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ParentEd Night 12/9/20 "Behind Happy Faces" with Ross Szabo

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The ability to manage mental health and address emotions are especially relevant during this pandemic era. With so many struggling, it’s a vital time to teach resilience and learn the warning signs that might signal your child needs extra help. Our country teaches about physical health and diet from kindergarten through the rest of a person’s life. It’s time to do the same with mental health! Highly coveted speaker and author, Ross Szabo joined the BHUSD parent community (TK - 12th grade) on Dec. 9 at 7:00pm to discuss the stigma around mental health issues and provide hope with his charismatic style and relatable approach in teaching parents to talk more freely and increase self-efficacy.

Show Transcript

thank you so much welcome is always appreciated I'll pretend I can hear you applause on Zoom has been quite a journey I do teach every day at the Geffin Academy at UCLA which is a school for students in grade 6 through 12 on UCLA's campus but when I do the use like big keynote presentations it's always difficult is what I'm sharing like really vulnerable personal parts of my story and you like see people leaving the conversation this is the most meaningful part thank you for being part of the conversation we'll discuss a whole host of things of things as we go through the evening I'm going to share my screen to bring up my PowerPoint presentation as I do this there is a view for you where you can see me and the presentation you can put them kind of right next to each other so you can kind of with that and find out how that works for you I will use the chat during the presentation just when I ask you questions but if you ask me questions it's going to be really difficult for me to while I'm presenting just a just a heads up so let's get started one of the biggest challenges that I have it's time I speak about mental health to any audience is as soon as I say the words mental health that those 2 words have a lot of different meanings for a lot of different people some of those common meetings that people have with mental health are these images a lot of people think this lovely breakdowns they think of people looking angry sad lonely scared they think of mass shootings are school shootings they think about a lot of things but very few of those things are positive or an actual reflection of the definition of mental health when most people hear the words mental health they typically if someone has a problem the actual definition of mental health is not having a problem mental health is not being stressed out it's not having lack of sleep is not having a diagnosis it's how you address all of those things when most people to work on their physical health they know that the exercise they have to eat right now but they have to take care of their bodies when you want to work on your mental health you have to think about how you communicate what your relationships are like how what your coping mechanisms are and how you can build your mind and what we've learned throughout the years is if there is not a clear definition of what mental health is then it's really difficult to engage in it talk about it or do anything with it we surveyed 12 college students at UCLA and found that less than 25% of students cannot correctly Define mental health so this is a really important Baseline starting point no matter what age your kid is making sure that they clear definition that isn't something wrong with you it's how you take care of yourself much like your physical health is a really important starting point so how did this guy become the spokesperson for men I'm kind of a perfect spokesperson for mental health cuz I don't look like somebody who has problems and and what I'm going to share with you tonight is a really intense personal story of not just my own issues but how biological mental health disorders were passed down through my family through generations what my parents went through and you know really just a detailed story of my own Journey bipolar disorder depression attempting to take my life and and my recovery I'll discuss a lot of factors that are important in that process we're also going to just talk about what's happening with mental health in the country how you can look at vocabulary differently and then after I share my personal story I'll go into some specific tip that you can use for mental health during the pandemic because it does look like we will still be in remote learning in LA foret for a while maybe until next fall so we'll see all right 20% of Middle School and High student experience a diagnosable mental health disorder each year suicide is the second leading cause of death for people ages 15 to 24 outside of diagnosis and suicide young people are experiencing sleep there experiencing an overwhelming amount of stress they are going through a lot of difficult times with bullying body image all kinds of other things what are the challenges that we have a lot of students MLB statistics mental health awareness campaigns have been largely effective in getting these statistics out there one of the unintended effects of campaigns is how's it going out there saying everyone's messed up and if you have a problem you should go talk to someone about it but often times that person doesn't exist for a lot of young people and they're not in power people to take action on their own if you think about physical health when physical health campaign started we need sit people in the rooms and say like here's a deal you have heart problems and diabetes and cancer and you're all going to die name of the people who like I don't want to die the messenger wasn't like well you can talk to a doctor I was just here to tell you how my stuff you are I don't I don't have anything else for you we can do that with physical health campaign we taught people how to exercise I eat right how to look at family history and how to take care of yourself so it's time to kind of move past awareness now and start doing the same thing with mental help with people of all ages they get it they know that people are messed up it's time to start teach and what they can actually do about it and that's what we're going to do tonight the one specific that is relevant and the whole reason I started speaking is that over 50% of people don't seek help for them and they won't talk to a friend they won't family member they won't go talk to a professional even when they need it so I would like to ask the audience why is that why is it that everyone on this call everyone who has kids know some name some kind of Mental Health Challenge but over 50% of people won't talk about it so I was hoping somebody could put answers in the chat and I will let you know some of the most common answers I get from kids they're scared could be retaliation people may judge you there Shane are virus no one will understand there is that constant feeling of adolescence they're avoiding they don't want to burden people with their problems stigmatised affordability two biggest ones I'm not seeing our as a sign of weakness why don't you  it up and trust a lot of you people go through experiences where their trust is burned and they have trouble building trust again so one of the reasons I start with this question is this really is after you have a clear definition of The Next Step I had access to some of the best metal Trim in the country I wasn't compliant with it because I felt stupid embarrassed ashamed week I thought my problems would go away on their own and I thought my one day I would wake up and they would go away I was not able to actually get help until I address those barriers preventing me from seeking help so if you really want to make a difference in your family and your friendships after you have to ask this question why don't we talk about and then you have to break down the answers of Shame embarrassment fear all those other thing because without that someone's not going to even be comfortable enough to address what they're going through enter able to get someone comfortable enough to address what they're going through the next step is having a vocabulary that actually allows them to do that and would I find a lot of times as I travel around the world and ask people how their mental health in they give me one at 3 and it's good it's bad or but none of those three answers are really going to help you expand your mental health so we have to approach vocabulary from two very different places first we have to separate mental challenges into actual different categories we do it with physical house all of you know the difference between a sprained ankle and a broken leg you know the difference between someone who has diabetes and someone with cancer you know the difference between a cold and the flu unless where's your mail because everything is terrible for us once we get sick we can't hand it it's all very difficult for us to get out of bed we need to break mental health challenges in categories so that everyone understands there are different things in packing up and there are different ways to address it everyday challenges are things that all people go through environmental factors are what happened at you at home the way you were raised with the school you go to like how does your environment affect you significant events or experiences with wash change rejection that impact a person's life mental health disorders are diagnosed with disorders from a mental health professional development disabilities are disabilities that a pair of persons learning the reason we need different categories is because it's currently happening as some people go through stress and think it's the same thing as an anxiety disorder it's not some people go through a breakup and think it's the same thing as clinical depression if not and if we do not have these different categories that we can't really provide a framework for mental health that people can use the next thing we need to do is really change the way we frame mental health if you think about the mental health Sacrament most people use on one side even people who were sane and then in the middle of people with mild mental health disorders and then on the far and you have people with severe mental health disorders but this spectrum is broken for two main reasons number one you can have your mental health disorder like I do and be saying at the same time and the second most dangerous thing that the Spectrum does is it promotes the idea that these people need help but these people don't and what's dangerous if this was the equivalent of a physical Spectrum any advice you would have gotten since you were yelling is you do not need to eat healthily until you get diabetes you do not need to exercise until you get and we don't do that with physical helper Proactive or preventive we teach people how to take care of themselves so we need to change this mess all Spectrum to something more like this and the spectrum is about balance balance is just in in visual being able to do the things that they typically do so people were able to balance or just people don't have to think about their mental health much they don't have stress they don't have trauma they don't have a lot of things holding them down these are the people who I hate most in life but they exist difficult to balance with the I'm aware stress I'm aware that I'm not sleeping I'm where that my mental health is a challenge I am not actively doing anything about it needing help the balance or using help the balance could be someone who has a diagnosis who's on medications in therapy but it could also just be someone who every day of their life knows they need to listen to music talk to a friend go for a walk exercise do something that helps balance their mental health you don't need to have a physical health disorder use help to balance your physical health you do not need to have a mental health disorder to use help to balance your mental health needing constant assistance the balance could be some routes to ask if somebody who program somebody who's in Nara also just be someone who all of you I've already like dealt with at some point in your life one of your friends are family members went through something so severe that you decided you weren't going to let them be alone Queen's Revenge you slept on the couch stayed with them until you felt like they could be alone again being unable to balance could be some of their suicidal but it could also just be someone went through something so difficult that no matter what else they try they cannot balance their mental health one extreme examples of this is around three years ago I lost my dad completely unexpectedly my dad was like the healthiest person I do he's never on any medication he didn't have any issues his death was the big shock to me and my family and it was an incident that happened I went from being someone who always uses help to balance to someone who could was not able to balance in seconds if you on this call I've had similar situations when your place on this spectrum change instant and the reason that we need to put using her needing help in the middle of the spectrum is because that's where it is for physical health when you see someone leaving a jam or exercising none of you on this call look at them and think what a freak what a weirdo why do they have to do that most of us think of ourselves like I should probably exercise to we need to get mental health to the same place when we see people using how we celebrate it instead of judging it so the real reason all of that vocabulary is important is because all of your kids brains are currently developing the large . brain growth is between the time of being born until Age 2 and 1/2 what's the second largest. Of brain growth is from around age 12 to age 25 and that is the only. Of brain growth that a human be he remembers what happens in that. Of brain growth is extremely critical to the rest of the human beings life I often joke with people that being an adult is really just trying to undo adolescence habits that we storm in that time frame so what's happening in a teenage brain really for me is that it doesn't look like this food advance shooter it looks more like this it's wiring itself it's connecting it's forming habits it's forming coping mechanisms it's forming the internal voice that they use pretty much for the rest of their life and all that is happening while the brain turning old memories and getting rid of them experiencing Rush of dopamine and they're going through all these other changes so what's a really fascinating research has shown is as teenagers are going through challenges their brain is hard wired the risk taking a lot of teens may not be hardwired for risk-taking they may be more introverted and more willing to kind of shut down so when it comes to substance abuse or other issue second impact of person you really need to pay attention to who your kid is and how to channel opportunities to match the risk piece of their brain if you have a child who is more introverted and is more prone to kind of shutting down or numbing out then it might be helpful to engage them with reading Dance Arts or activities I kind of recognize their personality if you have a child who you know is a risk and you know that early on you know I haven't nephew whose only 3 and has no fear he believes he can knock you over she believes he can jump in pool he believes he can jump off of anything and not have consequences when you are about to listen to embrace risk it's really important to meet their field of their need for a rush experience so matching that kid with martial arts reporting rock climbing sports but still let them have that dopamine rush but it's engaging and things that aren't as dangerous as really important if you don't have those opportunities for kids it does make them more prone to engaging substance or doing other thing to feel that Rush of dopamine and that reward system to think about identifying the reasons people don't talk about it having vocabulary to use and paying attention to where your kid falls on the risk-taking Spectrum matching them with activities I can help them what I'm going to do now is my personal story ever really interesting be getting to my person story I didn't grow up in LAX a drop in Pennsylvania that is not interesting what is interesting is that I was actually born in Bethlehem and raised in Nazareth cancel and if you are not familiar with my home state an hour north of Philadelphia are two towns Bethlehem and Nazareth the deal is if you live in Nazareth it's really tiny town There's No hospital so if you're pregnant and you live in the address you're only Hospital choice is Bethlehem go there happy child sleep at Nazareth I'm not sure how come home. Home I share this part of my story one because it's a funny play on Jesus and where he was born and raised while it was not what is something that you know comes up a lot it's also where all my mental health issues started I would like to blame the people who named these town I feel like I could have done a better but any story with mental health starts with a photo of a family this is a pretty classic mid early 1980s photo of my family there's a lot happening in this photo my parents said a conversation and they thought like hey what do you want to wear for the family photo and it came up matching track jumpsuits and turtlenecks I am the baby being held in yellow I'm the youngest of three boy is my oldest brother is 7 years older than a man middle Brothers two and a half years older than any family photos in you can look at this photo and project your own emotions thoughts memories into it but you don't really know the people in this photo you would never know by looking at this photo that my father was raised by a classic 1950s alcoholic. that my dad was never heard once that he was never told he would love that he never had a birthday party you never had a friend visit him the only time he was touched when was when was physically abused by his father mom is brother and his I do look at my mom you never know that she was also raised by two parents who struggled with alcoholism and a mother who had an anxiety disorder and sometimes my mom came home to baking and cookies and music and sometimes their mom came home will really dark place when my parents got together they did what most parents to do that had a conversation and my father decided that he was going to do things differently how does every day he told us he loved us every K I can't remember a single sporting event from the time I was five until I was 18 my dad wasn't on the sidelines I can't remember a single speaking me then that would prefer miles of him that he didn't drive to to be in the audience my mom did everything she could to make sure that our home life was stable and not like her home but the one thing that either of them could change is that on both sides of our family we have severe lineage of depression bipolar disorder anxiety and addiction so my parents did everything they know new to do to give me a childhood that was great and it was we had road trips and camping trips and scavenger hunts in all kinds of fun but my life changed significantly when I turned 11 so this is me 11 Monroe Brothers on the left what we are doing here is dropping my brother off at the University of Pennsylvania to University of Pennsylvania ivy league College in Philadelphia for his sophomore year of college my oldest brother is extremely book-smart I want to stress books because outside of books not not a lot happens but he's so book smart but he graduated high school when he was 16 and went through where's the offense Albania to major in physics that's very book smart and dropping them off after we dropped them off my dad got a call for University of hospital and the person on the phone said your son has been determined to be a threat to himself and others we hospitalized him against his will you come down immediately my oldest brother has what disorder and slept for about six days was in a state of delusion walking around campus singing loudly and stairwells at night thinking you could teach classes so luckily to school stuff can you put him in a hospital but that was just the beginning for me in November of that year when I was 11 and I visited my oldest brother in a psychiatric ward 2 months later in January my grandmother died my best friend was killed in a car accident and two months after that my grandfather died so this little guy went through a lot of Watson change in a really short time anything I want to emphasize the most for all of you is no one sat me down at 11 or 12 and was like hey how are you coping this is how you this is how you handle this when I went through all that I throw regulating my own emotions regulate their own emotions you can try and guide them you can talk to them but you have to pay attention to how they regulate what I did to regulate was I saw that I wasn't really good philosophizing about life and death and the year I spend visiting my grandmother in the hospital my grandfather in the hospital and going to three very significant funerals I just learned that I was really good at making people laugh so I did everything could to make people laugh but I never talked about my own emotions I never talked about how I felt and then around 8:12 I started drinking and I wasn't drinking like all the time I've been drinking like you know two to four times a month but I learned pretty early on that drinking felt good at something out I had no idea that that first drink I had was lighting up a slot machine of addiction and Lenny and you're my family so what can you do K through 8 that can help change these things one of the biggest things you can do is focus on social emotional learning social emotional learning is basically emotional intelligence normalize emotional conversations for kids it helps them understand what emotions are it helps them or be more comfortable and identifying them and it really give them those kind of basic tools mindfulness is also a really helpful. students are paying attention and sells learning to grow and his two programs that really help with this one is the ruler approach another his mind up its teaching about brain development calmness Focus all of those things it have helped me to have had a social emotional learning program in high school that I'm absolutely what did it presented everything I went through and the way I coped absolutely not my own personal regulation is more powerful than any school and that's why it's really important to pay attention to how your kids are taking care of themselves so what happened to me was by the time I turned 16 and it's okay to laugh at this photo who thought this guy would have trouble adjusting to high school why people would happen if I started having classic symptoms of bipolar disorder where I felt Invincible on top of the world nothing can stop me bring me down then I can go to bed my music I couldn't do anything because my mind was going through so much I just wanted to shut it down and the quickest way for me to shut my mind down was to binge drink and I would binge drink until the point I would pass out I never drank to hang out with people I never drink to be social I would drink a case of beer or bottled vodka just to pass out so I went to a psychiatrist I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder but two extremely dangerous things happened before that diagnosis number one I have now been hiding all of my tree and fear about all that loss from age 11 to age sixteen and never dealt with it and the most dangerous thing that happened was that I want to drink alcohol before I learned to talk about my feelings so that went through my junior year of high school and into my senior year that's what I continue to do I hide my emotions and I drank when I went into my senior year of high school I went into a really deep state of depression started off of me just feeling lonely about the loneliness would go away and it didn't but I do think it's really important for you to understand there's a huge difference between feeling depressed or sad or upset and actually having clinical depression when someone feels depressed or sad or upset they have an identifiable cause a parent's to get divorced they can go through a break-up they could get a bad grade they could face rejection and I know what that causes its and understand reaction to talk about it but they know why the opposite of feeling depressed is happiness when you have depression you don't have an identifiable cause everything everything hurts you stop doing things you enjoy you stop picking yourself to death or suicide and no symptoms last for weeks or months at a time the opposite of depression is not happiness its Vitality is having the bed and do the things you normally do so in November of my senior year I started having thoughts of death and suicide 24 hours a day 7 days a week but again I didn't talk about it for two months of my senior year anytime I was alone I was crying anytime I was in front of people I put on my happy face I made everyone laugh I made everyone smile and then I would go home and I would either cry myself to sleep or I wouldn't sleep at all I always thought one day I would wake up and I would just want to live again but unfortunately that day never came and on January 5th in my senior year of high school I was hospitalized for attempting to take my own life it's important for you to know that nothing happened that day I went to school like I always did had a basketball game at night I play the game we won the game I went to a restaurant with my friends and celebrate like we always did and on the way home from that restaurant I decided I no longer wanted to live and what's really sad about that as I didn't want to die and people always ask me why you try and kill yourself if you didn't want to die I didn't want to die I just couldn't handle it in the way I was living anymore and taking my own life was a way out of that pain everyone else would be better off if I was gone it's not true but that's the way I felt so I attempted to take my own life I woke up in a psychiatric ward and and about 2 or 3 days into my house say everyone in the hospital had to stand up and talk about why they were there and the stories before mine was filled with really traumatic things it came to me and they're like why are you here I really know what to say I was 17 never imagined I'd be in a psychiatric ward and they said I don't know what to say or why you're here but can you tell us about yourself and I was like yeah I can do that my name is Ross I played varsity basketball for 3 years I'm a number the peer helper I volunteered five years to help the Special Olympics I attended the national youth leadership Forum in Washington DC I have a 3.8 GPA stop really stupid cuz the life I was describing was my external life it was my college resume it was like that everybody else saw but it wasn't the life that I live if I want to talk about the life that I live I should have stood up and said hi my name's Ross and I hate myself I hate my so much I'm going to binge drink and drink and drive I don't think anyone should care about me I didn't say that and the point of me telling this part of my story is not actually about me at all it's about all of you because how many people do you know with an external life that everybody an internal life that's completely different a lot of us do that a lot of your kids to do that it's really important to pay attention to that gap between your external and internal life the longer they hide the more these oceans build my journey from mental health from that point on was actually much worse I got out of the hospital got in the college's went to college at American University in Washington DC had to leave 2 months then because of the lots of bipolar disorder bounce in and out of treatment centers and other colleges for 4 years battling extreme substance abuse eventually it 22 went back to American University had a rock-bottom moment where I drink so much night that I passed out for about 22 hours and it was in that moment on that night where I actually accepted what happened to me I woke up that night crying and I said to myself all right you either going to continue this and you're going to die or you're going to have to check that was the first night at age 22 but I accepted anything to happen to me all the way from 11 to 22 and a lot of people celebrate that are like yes you got to accept them I hate myself I hate myself more than I think any of you can imagine I mean you hate yourself it doesn't matter what your diagnosis or treatment are they're very thin there are very few things more dangerous than a human being who hates themselves I hate myself I had no consequences I drove drunk had unprotected  I did drugs cuz I didn't care what happened to me the first thing I had to learn to do with like myself once I learned to like myself only then then get treatment and therapy and find a through eventually I was able to bounce my life I graduated from college I went to the Stasi career that you heard about and I continue to work on my mental health every single day and learn about myself in new ways through every stage in my life that I have for what to look for when you're dealing with a mental health disorder is one accepting is really important and if you're struggling with someone who doesn't want except what they're going through focusing on the reason why they don't want to accept it and compare mental health can help break down those walls self-awareness was important for me to change my coping mechanisms I never chose to have bipolar disorder but I could choose to change the way I love it I can stop drinking I can stop hiding but I needed to be able to see when I was doing those things then I needed to have the discipline to actually change the coping mechanisms and the responsibility to follow through on it unfortunately mental health disorder quickly Rob people of these four things to try and help the poor people so that they can build that as a path recovery it since I have four parents are AppleOne educate yourself so don't just read books about mental health issues that nearest your kids may be experiencing also look at your family history I think I was about 26 years old I was sitting next to my parents at their pool when I asked her family outside of my brother have a mental health disorder and about 30 minutes later the list of other family members who have been stopped if you are in a family set up a history of mental health disorders your kids have a much higher risk of developing those mental health disorders the more that you can understand and explain family history the more helpful it can be we are lost one second cousins when he was 23 to an opiate overdose mainly because of the addiction that that was in our family and we still have a family that isn't comfortable talking about mental health or addressing these issues not their fault or never blame them but like this is a big deal this isn't just my family turn confrontation in the conversation most homes with adolescents are filled with confrontation they are trying to develop autonomy you were trying to set down peas and if a battle if there's a way for you to turn for everybody it usually means you have to meet them where they are walk the line between empowering and enabling when I came home from college the first time I was on a medication with that had me sleeping like 16 hours a day and my parents maybe get a job a part-time job I think I rolled silverware at Red Lobster and I hated that I was so angry but as I look back I realize that that job also showed me that I was more than bipolar disorder that I could do something other than just be the functional and laying on a couch and as I look back then walking that line between a pound and a boy thing really did make a big difference that line is different for everybody and the battles over that line are are many in a worst-case scenario is important to leave the door open my dad used to tell this gut-wrenching story he used to wait up every night until I came home and he got to a place where he was convinced that but I wasn't going to come home that the knock at the door was going to be the police letting him know that I died and used to talk about it as like it was clear that he couldn't get through to me give us clear that I was on a path of destruction and so he just kept letting you know like if you ever do want to talk if you are doing a try and address this I'm here but live with that paralyzing fear and that's why I asked parents is so important to take care of yourself my parents never stop taking vacation taking breaks. things that they needed for themselves to maintain their mental health so that they could be there for us when we needed it so now I want to switch and just close this presentation with some tips for mental health around covid-19 the reality is mental health disorders are at alarming numbers are in Coca 19 depression anxiety isolation body image from looking at yourself and what time all these things are at kind of astronaut so there's a couple of tips you can do number one it's really important for everyone of all ages to separate the cause of the stress into different buckets what's happening right now is a lie people lump all of their causes of stress from two into one bucket so things being cancelled remote learning Zoom fatigue homework outside all this stuff is just in one bucket is no way for people to cope with it if it's in that situation resume critique of the bucket things being canceled as a bucket not seeing friends of the bucket whatever the list goes on is a bucket people have to determine which bucket is most full and Coke individually we can't cope with all those Causes That One X or even just teaching anyone of any age that still like okay that is separate from this how do you want to cope with not seeing your friend how do you want to it's being canceled how do you want to cope with Zumba T all those things are important questions and working on his coping mechanisms is helpful the next thing is really focusing on what you can control the white we cannot control right now focusing on what you can control gives the brain a much better locus of control and allows for people to be able to have those coping mechanisms so there's a couple of things people can control 1 peeling in a way to vent not ruminate but then let them say how much it  how much they hurt how much things are happening as a way to get it out if we hit our kids were toxic positivity which is just constantly reminding them that things will be okay what they learn in that is like maybe no one cares about my feelings so don't let them have their emotions the things that they can control the people that they talk to so they can FaceTime connect on a gaming system do whatever else it is that helps them still keep in touch with people having a to-do list is really helpful because it gives you a stroke during a routine to follow every day when the world is chaotic and unpredictable if you can bring a system that allows you to have her change it helps you balance your mental health they can also control the content they consume this goes for you if you are stressed out by the news if you are stressed out by other things social media you can control that and you can teach your kids to control that to a lot of my students have deleted social media they done other things because they realize it was them helping their mental health and then the last part is the way they treat themselves so all of us have an intern all the talk to ourselves more than we will ever talk to another human being you might be asking yourself if that's true it is true that's just how this works but not in your head what you say to yourself is often louder than other voices so if someone synonyms of negatively with self-hate with all these other things it's really difficult for them to address their mental health at all treating themselves more like they would treat a friend can be a really important step during this time so during the pandemic very few children we call their friends DUI this pandemic  and you and all this is going to be terrible and it's never going to end in this is never going to change but they might be staying so paying attention to self compassion is really poor and then the last thing that we do is we teach our students how to talk to friends about their mental health the reality is for majority students who aren't seeking help from a mental health professional they are telling a friend they are talking to their friends about what they're going through so we don't cheat kids how to manage like suicidal ideation or anything like that but we just a basic steps of how to open a conversation the first step is trying to help someone feel comfortable so that could be you notice that someone is not doing well and you try to talk to him about it never in your life are you going to go up to someone and be like hey I noticed you have problems and have them be like you're right I have so many problem can you take me to someone who can help me typically if that's going to be more summer going to be more defensive or shut down or angry so how do you help someone get past that defensiveness you can't and let them know you care about them you can ask how they're doing you can ask why they don't want to seek help you can compare physical health to mental health you can try and break down the reason they don't want to talk about their problems instead of just focusing on their problems anything you can do to help them be more comfortable asking open ended questions that helps them give you more answers than just yes or no questions it's really important to have a plan if the person you are trying to help their situation gets worse and they refuse to seek out so for kids we tell them like call their parents tell someone to school tell a trusted at all do something but don't manage that person on your I know it's really important a lot of kids are staying up until 6 in the morning texting their friends trying to talk them through their problem now they're not sleeping now they're not able to study now they're not able to get good grades because they're trying to help their friend last piece of this is just remembering that you're not a therapist if you're ever walking with someone at any stage in your life and they fell and broke their leg none of you would be like stay here I'm going to go to CVS and then come back and like put a cast on her leg when do that you call 911 immediately but all of you on this call at some point in your life have blurred the lines of helping your friends mental health you can be doing that too it's really important to know that certain point someone's leg is and all you can do is support them by getting them to someone who can help them so the last thing to say to you before I open it up to questions is I focus the low tonight on brain plasticity and growing minds and everything else I want to share with you when I was 17 and got out of the psychiatric ward after attempting to take my own life and went back to HighSchool all the sudden everything was different before I went to the hospital the cool guy I was gathering party with I was a guy everyone late I was got everyone knew when I got out of the hospital all of a sudden people just started calling me a psycho and a crazy kid and stupid and I was made fun of and I lost my friends and I have rumors about me all throughout that school and two months after I got out of the psychiatric ward or a psychologist came into one of my classrooms to talk about the patients that he treated and as he talked about the patients he treated every single student in classroom started laughing even my friends would see me hot the wise started laughing but I wasn't laughing I was tired of being laughed at and so I grabbed my teacher and I took him to the hallway and I said hey funny and he looks down at me and you ask me like whoa you know what do you want to do about it and I asked him to let me speak I said if they are going to laugh and not understand the psychologist maybe they'll understand me the two weeks later I stood up and that exact thing Potter term and I spoke for the very first time and it did not go as smoothly as violently but when I finish my presentation and I learned it the really young age if you share your story it opens other people to sharing their stories that feature who let me speak that day brought me back to speaking to his classroom from age 7 all the way to 8:25 through some of my darkest moments through some of my most lost years but what he really did was he looked into the eyes of a kid who didn't believe in himself I'm sad I believe in you he looked into the eyes of the kid who hated himself and said I love you and that is one of the most powerful things we can do persistently believing and loving people who don't see it in themselves while working through our own emotions of fear and worry and concern hoping that they will one day do see it all of you have that opportunity you have that gift you have that presents and it's really important for you to use it now and this time when people are struggling more than they ever before I leave you on this call have the strength to change your mental health you just have to embrace it you have to take that power so tonight I shared with you my personal story but what I really hope happens after this is that at some point when you really need to or some point when you see your kids needs you find a way to reach them find a way for them to share their story because you have no idea where your story can take you until you tell it thank you so much everybody I am going to give you some resource quickly if you would like to have a video of this message a discussion guide on Mental Health a chapter from a boat behind happy faces you don't need any phone bring me near campus I'm here you just text my name to that number and then it'll enter you into system and end all the informational pop up in your email you can use a chat for questions and I will try to answer as many as I can I accept compliments to thank you so much I forget being vulnerable in and sharing your story and and allowing all of us to be here and listen and I hope that the listeners feel comfortable and and ask questions somebody's asking what are the first signs that show a child is seeking help

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