CT State Gateway student Terence Okwuosa. Lucy Gellman Photos.
The face looks out in an Elphaba green, his mouth fixed in a cartoon squiggle. His eyes, which take up at least half his face, expand out into spirals. A blush-colored, fleshy brain sits atop his face, outlined in thick black paint. A steady drip falls from his face where the cheeks should be. A sign makes his presence more known. We can’t become what we want/Without by reimagining what we are, it reads.
“Neuron Boy” is the character at the center of Open Mnds, a new clothing brand and mental wellness platform from CT State Gateway student Terence Okwuosa. One year after Okwuosa moved from Atlanta to East Haven with his family, he is launching the brand as a way to talk about mental health, navigating trauma and practicing self-care. In particular, he hopes to bust through a stigma around seeking help that many of his peers still experience.
“It feels great,” he said Thursday afternoon, as he joined the school’s fall Recovery and Wellness Fair at Gateway’s downtown New Haven campus. “It’s been a long time coming. To debut something like this in a new community and get support on something so true to my heart—it’s manifestation. To connect with other students and peers [around this], it’s surreal. It really is.”
Elijah Carrion.
It’s a passion project that draws from Okwuosa’s own struggles with mental health, which ultimately inspired his studies in graphic design. As a high school student in Gwinnett, Georgia, “I went through a lot of, like, crazy traumatic stuff,” including depression that got so bad Okwuosa considered taking his own life. Then in the last months of his senior year, Covid-19 turned the world upside down.
If you or someone you know is struggling with thoughts of suicide or self-harm, please seek help. The number for the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 800-273-8255.
The pandemic shut down life as he knew it. At home, “it got me to sit more still,” he said. For a while, his depression got worse: Okwuosa experienced extreme anxiety and social isolation. He didn’t have the built-in friendships that high school had given him just months earlier. In an effort to find mental peace, he set up a studio in his garage and began to do graphic design work.
Something clicked, he remembered. While Okwuosa had always been creative, he’d never had the time to focus on a single project. He started thinking about how to fuse his love for fashion with a growing belief that people needed to be talking about mental health.
That was the beginning of “Neuron Boy,” although Okwuosa didn’t know it then. Left to putter and experiment in his garage, he fell in love with graphic design, learning as he went. Inspired by Atlanta’s rich streetwear culture, he also drew on his own fashion icons, including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Virgil Abloh and Kanye West.
In particular, learning about Basquiat’s own health journey—the artist was hit by a car in New York when he was just seven, resulting in several months spent in the hospital—reminded him that he wasn’t alone.
“It taught me to make something out of nothing,” he said as students milled around the table, holding Open Mnds merch up to their torsos to see if it would fit. “It’s about not letting your personal barriers disturb you from what you really want.”
Then last year, Okwuosa moved from Georgia to Connecticut, where several members of his family live. While navigating schoolwork and a student mural project with several of his peers, he pushed forward with the website, logos, design and clothing items for Open Mnds.
He found local collaborators, including Russ Loller of the Battlezone Exchange. He credits Saad Idriss, who has been his best friend since middle school, as a co-founder of the brand.
He added that Drea Moss, the designer behind Mindless Thoughts, has inspired him to think about one day having a brick-and-mortar, like the shop she runs on State Street. He has yet to connect with her.
Neuron Boy, meanwhile, is inspired by the social and emotional transformation that Okwuosa had to go through before he felt mentally healthy again. It’s deliberate that he doesn’t look quite human: the feelings Okwuosa once experienced were entirely foreign to his experience, too.
“It represents being different, and personal growth,” he said. “You might feel alienated when you are trying to change your ways, break a habit, get into a new environment.”
Myson Pollard.
Thursday, supporters from across Gateway came by a small, meticulously laid table to celebrate the brand, which many have heard about since Okwuosa arrived in New Haven as a student last year. Myson Pollard, a general studies major who met Okwuosa through his classes, praised the mission as opening up a needed and overdue conversation around mental health.
A transplant from New Orleans—he came to the Northeast when he was still a kid—Pollard said he still sees how the stigma around mental health can keep young people from talking about it. While he has learned how to blow off stress and anxiety through football and music, he knows firsthand how many of his peers still struggle each day with their mental and emotional health.
Business administration student Elijah Carrion, who also goes by J.Love the Artist, said he’s also excited to see the brand take flight. Since meeting Okwuosa last year, he’s been hearing about Open Mnds. Thursday found him checking out a quartet of freshly printed hoodies and camouflage hats. As a fellow creative, he said, he’s thrilled for Okwuosa—and those who he inspires to open up through his clothes.
Krystal Christmas.
“I remember when it was just a mere thought, so it was the least I could do to support brother man,” he said. “As adults, we are just children with trauma. Some people are healed, some people are getting on the journey to healing … we need to be open instead of closed off from the universe.”
“Being involved in this teaches me a lot,” chimed in Krystal Christmas, a pre-nursing student who is already working as a phlebotomist. Growing up in Bridgeport, she struggled with her own mental health. Now, she’s glad to see Okwuosa starting a conversation that peers might be otherwise uncomfortable to have.
Fentyshia Daniels.
That was also true for Fentyshia Daniels, a counselor and social worker in Gateway’s Counseling and Wellness Center. Each year, Daniels helps organize the Recovery and Wellness Fair. So when she heard about Open Minds, the collaboration felt obvious.
“The goal is to provide awareness to students, faculty, and staff of the services that are available,” she said. Her hope is to break a stigma around mental health support that is still prevalent in the families of first-generation college students, particularly immigrant families, and in many young people in New Haven more broadly.
As an immigrant originally from Belize, she lives that everyday, she added. Sometimes, the Counseling and Wellness Center is the only place students feel like “these feelings are real, and I don’t have to hide it.”
While they try to spread that message with themes “Wellness Wednesdays” and events throughout the year, they welcome collaborations that encourage more students to seek out mental health services at and beyond the school.
“I love it,” she added of Okwuosa’s work. “We’re excited as a center that we can support his vision.”