The TellMyStory Challenge Fights Mental Health Stigma From The Bottom Up
“I lost teammates of mine. It not only affected me but an entire community, and I didn’t want that to happen again,” Eungjae “NJ” Kim said of his mission to start the TellMyStory Challenge.
The TellMyStory Challenge is an ambitious online campaign that de-stigmatizes opening up about mental health journeys in an unconventional manner. Founded recently by NJ, Daishaya Gadson, and Max Martinez, the campaign’s mental health mission seeks to have friends, family, and coworkers “provide evidence to other victims that they are not alone and this illness is much too prevalent,” according to its story. In particular, the campaign champions people who have lost loved ones to mental health struggles and people who are impacted by stigma surrounding seeking help for mental illness.
Starting with his network of friends from student-athletes in high school and college, NJ has branched out the campaign from his network to a campaign that includes everyone victim of mental health. Assisted by his high school teammate, Max Martinez, a senior baseball student-athlete at Texas Wesleyan University, and Daishaya Gadson, a friend and an executive board member of the AD King Foundation, NJ’s TellMyStory Challenge runs across Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, and recruits the personal testimonies for how people deal…
