(dramatic music)
(upbeat music)
It's December 7th, 2004.
I'm driving perhaps a little too fast in my Toyota RAV4,
and I'm taking my kids to a party,
a party my students are hosting
for the end of the year holiday celebration.
Nicholas, six years old, Tanner's four,
and Jackson's just three months,
and they're sitting in the backseat.
Nicholas is teaching Tanner The Dreidel Song.
I'm bringing the ham as the main dish for the party.
So the whole car smells like clothes.
And I got the point setter on the front seat
and the phone rings.
It's my mother.
And she says, "Our worst fears have been confirmed.
Your brother has died by suicide."
Now, six months before,
my brother had been on top of the world;
a successful businessman, a loving husband and father,
many, many friends.
He was the pied piper.
Everybody would follow him anywhere.
But my brother had an invisible disability
and that was he harbored the demons of his bipolar illness.
He hid them from everybody
and they ultimately prove to be fatal.
Just one week before his death,
my brother and I sat down to have a chat.
I had just read the book, "The Unquiet Mind"
by Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison,
who in her own beautifully written memoir,
chronicles her own fight against bipolar illness,
her almost near fatal suicide attempt,
and most importantly, her recovery.
And I said, Carson, look,
here's this other very accomplished public person
just like you.
She's gotten better. We can figure this out.
There's hope, there's hope, there's hope.
And he looked at me and he said,
"But Sally, it's madness."
And less than a week later, he was dead.
Now, I don't know exactly what he was trying to tell me
in that conversation, but I have a pretty good idea.
He was an incredibly determined man that was bound
and determined to get through all obstacles in his life.
And I believe in my heart that he would've fought
to get well if he knew when he got to the other side
of this long, dark night of the soul,
that he could have his life back,
that he could have the respect and dignity that he deserved.
And I believe he lost that hope.
And that makes me so mad.
It makes me mad that someone with a treatable health issue
like bipolar illness has also,
not only to deal with the unbearable psychological pain
that comes from that illness,
but also all of this discrimination,
misperception, and prejudice.
On the night that Carson died,
his good friend called my brother's wife and said,
"Oh my God, what can I do?"
And she said,
"No matter what you do, don't let him be forgotten."
So the seeds for the Carson J. Spencer Foundation
were planted on the night of my brother's death.
By January, this man had convened
all of my brother's closest friends
from across his lifespan and our family.
And in our grief reaction, we resolved to do something.
We were gonna find bold gap filling ways
to prevent what happened to Carson
from happening to other people.
And we were also gonna do this
in a way that celebrated my brother's life
through innovation, vision, and entrepreneurship.
Fast forward over a decade later,
and we are now known as leaders in suicide prevention
and in innovation.
And one of the things that I'm particularly passionate about
is positioning this issue as a social justice issue
and as a social movement.
So that's what we're gonna talk about today.
How do we shine the lights
and illuminate the path
to make this social movement a big part?
The social movement of our generation?
So the three lights that I'll share with you today,
number one, we gotta shine that light on ourselves.
Each of us was brought in a culture
where these same misperceptions are formed and cultivated.
We gotta unpack that and look at 'em.
The next light we gotta shine is how do we illuminate hope?
How do we cultivate hope in people, in systems,
and communities so that people can hang on
when life challenges come their way?
And then finally, how do we enroll and enlist
a wider circle in our effort?
The people who usually show up for these things
are people like me,
people who have been bereaved by suicide.
Sometimes mental health providers show up.
And more recently,
larger numbers of suicide attempt survivors
and their families are showing up carrying the flag.
We are a determined group.
We are a feisty group.
We are a smart group.
We are a mighty group.
And we are a small group,
or at least the ones that are out.
So we need to enroll and enlist other leadership,
other people, other voices, other energy
to really create the social movement
that's needed to create the change that we want.
So let's start with ourselves.
The very first thing we need to do is unpack those beliefs.
Many of us harbor beliefs
that we don't even know
are getting in the way of doing this work.
I'm gonna throw out three provocative things to think about.
And as I do, just do that internal self check.
Do I believe that? Do I not believe that?
Why am I pushing against that?
What do I really think?
The first one, suicide is preventable.
Suicide is preventable.
There is a national movement right now
called Zero Suicide, zero.
That's the number we're going for
because what other number is appropriate?
But you should hear the kind of pushback
we get from that zero.
"Oh, no zero's not possible.
How could we ever get to zero?"
Well, think about that.
We have evidence now when large behavioral health systems,
when their leadership and their practices
commit to continuous improvement going to zero,
lo and behold, suicide numbers drop drastically.
It's a mind shift.
And when your mind shifts to it is possible,
all kinds of things happen.
So what if suicide were completely preventable?
What would we be doing differently?
So why is that provocative?
Well, because a lot of families like mine
did everything we had in our power,
at least at the time with the tools and the science
that we had to keep our loved ones here.
And to hear that suicide
is preventable is really hard for us.
But I like to think of it
just like we do think about cancer.
There's a lot we can do to prevent cancer
from ever happening.
We can clean up our environment.
We can teach people how to eat well.
We can have them never start smoking.
And sometimes people are still gonna get sick.
And when they get sick, we're gonna catch it early.
We're gonna have all kinds of screening programs in place
and we're gonna treat it aggressively
as soon as we identified it,
and hopefully eliminate it before it progresses
to where it's life-threatening.
And sometimes we'll do all of that well,
and people are still gonna get sicker
and we're not gonna stop,
we're gonna continue to give them the best treatment,
the best science that we have to bear.
And sometimes, despite all of our efforts,
we might still lose people,
but we don't get all ruffled
when we hear we are gonna eradicate cancer.
That is a valuable goal.
That's what we're trying to achieve
with suicide prevention as well.
The second provocative thing I want you to think about
is mental health is different from physical health.
Mental health is different from physical health.
Well, at some point in our collective thinking,
the brain left the body.
The brain is certainly a part of a body,
and everything that's going on in the brain
is affecting the body and vice versa.
But we treat these things very differently.
When I show up and I've got a broken arm
or a gash in my leg, empathy and support is automatic.
But when I have that same level of pain,
but it's internal and you can't see it,
instead of getting empathy and support,
I often get judgment and prejudice.
The many ways that this shows up in our healthcare systems,
in our peer support, in our friends, schools,
and workplaces is devastating an added level of injury
to people who are fighting for their lives.
The last thing I want you to think about
in terms of unpacking your beliefs
is this idea that talking about suicide
can put an idea in someone's head,
talking about suicide can put an idea in someone's head.
Now what I've learned about people
who are harboring suicidal thoughts is it's not only
the pain and the fear of holding those thoughts,
but it's also the tremendous feeling of isolation
that accompanies them.
The fear that no one's gonna understand
that they're gonna be judged.
So when someone reaches out and says,
I've noticed it would be understandable
if you're thinking about suicide.
I'm wondering if that's true for me, for you.
How can I help you?
That experience of connection and empathy
does so much to reduce that anxiety of being alone.
So reaching out and using direct language about suicide
is comforting and connecting for people.
That said, there are ways that we talk about suicide
all the time publicly that do increase vulnerability
for people who are already thinking about suicide.
We're not planting suicide ideas in their head,
but when we talk about suicide in ways that it glamorize it
or romanticize it, or we talk too much about means,
or places, or death scenes, or whatever,
sometimes people over identify with that story
and they become more at risk themselves.
So the second thing that we need to do
is really increase our knowledge.
We need to increase our knowledge and our skills
on how to have these conversations with people in our lives,
our classmates, our coworkers, our teammates, our neighbors.
We need to understand that people are much more likely
to die by suicide than motor vehicle accidents,
than breast cancer.
We need to bring out these issues
like we do other health issues
and raise them up as priorities in our communities.
It's not just about awareness.
I mean, we knew for decades that smoking was bad for us
before we did anything to change.
We need to move hearts.
We need to change policies.
And we need to develop skills
that give people the tools to really change this.
Alright, that's light number one, starting with self.
Then we gotta shine that light out
and we gotta figure out how to cultivate hope.
Because hope really is the antidote to suicide.
You can think about your own life challenges,
and if you had a glimmer of hope on the periphery,
you were much more likely to persist
than if you were standing in a dark room with no way out.
So there's this model developed
by an international thought leader named Dr. Thomas Joiner,
who wrote the book, "Why People Die by Suicide".
And he looked at all the warning signs
and risk factors associated with suicide
and there were hundreds of them,
and he boiled them down to these three common pathways.
I'm gonna highlight two 'cause they really inform hope.
One is about perceived burdensomeness.
People who are suicidal often feel
like they become a burden to the people who love them.
Their thought process is this,
"My death is worth more to the people who love me
than my life is."
Now, this turns conventional wisdom on its head, right?
People always say, "Ah, such a selfish act, suicide."
Not to the people who are suicidal.
In their minds,
they believe they're doing everybody a favor.
It's a selfless act.
They believe that everybody's gonna be better off
if they're not here.
And you can think about the many ways
that people come to think that they're a burden,
whether it's an illness, or a financial problem,
or they've done something that's humiliating,
they've made a mistake, they've failed,
there's been a divorce.
The word perceived is important
because when people are in the throes
of a mental health condition like depression,
very often their world kind comes down
to a very narrow tunnel.
And the ability to generate solutions and problems
and see themselves from an objective standpoint
is compromised.
So, but this is their reality, perceived burdensomeness.
The second part is what he called thwarted belongingness.
We are hardwired to be in relationship with other people.
And when those inner circle folks are taken away from us
through death, moving, getting kicked outta school,
losing a job, incarceration, separation,
it also increases suicide thoughts.
So if these are some of the drivers for suicidal despair,
then the opposite is protection.
So instead of burdensomeness, we have purpose,
instead of isolation, we have belonging.
So when we cultivate hope in our communities,
especially our communities
that have increased vulnerability,
let's think about how to renew a sense of purpose
and how to have genuine connection.
The last light that we need to shine
needs to be that beacon to bring people into the movement.
Now, in 2001, my father was diagnosed with prostate cancer.
And when he told me he whispered it, "I have cancer."
Now, my father was brought up in an era
where cancer was understood
as something you brought upon yourself,
some kind of moral failing, something that you did,
and it was a death sentence.
So my father had tremendous amounts of fear, shame,
and hopelessness around his diagnosis.
I was brought up in an era where you kicked cancer's butt,
you caught it early, you did everything in your power,
and there were tons and tons of stories
of successful recovery.
Also in 2001, I had given birth to my second child, Tanner,
and I had put on some weight from the pregnancy
that I was interested in getting rid of.
And someone suggested to me,
there's this three day walk for breast cancer.
Why don't we train for it?
And I thought, yeah, that'll get me back in shape.
Let's do that.
I had no connection to breast cancer.
I had no one close to me that had been affected.
I signed up for this walk because I wanted to get in shape,
and I showed up for this incredible 60 mile three-day trek
from CSU, Colorado State University to CU Boulder.
And I showed up at the start line
and there were 3000 mostly women walking alongside me.
Many of them had handkerchiefs on their head
from recovering from chemo,
countless people carrying balloons of butterflies,
and stars, and hearts honoring their loved ones.
And when I look back at those experiences,
now that I'm in the throes
of the suicide prevention movement,
I think there's a lot we can learn
from the breast cancer movement.
They got a lot of things right.
We can stand in solidarity with people who are fighting
for their lives and say,
"I will walk with you."
And we can lift up the people who have passed
and honor them with dignity and respect.
And we can say the words loudly, directly, and deal with it.
So it's important to engage this wider circle.
And the way that we can do that
is through organized empowerment.
Now, these pictures below,
I am thrilled to say were just taken a couple months ago
at the Washington DC Monument Mall,
a hundreds of us gathered to march in solidarity
to demand dignity for people who are struggling
and challenged by mental health conditions.
And it's really important that we come together
and lift up the voices,
the voices who have lived experience with these issues,
lived experience with recovery,
lived experience with the barriers and challenges
that people face every day when they fight for their lives.
These people have often been rendered voiceless,
pushed to the sides, marginalized, discriminated against,
and yet they hold the key;
it's the black box of how to understand
how to recover from this.
And when we lift up these voices, magic starts to happen.
People see hope.
They see promise that recovery is possible.
We also need to enroll these stakeholders, business leaders,
faith community leaders, educational leaders,
to not only take this on as a priority
that they're champion, but also to raise their hand and say,
"Me too, me too.
My life has been affected by these issues
and I am with you and I will fight along with you."
It's been really exciting,
we've been working quite a bit
with the Denver Fire Department
who came to acknowledge like in the national landscape
that they'd have more firefighters die by suicide
than line of duty deaths.
This has been a fact we've known for a long time,
but recently the first responder community
has taken attention to this.
And when I went to start partnering with them, I said,
"Who's out?
Who's talking about recovery?
And I don't really care from what?
Who is sharing stories of hope
that you can get through this?"
And they said, "Nobody.
Why would anybody do that?
We depend on each other's lives to be mentally resilient."
And I said, "Well, sadly, until people see that story,
nobody's gonna believe it's possible."
It took them a year and a half to develop the courage.
These men and women run into burning buildings
to develop the courage to come out with their stories.
And when they did all the way from the chief,
to the assistant chief, captains, lieutenants,
and firefighters, it changed the landscape.
It provided permission for people to say, "Me too."
So how do we act against this injustice?
How do we lift these voices and create social change?
All right, I want to have some help
in bringing down the lights.
And as I do that,
grab the flashlights that are on your table.
And if you don't have the flashlights,
what I want you to do is pull out your phones.
We're gonna use those as lights.
And everybody's gonna bring the house lights
to completely dark.
Can I get that door shut in the back please?
And we're gonna pull these lights down.
Go ahead.
All the way down.
Dark, dark, dark, dark, dark.
Okay, so I experienced my own depression
in the spring of 2012.
I had a perfect storm of life events happening.
I was vulnerable in a number of ways,
and I was just brought to my knees.
And the experience of the depression that I had
felt like this.
Being in this dark room, there's no way out,
there's no hope on the horizon,
and feeling terribly isolated, and alone.
And this is the common experience
that I also hear from people
who are suicide attempt survivors.
Now I'm gonna ask you to light your lights,
whether it's the flashlight of the phone
in response to some prompts that I'm gonna give you.
And when I do, go ahead and lift them up.
All right?
So my first prompt is, if you are a suicide loss survivor,
go ahead and raise your lights.
If you've lost someone you love to suicide,
whether it's a friend, family member, coworker, classmate,
teammate, neighbor, thank you.
Hold them up.
You are all shining lights of hope
because when the fanfare goes away
and the resources dry up,
we are all there carrying the flag forward
making meaning out of our loss and saying,
not one more life to lose.
Thank you. Put your lights down.
If you yourself or with someone you love
have ever walked through that long, dark night of the soul
of being depressed, anxious, experiencing trauma,
list your lights up.
Anytime, feeling overwhelmed, suicidal, scared,
huge life challenges?
Thank you.
You are all shining lights of hope, keep 'em up.
Thank you.
Because when others are in that place of despair,
you can walk alongside them and you can say,
"I don't know exactly what you're going through,
but maybe I've experienced something similar
and I have some ideas and I'm with you
and I will walk with you."
Okay, go ahead and put your lights down.
Now, if you are supporting
the mental health promotion movement
and the suicide prevention movement for any reason at all,
go ahead and you'll lift your lights up.
Every light should be up.
Okay, very good.
Raise them proudly.
Now imagine you are that person in that dark room,
feeling isolated, alone, and afraid,
and you look up and you see all of these lights around you.
I am with you. I will not leave you.
I have some ideas.
We'll get through this together.
You provide the hope.
Okay, thank you. Lights back up.
So in closing, I just wanna say thank you all
for being shining lights of hope.
You are the beacons to this movement.
Your light shines brightly so that others can see
and be illuminated into their own misperceptions.
So thank you so much for being part of it.
(upbeat music)