Submitted Photo Eric Kussin, founder of #SameHere, speaks to the Fredonia School Board at their last meeting.

Earlier this year, Fredonia High School Principal Darrin Paschke mentioned wanting to get programs in the school to help students out in regard to their mental health. After a recent in-service day at the school, one such foundation may see its way into the Fredonia school district in the future.

Spearheaded by Fredonia’s Chief Officer for Curriculum and Human Resources Margie Wright, representatives from the #SameHere Movement spoke to faculty and staff at the school, sharing who they are and what they’re about. Wright said representatives from #SameHere, including founder Eric Kussin, held roundtables with the staff all through the in-service day, and the need for this comes from general school wellness.

“It came about with the idea of staff mental health, student mental wellness, and taking the stigmas out of things,” she said. “As administrators, oftentimes there’s that looking toward us to support and we know we want to, need to, but we’re not equipped to either.”

Kussin and #SameHere Director of Schools David Hymowitz, both of whom were at Fredonia school, each have different backgrounds as to how they got there. Hymowitz is a licensed social worker, giving him a traditional path to a foundation like this, but Kussin’s path was different. He never envisioned himself working in the mental health field, and he acknowledges he is not a mental health professional, but his message and initiative are still capable of helping people.

“My brain and my body hit a brick wall,” said Kussin. “I effectively stopped being a person for two and a half years. … I ultimately ended up learning about experiences I had as a child… and how the accumulation of what I went through over that time built up inside me… So I was fortunate enough to learn healing modalities.”

From there, using his background working for professional sports teams, Kussin made connections to create #SameHere, with people willing to share stories and talking about what happened to people, not where they’re going.

“Often when we talk about mental health and see organizations come into schools, offices, and sports teams to discuss this topic, we lead with terms like depression, anxiety, and mental illness,” said Kussin. “What that does is turns off 80% of the room. That percent of the room says they aren’t in that category. Our message at #SameHere is these things happen to not one in five of us, but five in five of us who go through challenging life events.”

Kussin praised Wright and Fredonia for bringing #SameHere in to meet with the teachers first, because of how schools have dealt with mental health in the past. Instead of giving presentations on specific topics, giving a background of how life impacts people and where that leads, the crowd being spoken to is less sectioned off. Kussin said he’s looking forward to coming back to Fredonia in the future.

“I got a chance to work with the teachers today,” said Kussin. “I’m looking forward to coming back and working with students, working with parents, and using technologies we have to connect everyone else through apps. … Creating a community that’s connected through a data side of things.”

Fredonia Superintendent Dr. Bradley Zilliox said the school weighed Kussin’s presentation and foundation through a couple different perspectives, including where the administrators are in this and how they can help themselves, and how they’ll be able to efficiently help students through challenges they encounter.

“I like the word platform,” Zilliox said. “This is the platform we’re going to work from on both levels. … We look forward to working together and we can’t wait to have you in front of our students.”

School board President Brian Aldrich likened mental health instruction to the instruction of all other subjects the school teaches, saying it’s just as important to educate students in this category. “We teach literature, we teach reading, we teach mathematics and social sciences,” said Aldrich. “And yet, this is kind of a core thing that’s very beneficial.”

For more information about #SameHere and specifically their school program, visit https://samehereglobal.org/samehere-schools/.