By Elizabeth Herman ┃Posted: July 11, 2018

What can we do to help stem the tide of mental illness in our world? Can a movement to accept and treat the mentally ill make it easier for treatments to be effective? How can individuals support such a movement?

A growing effort to make sure that both the causes and results of mental illness are minimized and mental and emotional health receives the support it needs, Everyone’s a Little Crazy was founded by Eric Kussin in response to his own personal life challenges.

During a successful career as the chief revenue officer for the Florida Panthers, Eric Kussin's mental health took a rapid decline that led to numerous visits to psychiatrists and even Electroconvulsive therapy, which left him almost permanently in bed with severe cognitive deficits. Eric finally had a remarkable recovery after seeing an integrative psychotherapist who recommended he enroll in a breathing meditation workshop.

In this podcast, Michael Fischman interviews Eric to reveal the details behind this movement and how individuals can get involved.

Quotes from podcast

Michael Fischman says, “Eric wants to start a mental health movement, where athletes and celebrities join together, so that everyone feels safe to ask for help when they need it. Built like a linebacker, Eric is tall and broad shouldered. He has curly, black hair and deep set eyes that tell me he’s gone through hell.

While Eric was growing up, his family life was turned upside down, as he witnessed his brother go through several agonizing near-death experiences. The only coping mechanism Eric had at that time was playing sports and focusing on school. Eric ended up graduating from Cornell University with a passion for sports.

He became a sports sales executive for the Phoenix Suns and later for the New Jersey Devils. In August of 2014, Eric was hired by the Miami Panthers to be their chief revenue officer. He was excited to take on the new challenge, and thrilled to be part of the executive management team, but that only lasted for a few months.”

Eric says, “About 3 months in, I started to have these feelings that I was lacking motivation when I was leaving the office. So I no longer cared about going to the gym obsessively like I had before. I no longer cared about socializing or going out with friends like I had before. I no longer cared about meeting women, or going on dates like I had before.

My ability to function in my job started to wane on me. Clearly what was happening was that all of these life traumas and experiences I had built up over time were now starting to take a much larger place in my conscious thought, and were now affecting the way I was actually functioning on a day to day basis…”

Donna Stein, an Integrative Practitioner who met Eric through his mother, talks about the phenomenon of traumatic childhoods: “There are many children who go to sleep in their army fatigues even though they’re not in the army, because they’re growing up in a war zone of sorts…

There is Sudarshan Kriya meditation. Although there are a lot of different techniques out there, I think one of the things to be alert to is that when people are sitting in silence and if there is a pre-existing depression, it is often an invitation for additional rumination, which is something we want to try to avoid…

which is why in practices like Sudarshan Kriya, where there is a series of steps to follow, it’s as if it gives the mind a bone, while it addresses the nervous system and scrapes away these layers of deep stress, and it works really effectively.”

Eric believes that, “People in our society right now are so afraid of the stigma, still despite the fact that there are large organizations trying to attack it. I just thought there was a way to put this all together, which is why I formed the non-profit called We’re All a Little Crazy.

So, it’s meant to turn the term ‘crazy’ on its head. The idea is to have athletes and celebrities come together under this platform to say we all spoke up in our own individual ways, and by the way, we’re still successful now. We weren’t turned away just because we opened up about it…

Allowing people to celebrate their craziness because of these life traumas will be what gets us to a better place in society.”

Links

Here is a link to podcast #6, the story of Eric’s mental health movement. You can find all of the podcasts on iTunes or Google Play, or on the Back to the Source radio website.

By Elizabeth Herman - PhD in English, with concentrations in Rhetoric and Composition, and Literature, she offers writing support to clients, teaches locally, and lives in Boone, NC. With a longtime keen interest in Yoga and Ayurveda, she recently completed a 200-hour yoga teacher training with Sri Sri School of Yoga.