WMH Season 3 Ep 2: From Not Talking About Mental Health to Starting a Mental Health Non-Profit

This is a transcript of Watching Mental Health Season 3, Episode 2 which you can watch and listen to here:

Katie: Hi everyone, and welcome to a new season of Watching Mental Health, and we are back at our regularly scheduled time, which is every first and third Wednesday of the month at 3:00 PM Pacific Time. And we are officially in season three. This is episode two, and I'm so excited because today we're going to bring on a really good friend of mine, but also the founder of a really important mental health organization, nonprofit here in Las Vegas that I'm assisting in helping to grow. And so I'm super excited to talk more about that, but I want to first talk about Melissa. And so Melissa Atwell is my guest today. And her journey began when she was just 19, although probably like most of us, she wasn't aware of it at the time.

While working at a Vegas casino, she started experiencing out of body sensations and feeling like she was watching herself spiral. And she had just kind of accepted life that way, but feeling like she hit rock bottom and unsure of what to do. Melissa believed that she needed to fix herself, and that is I think what started her journey. And so after many years of suppressing her emotions, she feels like today she is finally beginning to meet herself for the first time. And I met her just over a year ago, I think. So we've known each other for not too long, but I think long enough to know her heart and just to see how much she really cares about the community. And I think that's what the mental health moment is all about. And so she created it to bring awareness to mental health, to mental wellbeing.

She created it because we all deserve to talk about our mental health because we all in truth have a mental health moment. And so the platform is a safe space for herself and for anyone to express their views, their experiences, their stories, and to learn and grow together. And so today we're going to talk about her story and why she decided to create a mental health nonprofit, which is hard, hard work. And so with that, let's bring on Melissa Atwell to the show. Hi. Thank you so much for being here. I'm so excited. This has been a long time!

Melissa: Thank you for having me!

Katie: Yes, yes, absolutely. And I gave a brief introduction, but I want you to tell me a little bit more about who you are in your own words.

Melissa: Okay. So I am born and raised in Vegas. I am married. I have two young girls, eight and 10 years old, and we have six animals. So we have a farm. And I think for me, when you had mentioned about my story when I was working at the casino, and it just totally took me back there, but I remember not being aware of what mental health was or that it even was a term. And so I do feel like the reason I did start the mental health moment was when Covid hit and I had this realization of everybody is going through this and it's not just me and I'm not alone, which for so long I didn't get help because I thought I was alone. I thought I was crazy. And once I started talking to more people and realizing that other people have those moments too, I was like, okay, this is a real thing.

We have physical education, mental health is so important and mental education is so important. So I think along with Covid and then me growing up just in Las Vegas, it's a city of a lot going on and sometimes the view of what you're supposed to do or what you look like is at a standard. And so that was really rough on younger or my 17, 18, 19-year-old days. And when I did have those feelings of that out of body experience of I feel not alive inside, I just felt empty alone and everyone would be fine just going on and starting a nonprofit. You mentioned it before, but it's very hard and I'm learning everything as I go literally. And you're on my board and you're learning with me and I am just trying to really embrace this leadership role, but at the same time really feed that into the community. So for me, the mental health moment is more than just I, mental health awareness. It's about us finding our true and what we call it, our truth, and being able to live our truth and speak our truth. And I think sometimes when we share our story, not sometimes a lot of the time when we share our story, we are able to heal personally, but then we're able to, we give someone else the permission to allow themselves to heal too.

I feel like I was talking a lot. I'm sorry.

Katie: No, I love it. So we're going to talk through each of those subjects that you brought up because they're so important. But I think the first thing that you mentioned about covid and essentially just about feeling like you're alone in your storm. And one of the quotes that somebody mentioned around Covid times that really stuck with me was that we're all in the storm. We're all battling a storm, and some of us have better ships than others. Some of us are trying to do this in a rowboat. Others of us have a yacht and a whole support system and a village, and many of us are anywhere in between that. And I think that that's important to recognize. And I think that that's what you recognized really when you in covid really started this nonprofit because it's hard work. But this is a passion project for you. This isn't your job, but this is your job, right? You've put in a lot of effort.

Talk to me more about the mental health moment and what we offer or what we're wanting to offer. I know this is a big year in 2025, you're wanting to really get us out there. So talk to me more about the mental health moment.

Melissa: So The Mental Health Moment, our mission is to encourage individuals generation to generation to quote, take a moment for your mental health. And we really emphasize on the fact that we all have a moment and we all have these moments. And sometimes I think it is very hard to give ourselves permission and allow ourselves to feel or embrace the emotion that is going on. And I will say we can be our own worst critic. I know that I can be really mean to myself in my head. And along with that, our vision is the word care and breaking that down, it is community awareness, resources and education. And I believe that that's what we are trying to create, create community, create the awareness and create available educational tools and resources. So right now we've done a few trial events, we've gone to some nonprofit walks and had our booth out. And we have gotten really great feedback. And the one thing I have to continually keep in mind because we live in a society where we want things instantaneously, like fast food, and we're almost three years old, officially 5 0 1 C3 in six days, and it's taken, I know happy birthday, it's taken, you can do a birthday post. Oh mygosh, Oh yes, squirrel. But it definitely, it's taken a long time to get here. And really, one thing I have learned through this process is that there's a reason for every season and we go through the process of life. And I'm just really trying to embrace the journey because I have learned a lot. I've learned a lot, and I'm really trying, I am a graduate of UNLV and my major is communication studies, but I've gone back and I'm doing their continuing education program related to nonprofit assessment, fundraising, grant writing. So I'm really trying to immerse myself in it. And like you said before, it's not my job, but it is my job. And since I had my, in July, 2020, I had my rock bottom, that was when I really started putting all of this out on paper and using my bubble diagrams and seeing that there is a need, there is a need to just talk about mental health to break a stigma and just that's going to take time.

So I think one of the things, because I did mention before, we've been to walks with our booth, so we're really just trying to grow an email base and our social media right now. But one thing we're working towards is holding round table events. And for example, one of the ones that we did already was related to the holidays and what that looks like related to mental health or grief or stress or anxiety. And then coming up in March, we're going to do, I would call it a follow like up, but touching base again on stress, anxiety, and burnout.

So the idea with this is to get people to come to a location to where we can all either talk as one large group or break into groups, but we give everyone permission and ourselves this safe space on top of allowing us to have our human experience. And sometimes I call it a light bulb moment. And sometimes if you can help someone get the light bulb moment and be like, oh my gosh, I get it. I can go get help, I can be on medicine because I know it's going to help me. And so I feel like that's a huge thing for what we're trying to do is really help people find their light bulb moment and help them be able to live their truth versus mask it and feel like you have to mask it every day. Because I feel like one of the things you've heard the saying it's okay to not be okay.

And I feel like a lot of the time, if someone used to ask me years ago, how are you automatically, I'm like, I'm fine. I had my mask on. But the more I've healed, the more inner work I've done, the more all around work I've done for myself, you're able to just slowly grow from it. And I've switched and had this growth mindset versus a fixed mindset, which I used to have all the time back when I was at the casino. And so I also want to mention another thing. The reason why I am doing this is because I have two young girls, so very, I want to make them, they're very aware. I think you've met them, but they came to the booth, they know what mental health is, they know what emotions are. I want it to be a topic that can flow versus a topic that's like, Ooh, I don't know about this. Let me go Google it. We are allowed to have a fluid conversation about it. And that was one thing I did not have growing up. We didn't talk about emotions. I was the oldest with two younger brothers, so I was always, we were in a baseball family, so we were always doing the sports and it was like, man up,

Toughen up. And so crying and feeling your emotions, I've had to do a lot more work as an adult because of what I pushed down and felt that I needed to hide full circle, wanting to be able to show my girls that if you feel it, if you feel it in the moment and you allow yourself to be versus feeling like you need to put your mask on, you're really helping your face yourself,

Katie: Right? Yeah, absolutely. That's beautiful. I love the reason, I love the girls, the trying to make our generations, our future generations more in tune with their mental health than our previous ones. And we're facing honestly a massive youth mental health crisis. So it's a big deal. I think that you're showing your girls how to approach your mental health. So with that, take me back a little bit to, and you kind of touched on this a little, but to your journey, what is some of the work that you've done? You started off as a teenager, started having these out of body experiences, and then what happened? How did you eventually get to and or what tools did you wind up using to help you along through this journey to get you to where you are today?

Melissa: Yeah, and I will 100%. I constantly say this, the journey is still going. There's no really finish line. This is something, and I'll talk about it now, but I was diagnosed at 17 with a DHD, and that has been top number one thing along with anxiety, just me having to navigate since I was 17 and younger than that, I was always three or four years behind in reading. I had a reading disability, so I always just looked at myself.

Katie: You always had these ADHD struggles, you just didn't know

Melissa: Always. And I could not understand in class just why I couldn't stay focused. And it's still, to this day, it's something I'm managing. It's not something that is what I thought mental health was, is like, oh, you take a pill and then you're cured, and then it all goes away. But it's more of figuring out how to be present and manage yourself and get through the moments because they will come back around. So where was I? What was I saying? Oh

Katie: Yeah,

Melissa: Go ahead.

Katie: Diagnosed at 17 and take me through.

Melissa: So I go into college UNLV, and I am trying to find a major that I can do because I started out wanting to be a teacher and my mom's a teacher, and so I wanted to be a teacher, but I could not pass the praxis test. And those are kind of like the proficiencies of college tests. So I could pass math, I could pass writing, I couldn't pass reading. I took the test five times and didn't pass it each time by one point each time. I remember my mom every time when I, because you would find out immediately, you took it on the, I was going to even go to the point of trying to get it a written test, but I got so in my head that I was like, I need to just find another major that I can I just do and get through, do

Katie: And get through. I'm tired, I'm exhausted taking it just four times.

Melissa: And I actually am so grateful that I pivoted because it led me to my career later on when I was working at the casino. But my background's human resources, so it led me to that. I love talking in front of people, not that I don't get nervous, but I was in debate classes and speaking. And so it really set me up for things that I had no idea that I would really, full circle is so beneficial. So by the end of, and then I got married when I had just turned 22. We were very young when I got married. So during this time I remember really pushing through and having these feelings of why do I feel empty? Why do I feel, I mean, I'll say it dead inside. I didn't know I thought something was wrong with me. I tried to talk to my husband about it, and we've come a long way and worked a lot to the present moment right now. But back then men talking about mental health is that's its own huge stigma around mental health and related to men.

I really felt so alone. And so I remember a boss had said to me, had made a comment just about my parents,

And I was so self-conscious and all the stuff that a woman would be, but it hit me so hard that it hit me to rock bottom, but then led me to getting on medicine, going to therapy. And really that was 22, 23. And so I start working on myself. I do therapy, do the medicine. I'm constantly in the back of my, I am hearing my dad saying, you don't need the medicine. You just tough it through. I mean, that's a whole other story. But my dad is a huge, my family growing up is a huge reinforcement to why I'm doing, why my passion is here, because of just feeling like in those moments I had to push through. And so I ended up having my first baby when I was 23 and I immediately had postpartum depression.

And that was some of the craziest times, but also it was a stepping stone. I've learned now to look back at it with gratitude because now I can talk about it and hopefully someone else will hear this out there and they'll be able to relate and be like, okay, I'm not crazy as a new parent, you feel like you are alone. So I really started doing the work. By the time I had my second baby, I had a pregnancy. Both my pregnancies were harder, so they gave me more anxiety. And so I had preeclampsia and my blood pressure was high. So I was a very not great pregnancy.

Katie: You're high risk pregnancy, which makes it even worse, all the anxiety.

Melissa: And right before I got pregnant with my second daughter, I was diagnosed with OCD.

And that was so interesting to, because I couldn't get on medicine yet because I was pregnant, so I didn't know what that was going to look like. So waited until after giving birth and then went back to my routine with my ADHD medicine and my anxiety medicine. But now I was also filtering this other thing in and I felt so broken. I was just so confused. How does one person manage all of this and manage it in your head? So I ended up really, really doing the work, spiritually, doing the work, meditating, breathing, working out, moving my body, but then also reading the books that really do push you to think about your present moment, think about your mental health, what can you do? How can you shift a mindset? One thing that I'm huge on is you can have a bad moment, but that bad moment does not need to make the rest of the day bad.

If we can figure out how to shift the energy and it's all about, we're in control of us. So one thing I really did fall upon, not fall upon, but really recognized was just self-care needed to be at number one. And that's something I still work with. I go in and out of flows. I mean, we all wear different hats, but I realized how much when I do take care of myself and invest in myself, what changes not only happen that will manifest themselves in physical, but in my mind I'm able just to just get through it. Versus when seven years ago, it would debilitate me. I would just have moments and panic attacks and not really understand what was going on.

And so now I do really want people to see that it's a journey and it's a process and it's not easy at all, but it's so worth it because when you can finally have that awareness of what your mental health looks like, then you're able to begin. And I wanted to empower everyone to find their truth versus feeling like we have to compare ourselves to other people and be what society tells us to be. We all have something different going on, and I feel like the more we share, the more we talk about it, we are able to break the barrier of, and especially you had mentioned it before, but the youth now, it's a huge thing. And that's one of my many things on my list that I really want to do. But one thing I think is so important is that we have physical education in school. Why not have mental education too? A lot going on. But

Katie: It's amazing. That's beautiful. And I think it's really inspiring. First off, you hit on all the biggies, so I love it. Therapy, medication if you need, but more than that, meditation, that's spiritual work. Getting out, being active, getting physical, all of that contributes to the journey. And what I really loved about the mental health moment when you first shared it with me is that it is something where it empowers us to all share our own individual story because we are all unique. Our healing journey is unique to each of us. We do all have a bag of shit, but it's all a little bit different. And so the tools that you need to use to approach that bag are slightly different. But essentially they all come down to the same big stuff, which is really talking about your story, getting it out there, experiencing your feelings, but experiencing them and then letting them pass.

And so I really love what you said about a bad moment doesn't have to make a bad day. And I just think that all of that is super powerful. So I'm going to ask you one more question here, but I think I already know the answer to this, but I want you to talk a little bit more on it. As somebody who has this lived experience, do you think that a mental health challenge or a diagnosis is something that can be cured or overcome? Or is it something that can be managed and is there a difference? You were recently diagnosed with OCD. Do you feel like you have that feel like you've been able to manage that in the same way that I think ADHD or a DD has probably been more debilitating for you in life? So talk to me a little bit about that.

Melissa: So definitely the mindset that I have had to have is it is a matter of managing it versus there is no 100% full blown cure. And I realized that all the way down to when I forget to take certain medicines throughout the day, just how my mood is, I see it all. That's interesting. What was I saying? Dang it. Sorry, I lost it. I squirreled.

Katie: No, you're fine. You see, I think what you were saying was that you are impacted even when aren't, if you forget a pill in one day or a piece of medication at one time, you can feel those differences for your a DD is what I'm thinking.

Melissa: Yes, yes. Thank you. And it's more of something that, and I got a tattoo because of it, but it's like a wave and the waves get big and then they come back down. Or if we're going to, I'm a huge visual person, or if we're looking at it like a mountain, you're going to have times where it's so hard going up, but coming back down, there's no cure. And I feel like once I realized that I took out this labeling of it's this or that

And put it into this space of it is this is what it is. And I can now, and my brain constantly wants to learn and try all the new things that can help ground you or help you breathe, sleep, all that kind of stuff better. So I think that if you can keep an open mindset of growth and growth looking sometimes high, sometimes low, sometimes good, sometimes bad, you're still able to move your way through along on your journey and stay in this space of, I feel like another thing I've really practiced, tried to practice a lot of is gratitude. And I look at back at my journey and I'm just grateful even for the hard times because it has pushed me to a point where I was like, you know what? I'm going to start a nonprofit because I believe there's other people out there that are struggling. And then I opened this door of finding my tribe, finding my people, finding people. And so it's a journey. It's a journey. It's going to take time. I love saying this one, healing takes time. This isn't Amazon Prime. And it's so true. You could interchange that with any word, but growth takes time too. And it's for my brain because I'm like Amazon Prime, okay, I'm getting this in two days and when I don't get it in two days, I'm like, you lied to me. Where's my package?

Katie: Remember when it used to take two months? And we were like, man, good thing I got it. Two months. I want to refund. I'm done. We're so engaged as a society. But you're right, healing takes time and it's a journey. Mental health, all of that, it's part of the journey. It's not something that is just cured

Melissa: And it's not something that there's this handbook for it. And you mentioned it before. And one thing I want to embrace with our mission is we're all so uniquely different, but we all belong. And it's this piece of being able to see, I've really tried to take my weaknesses and for example, what I look at it was my A DHD and my OCD and turn it into my superpower. And so now that's taking time. But if I can, it's all about just shifting to super mindset. Your mindset.

Katie: Absolutely. And it really can be a superpower. All of our mental health challenges can be a superpower, but it is about kind of shifting that mindset and recognizing the power that it brings. I know for me, with my anxiety, I took an emotion coach to finally make me realize that my anxiety was really important to me growing up. I needed it in order to survive what I was experiencing. I need to be grateful instead of pushing it away. And that has helped me develop a better relationship with my anxiety. And I feel like I am more in the driver's seat now, right?

Melissa: Yeah.

Katie: Hanging out. But I'm the one that's in control. And so I think that we all have a different way of how we need to process things. And I think you and I just are a great example of that. And so I'm just so glad that you came here and that you opened up with your story. It is a challenge. It's hard to talk about your story and for anyone, it really is. And so I just really appreciate you for doing that and inspiring others I think to feel like they're not so alone in this crazy storm. We call life.

Melissa: And that's going to just constantly be our mission. And we're, we're still babies, but we're embracing the season that we're in. And I'm really excited for 2025 just to see how the end of last year went. And going into this year. For the longest time, I didn't think there were other people who were as passionate about mental health awareness as I thought I was gravy. But then when I started finding all my people and my tribe, I'm like, okay, there are people out there, so I'm just ready for us to make a difference. Make a difference.

Katie: Exactly. Make a difference. We need it. The state needs it, this country needs it, and we're going to do it,

Melissa: And it's going to take all of us. We have to do it. Let's do it together because you don't have to do it alone.

Katie: Exactly. Yeah. That's beautiful. And that's a perfect way to end the episode. I think that this was such a great show. I just love having you on. Thank you for being again so open and authentic and just yourself, and it's hard to open up about things, but I know a lot of women struggling with A DHD with postpartum depression and just to feel not so alone is powerful. And so with that, tell people how they can follow us, how they can follow the mental health moment and or get in contact with you if they want to.

Melissa: So we are on Instagram and Facebook, it's at the Mental Health Moment. And then we also have our website, which is www.thementalhealthmoment.org. And I don't know if it's something because I would give my email, but I'm like, can it pop up? Or I, maybe that's something that could be…

Katie: Included. Yeah, we can put your email in the description of the episode, absolutely. But yeah, we'll have just direct people to the mental health moment.org and to check us out, check out our social medias, follow us and definitely follow up. So I'll make sure that we have your email there for all of our viewers and for anyone who wants to get in touch and to be a part of the movement, like you said, we're baby, but growing and do think there's momentum coming out of last year. So super excited for 2025. And with that, I'm going to wrap it up. This was the first official episode back, but still technically episode two on season three, episode one's going to be coming out shortly. We did that during a marathon, so that was a great episode. So for anyone who's listening, come on back. Check out my website at katierosewaechter.com to see all of the episodes. And yeah, just anything you want to see, let us know. Let me know if you want a topic. I'd love to start taking thoughts and topics from the audience. So with that, I will wrap it up, but I will be back every first and third Wednesday of the month. Join me live and then catch all of the episodes at katierosewaechter.com and we will see you on February 5th. Thanks everyone. Bye bye!