeling a little bit scattered. There's a lot of uh stories I'm working on because I'm a journalism student at UConn, so they're all kind of colliding in weird ways today. Well, I went to a board of trustees meeting for school, and then it kind of I had to leave early, and then the It's this whole thing, and I was disappointed because the school didn't get back to me in time and missed a deadline. So you know, some of those things can kind of take a hit to your ego, but I think I'm happy to be in the news community. I think the people I work with have only uplifted me, so I have to focus on the fact that it's not like a scary place with my my newsroom, but it's just like I want to be be good for them, but they understand they just want me to be me, is I guess where I'm feeling.
SPEAKER_03Thanks for sharing.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. Um, and then I was gonna ask, like, just to get like the listeners situated, can you just kind of explain a little bit like about like a little bit more about yourself and just to get the listeners like a feel of who we're talking to?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'll uh base it off of my mental health journey journey as well. I know that we're we're in mutual mental, so I'll focus on that. I am uh a little a little kid, I guess. I don't know what I was talking about. But yeah, I'm from Goldester, Connecticut. I come from a a smaller town, and um I was raised with two two siblings who had their own mental illnesses, and it kind of came into my my life later when it came to diagnoses and trying to work on my mental health, but it was also always present. Wow, that was so mean. Okay.
SPEAKER_00I live with my family, if you can't tell, because families are gonna be families.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's funny. Yeah, so my mental health journey hasn't been linear, but it's always been uh present throughout my life. And I think coming into a college age, I try to, you know, recognize where it's become less stigmatized, but also where like a lot of progress still still needs to happen as someone who's kind of witnessed it throughout my life and have my own experiences with mental health challenges and also mental health greatness, you know, it's all relative.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and we'll we'll dive into it because you touched a couple of points we want to come back to. You mentioned about college, the transition that can be hard going into college, being awake because you're in UConn, uh another thing also that can affect uh your wellness. It would be nice to hear as well. Like what were your the main challenges that you have experienced earlier on, or as you were becoming more aware of what was going on with your own mental wellness? So did you discover that by yourself or by a doctor or family? And maybe if we can learn a little bit about some of your challenges, but what what were the resources as well that you had or or didn't have and some of the key uh elements that helped getting you back on track and in a more healthy space?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think it's interesting because I think most of my mental health education has come from like a mix of you know health classes growing up. It was taught in a different way than I've experienced in like history classes or just curious knowledge of myself of like oh mental health history in the United States where I come from is very nuanced. It hasn't been focused on the individual person in a lot of years past. But in health class I learned like a lot of the different diagnoses that people can have and mental health challenges, whether it be like ADHD, eating disorders, depression, anxiety, and I think it was, you know, a curriculum that tried to destigmatize it and understand previous bad histories. But also, I think to contradict that was like a online sphere that was so new at the time that I grew up with, where there was like a lot of mental health knowledge to be found on there, a lot of communities emerging because they were connected with like-minded people or someone experiencing the same things as them that was never never an ability that they had in years past, but also came with a lot of misinformation at the same time of like what is a mental illness and how is it you know perceived in different online spheres can be wonderful for some and really open up a new community, or it can kind of stigmatize people further or really put them down a dark spiral.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. And uh you just said it, that flip side, you know, like you learn about it, but are the diagnoses stigmatizing more like yes, the education you learn about it, which is valuable, but then how is it done? So with people with lived experience when you're on the other side and you hear about some of the terms and how uh we could we can be labeled, yeah, that's interesting.
SPEAKER_00That dual side uh I like the just the idea like there's the online spheres, uh spheres, and then there's like what you're hearing in school, what you're hearing from like other places. Did you find that there was like some like misunderstanding between like people saying things and talking about things and then like actually what you were living with and dealing with? For example, like people are like, Oh, the weather is bipolar today. And I'm like, I you know, I have bipolar, like I don't I don't think you really know what that means. I just wonder, like, have you found anything like that to be true?
SPEAKER_01Oh, totally. I think in health class specifically, back in high school, my freshman year, you all kind of learn about the things as I've mentioned, but it was something that they mentioned, like you know, mental illnesses and challenges and whatever, through middle school, I think through like early education from my experience of the curriculum. But in high school, I remember specifically my sister had really bad anorexia. She was hospitalized many different times for that. And when we were learning about it in high school, it was just kind of disregarded. Like people, like my classmates, were like, Oh, that doesn't exist, that's just like an attention-seeking thing. And I'm like, it's very much more real in my home life, and then it kind of makes me want to coddle up further, or it makes you feel like nobody can understand you, which I think like ropes back into the internet because it's like you can find people who like are also siblings of people with anorexia or like have very shared experiences with you where you can connect, but it's also like I see online that misinformation, people just kind of like commenting, oh, the weather's been so bipolar recently, and like a weather report, or it's like I know there's been a resurgence of like the R Sler, which is very ableist and a huge deep progression, I guess. So it's like that's kind of prolifer proliferated online, and it's like you can't really disconnect the two. There's a lot of pros and cons, and just like education is always helpful, but when I was being educated about it, it also made me feel a little bit more lonely at the same time because my communal reaction wasn't the same as my lived experience.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, for sure. There's a whole section we could talk about about uh you know, language and words matter. Anybody can learn and educate themselves about it. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00My mouth is still not working 100%, but um trying here. Um thank you for that. And actually, you know, at a point now in your life though, like it, you know, you didn't really connect with like your peers then with like when they were talking about mental health. Are you at a place now where you do you have like community and you can connect with other people, like even if like they're your age, you're you know, around doing the same kind of things? Are there is there a way where you can openly talk about these things with like people in your life?
SPEAKER_01That's such a great question. I think personally, I'd like to acknowledge that I've had a lot of struggles with my mental health journey as someone in college, with college specifically being like a source where I came in and started counseling for the first time and really took the time to understand myself and be on a positive trajectory that way of like acknowledging like, oh yeah, I struggle with my mental health is a big step for a lot of people. But I also transitioned a lot in in college, like transferred, I guess. And um that kind of made me like lose my base in counseling and the peers I was meeting and the communities I was engaging with that I kind of felt comfortable with. Didn't exactly follow me to the different colleges, you know. I always had a different place and kind of felt discombobulated because of that. But I still, you know, at UConn have just kind of begun that pursuit of counseling again and acknowledging that I'm still still struggling, still dealing with my mental health. And I think it's important for the audience as well to understand that the mental health journey is never linear. Also, when I was at the Board of Trustees meeting, there was a big thing about a disability community center that a bunch of people who dealt with various disabilities from mental to physical were stood up in front of these millionaires, these board of trustee members, and were like, we deserve like a a communal space because this educational system has been oppressive to us. And I it felt weird to be a reporter in this situation and have to main maintain some sort of neutrality, objectivity. It's a big debate. But nevertheless, it made me feel, you know, at home at UConn. Like I have a space on campus where, you know, people are advocating for me, even if they're not even seeing me as someone with mental health challenge because I haven't spoken with them in previous years in the past, but they were just doing it for me and they didn't know me.
SPEAKER_03That's great. I was curious to know what kind of resources you find on campus or around the campus for mental health support. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. UConn has a student health and wellness center, and that's kind of the main thing, the main organization that handles everything from mental health to physical health. But when I've I've done counseling and I started counseling there, and I felt a little bit, I don't know, rushed, or like the kind of the first of all the payment plan or whatever, like, you know, cost is a barrier for a lot of people, including me. And then also it's like you can only schedule once every two weeks and stuff, and I'm like, it doesn't really feel I don't know, like it's actually doing stuff for me, but it feels more like words on a paper. But I don't know, like, because there's you know, valuable people, valuable counselors, and I'm happy to have them and happy to have those resources, especially as I mentioned. Mental health support has been terrible in like the last century, you know, where it was just UConn had a depot campus, we call it now, where they were really abusing a lot of people who were, you know, labeled as mentally ill, even if they were just, you know, gay and everything, as I am too. But I don't really view that as a mental health challenge. But there was still kind of like along with everybody else who deserves actual mental health support and not just uh oppressive treatment. So I think being at this stage, it's hard to kind of acknowledge where we can progress and where I'm like, is this actually mental health support? Versus understanding like there's also the previous kind of abusive system that I have to acknowledge like existed, created a lot of the challenges we have today, but I'm glad to not be a part of still.
SPEAKER_00Definitely. And I think um the system is changing, but very slowly, you know, like they're integrating, like um Pat mentioned, like like we're you know, we're both certified peer specialists, they're integrating peer work into programs now, and but there's still such a long way to go because the systems were really designed, you're right, not to really support or help, but just to oppress. And now I think they're they're changing, but there still needs to be more openness. And you know, I like that you said that you know, mental health is not linear. It it's for it wasn't for me either. And also that I found too that like, you know, I had to go to a couple different counselors, a couple different therapists. It wasn't really one size fits all for me. Um, so I had to try out a couple different things until I found the right fit.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and and sometimes uh yeah, it takes time. It's hard, it's hard to find somebody you can trust that you like, and it's okay as well to voice our needs throughout, you know, my journey. I've tried things that didn't seem to work, but I give it sometimes another chance and it was completely different. It can be either therapy, peer support groups, or anything. So uh sometimes you can still revisit some of those tools. Speaking of these tools, do you want to share with us uh some of your own personal uh wellness, mental wellness tools or strategies that you use, you know, to maintain your wellness or when you feel like things are going down?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think on the Yukon campus, another kind of way I support myself is through the Rainbow Center and through connecting with, you know, a queer community that embraces individuality, embraces what feels like uh some sort of home for me. And I think kind of going there and engaging with people is one way I'm able to reassure myself. And you know, I'd almost view it as some sort of peer support, even if it's not like specifically under the mental health realm, but just like a communal space where you know mental health often gets talked about, especially in relation to queer identity. I think beyond that is also kind of self-time, I guess, or just playing video games, reading books, and just kind of isolating. I think especially being on a pretty populated campus, a pretty large one, it can feel overwhelming at times. That's something I struggle with. And just taking that time to acknowledge that and take a step back and kind of have some meet time and engage in, you know, hobbies that have often just kind of been personal helps me, you know, balance out the socialization other aspect.
SPEAKER_03Awesome.
SPEAKER_00I wanted to touch on something also real quick, if we could, you know, with like the internet age and everything being online now, and here we are like you know, in in on this platform meeting together, you know, virtually. Is there have you found like connections, like human connections to be different, like whether it's like more virtual or like different than in-person? You know, for me, like I I'm kind of awkward online, but I I'm more of an in-person type person, you know, person. I'm an in-person type person, I guess. But like, are you finding that there's like different kinds of connections and like what does that look like?
SPEAKER_01Totally. I think I normally gear towards in-person connection now. I think because of COVID, I think it took a lot out of the internet sphere and the joy that came from that, where it used to be like escapism, it kind of felt like real life in a bit, where you know, engaging with a peer one-on-one going on a hike or kind of you know, playing a board game inside where you're not on your phone and you just kind of look at each other almost feels like an escape now, where it's like, oh, I'm not talking or seeing so many people engaged in such like a dopamine rush that it's like a reprieve from like work, where work can also feel so online oriented and like you're on a Zoom, not to not to shade this right now. But especially if you have an online job, I'm normally writing, but I'm also on call sometimes just talking to people. And it's like along with my coping mechanisms of plane switch and stuff, it's like, wow, I really just need to take some time either just with a friend and getting lost and not realizing that I got sucked into a conversation for like an hour, or uh just reading a book and also kind of feeling like that.
SPEAKER_03And do you feel you you would still get those connections through virtual contacts or not?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I still I'm like a texter. I can text a lot sometimes. And I'm like, sometimes it feels easier to do that. Yeah, I'm like, I'd rather like it's nice to just kind of have like a long texting conversation with somebody, but I think it really depends on the person. Like some people it's like, oh, I wanna get lost in a conversation in in person where we just start talking and you know, out somewhere experiencing, versus like, oh wow, I really just want to delve in deep and have like a political conversation or just like you know, kind of really be able to tune out your thoughts and send it to the other person. Like there's a lot of value in both in you know, video calls as well. But um I think post-COVID I'm still getting a lot of that, but I need more escape from that at the same time. It's just gotten more exhausting.
SPEAKER_00We talked about the upsides and downsides of that connection and a lot of different topics here today, and I want to bring it back to like what are some like key takeaways that you would like to leave some of our listeners with today? Like like from like what we talked about, like some some key points that I think that would really hit home.
SPEAKER_01I think it's to always stay true to yourself. I know that's kind of a little bit of a cliche, but at the same time, you know, through transferring different colleges, through having a very linear, unlinear mental health journey, it's always, you know, kind of accept yourself where you are and don't feel shame for it and kind of break open the conversation of like your true feelings and try to try to open up no matter if it's virtual, if it's uh online, don't let me sway you because that's not being true to yourself, but I would say just kind of listen to what feels best to what resonates to you and continue on your own trailblazing path.
SPEAKER_03Wow, thank you. That's a great uh way to finish uh our first episode of season two. Thank you so much, Kevin, for being here with us uh today. It's wish you all the best in your journey and uh also uh with your journalism studies, and you always be welcome back on the show to give us some updates. Thank you so much. Thanks for being here.
SPEAKER_01Thanks, Pat. Thanks, Hasan. It was uh it was an honor to be the first guest on season two. I'm sure there's uh a lot of bright things on your way this season.
SPEAKER_00Hoping so. It was a pleasure having you. Thank you so much, of course.
SPEAKER_03And um, and Kevin, if you want to stay with us, so um, we're starting a new thing. Is that at the end of each of our episodes, we will be asking everybody, what are you gonna do for your mental wellness today? We'll let you start.
SPEAKER_01Okay, yeah, I guess because I I seemed enthusiastic. I think that's a great question. Um I'm gonna read some of my book. I'm gonna try to not have an estimated time limit or whatever. I'm just gonna read it until I'm bored with it. And um, the book's called Cemetery Boy. It's a fun, fun little book. So I might read it a lot. I might pick it up and put it down.
SPEAKER_03That's great. Thank you. Thanks for sharing. What about you, Assan?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's a good question. I, you know, like I said when we first started, I just walked in the door and we like from work and got into this, which is I'm grateful for and I love. But I'm so excited to spend time with my cat and my fiance and just chill for a little bit. That's what I'm gonna do for myself tonight. What are you doing?
SPEAKER_03I'm gonna play guitar. Thanks again, uh Kevin. Thanks, Hassan, thanks everybody, and uh we'll see you uh next time.
SPEAKER_00Thanks everybody. Take care. Sensitive content for some people. Hosts are not therapists nor doctors. Everyone's experience is different and valid. Find what works for you. If you or someone you know needs immediate mental health support, call 1 800 273 and talk 8255 or go to your local emergency hospital.
SPEAKER_03Thanks. Why not looking forward to music?
