By: NICOLE BRODZIK, Lake Voice It was 6 p.m. on Wednesday, November 18 at Beaner’s Central Coffee Shop in West Duluth, which means open mic night and the regulars started arriving for what they expected to be a night of local music.
That week was different. That week a trio of women from University of Minnesota Duluth, Jacquelyn Hanson-Hietala, Alissa Stainbrook and Natalie Friesen, hosted Open Mic Night: Raising Awareness for Mental Health.
Their goal is to create a safe place for people to talk and learn more about mental illness.
“I think education is key and I think educating the campus community and the Duluth community in general about mental health is the first step in trying to reduce that stigma and make even a small difference,” Stainbrook said.
Hanson-Hietala is a student at UMD whose motivation for helping those dealing with mental illness stems from a family member’s mistreatment.
“I had an uncle who had mental health problems and my grandmother was too ashamed of it and he ended up homeless,” Hietala said. “He’s somewhere, no one knows where he’s at. I always think that if he could have gotten the proper help, his life could have been totally different.
It turned out that Hanson-Hietala wasn’t alone in her connection to mental health. Plenty of other people at the event shared their stories, and those of their friends and families.
“It was awesome,” Stainbrook said. “We had people sharing stories up on stage and everyone that attended came and told us how they were impacted by mental health, either their stories or with family members or friends. Literally everyone I think came up.”
And that shouldn’t come as a big surprise. According to National Alliance on Mental Health, one in four adults live with a mental illness, which means nearly everyone knows someone who dealing with an illness.
This trio of women hopes to make mental illness something that feels comfortable to talk about like any other illness, so that this kind of event becomes more of an everyday thing.
“It’s hard to put into words how incredible the experience is,“ Friesen said. “Hopefully someday down the line we can make it an okay thing to talk about and something that happens where people are open and can build off hearing each other’s experiences like that.”
With the success of their first open mic night, the group plans to host a similar event in the future.
“We had such a good turn out we just have to,” Friesen said. “We’re thinking sometime after the holidays, during that mid-winter lull in the season would be a good time to get people out and talking again.”