Mental Health Matters Founder Erica Meisner on Running for Mental Health

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic opening the door a little wider to conversations around mental health, it often remains a taboo topic. Instead of reaching out when we face challenges with our mental health, many of us suffer in silence.

“I don’t know why we all pretend,” says Erica Meisner, founder of Mental Health Matters in Charlotte. “It’s OK to struggle …. It’s OK to ask for help.”

This was a lesson Erica learned firsthand when encountering mental health challenges during her college years. Keeping it to herself, she says that period of her life prompted a wide range of feelings, including shame, guilt, and confusion. But it also manifested in physical symptoms that kept her from pursuing her passion: running.

Fortunately, she found the support she needed to work through her anxiety. In doing so, she developed a second passion: mental health.

Years later, after having her second child at the start of the pandemic, Erica made the decision to step away from her career as a clinical dietician. This gave her the time and space to lean into her two passions. She acquired nonprofit status for Mental Health Matters and organized the Mental Health Matters 5K & Festival.

You’re not alone.

For people who haven’t experienced challenges with their mental health, it can be hard to understand what it’s like. Erica says she’s seen both sides. Before her own struggles, she had trouble understanding what a family member was going through. Today, while her husband is supportive, he can’t fully identify with her experiences.

It’s no one’s fault. We’re not always able to put ourselves in another person’s shoes to understand why they can’t calm their mind of worry, turn off negative thoughts, focus on the task at hand, or pull themself out of bed some mornings. But it’s one reason many of us stay quiet about what we’re experiencing, especially around those closest to us.

Erica explains that Mental Health Matters aims to help people understand that they’re not alone. By bringing together a community and opening the door for conversation, she’s hopeful it will help break the stigma around the topic and encourage people to reach out.

“I hope that this will be a positive change for people,” Erica notes. “We do need to start making a change in the way people think about it and talk about it.”

The inaugural event was just the beginning for the nonprofit.

After a successful inaugural Mental Health Matters 5K & Festival this past May, Erica is already working on next year’s event, scheduled for May 18, 2025, in Charlotte. She’s busy developing additional plans for the nonprofit, too.

“The mission is to create fun and engaging community events,” Erica explains. “I want to be able to operate and prepare for following years, but I also would love to do something greater at a local level within the community for mental health.”

Ideas include donating funds to local causes focused on mental health, helping with the training fees for emotional support service animals, and even supporting a school-aged mindfulness support program.

Below, Erica shares more about her experiences with running and mental health, how both became passions, and what it took to bring the Mental Health Matters 5K & Festival to life.

When did you start running, and what role has it played in your life?

Erica Meisner: I always loved running. I used to play club soccer and lacrosse, and my running journey really started with athletic conditioning for the sports, but it became more of a love from there. Running was something that gave me a lot of joy, made me feel really good. So I continued running from a young age into college.

I have the good runs and the bad runs. Some days, I would come home after something stressful, and feel like, ‘Oh, I just need to go for a run.’ You just feel that tension release after a run. I think it’s one of those positive ways to process.

How did your struggles with mental health inspire the idea for an event focused on mental health and running?

Erica Meisner: Mental health was always something that was kind of on the back burner for me. I always prioritized my physical health. I’m a dietitian, so even in school, studying throughout my classes, I was heavily focused on physical health.

When I was a junior — I went to App State — I struggled with health-related anxiety, and I didn’t even realize some of the things that could happen with physical symptoms [from] anxiety. It just completely threw my world into a 180 …. I couldn’t even run anymore, and that was something that gave me a lot of joy …. I felt really alone. It was just a lot of shame and guilt for the way that I was feeling. I didn’t understand it and couldn’t grasp that.

After learning how important mental health is through that experience, I became really passionate …. There are so many great causes out there and races for those causes, but I didn’t see one locally for mental health. I always thought it’d be great to run a race for mental health, and that was where the thought of combining the two passions came into play. It started with that thought. Then for years and years…I never really acted on it.

Over the years, [I began seeing that] everyone is affected by mental health. You see in the media people have died by suicide, people in your life, family, friends — I feel like it affects us all, whether personally or through another person.

I became a mom, and my daughter has ADHD. She was diagnosed at 3.5 [years old] or so. Seeing all the challenges that she’s had and we’ve had as a family, I really felt like this would be something positive for the community.

What went into organizing the Mental Health Matters 5K & Festival?

Erica Meisner: I had no clue what I was doing when I started …. My husband has a business background. He’s known that I’ve had this idea for so long and was very happy that I finally started to act on it …. He helped me set up my nonprofit …. While I was awaiting that status, I reached out to a lot of people throughout the community.

I knew that I wanted…to have a post-race event that was very inviting. We had a typical festival feel with a petting zoo. We had yoga, some small-business vendors …. I wanted it to be fun so that people would feel more comfortable to come and approach the event.

I had a lot of small business funders that I had contacted throughout the year. And then Charlotte Running Company…I partnered with them for packet pickup, start to finish. [They were] our timing company…they were pretty much my main point of contact for the event.

I’m so grateful that it was successful. For the first event, [we had] 500-plus participants. I was just hoping to get to 200 to break even.

I want to say it was more runners than walkers, but it was a nice combination. And then we also had a lot of furry friends — a lot of dogs with the walking group toward the back — which made it really fun. We had a therapy dog group out there as one of the vendors.

What do you hope the Mental Health Matters 5K & Festival helps to achieve?

Erica Meisner: I think it brings that hope and solidarity piece, where you feel like you’re not alone, because there’s definitely strength in numbers when you’re running and you’re together …. It’s something positive and different for the community to gather around.

Charlotte runners…have opened up to me after this started and [said], ‘This is great,’ and stated the fact that running and mental health go together and a lot of us runners utilize running for our own mental health benefits …. Multiple people have opened up after the first event this past May and have said that they’ve used running to help with their mental health and emotional well-being.

My hope is that in creating this awareness and having this event where people can gather…they’ll feel more comfortable in finding the resources and reaching out for help when things are tough and they’re struggling.

Follow @mentalhealthmatters_nc on Instagram.

“I think it brings that hope and solidarity piece, where you feel like you’re not alone, because there's definitely strength in numbers when you’re running and you’re together.” – Erica Meisner