Laughing in the Dark: Comedy, Depression & Suicide Prevention with Frank King & Manon on The Healers Café

teach the audience something. And I always wanted to make a living in a difference. I always wanted to teach. I just said, no, what have I got to teach? So a friend of mine and listen up if you’re an aspiring speaker. Friend of mine, Judy Carter, wrote a book called The message of you turn your life into a money making speaking career. She gave me a copy. She said, Frank, look, you’re smart. You read it, you’ll figure it out. And I went into it thinking I got nothing. And halfway, she takes you by the hand to find your heart. Story The one you can’t help but tell, the one makes the hair on the back of your neck, stand up. So she I got a cat here. What’s up? Come on, baby, we have six rescue kitty cats. Oh, so they make you may see more than one before the This is Lily. Wow. So halfway through the book, I do have something to talk about. Judy led me right to it. I thought, you know, given my two mental illnesses, near suicides, is that attempt suicide, loss, survivor, more nuts in my family than in a squirrel turd, I could speak on suicide prevention if I got some training I did, got a couple certifications. And then my second thought was, now, wait a minute, I’ve been doing comedy for two and a half decades. Who in the world’s going to take me seriously? So my wife said, do a TEDx. And I said, What’s a TEDx? I now have 13 of them, and I got an application that week from a TEDx in Vancouver, British Columbia, oh, my goodness, yes. Collingwood, something is a neighborhood, yeah? In in Vancouver. Love the light rail, by the way. Lord, yeah, yeah. Oregon is a lot like Canada, only, more guns, worse health insurance. The they I auditioned, and I got it. And then two other events called and said, Do you have any more mental health topics? So that was number two, number three, and I became a suicide prevention speaker. And the the theme of my first TEDx, and the theme of my speaking career is starting the conversation on suicide. Because what I discovered when I was putting the speech together was, even though one person dies by suicide in the US, every nine minutes worldwide, every 40 seconds, hardly anybody talks about it unless you bring it up and then, dear Lord, almost everybody has a story. So that’s how I got started as a suicide prevention speaker. And then, as we say, in the US, I picked that lane to speak meeting planners, like, like the expert or thought leader, you know, just speak on one thing and do it really well. And then I thought, well, I’m going to pick a handful of people who industries that have a really bad problem, construction being number one. So I picked the top 10 industries in the US and pretty much around the world, choose that, and I just market to them. I just booked one this week for a large electrical contracting Association. They had seen me at another event in Phoenix for another large electrical contract in construction, 1000 people last year died by accident. 5000 died by suicide. Wow. Yeah, you’re five times more likely to jump off the building than fall off. So that’s really I mean, that they’re leading the league. Sadly, that’s how I and and oftentimes I get booked. They want the teaching. They want, the learning objectives. Teach them something they want, the lived experience, which I’ve got plenty of, and the fact they can do it with, you know, some funny personal anecdotes to kind of, it’s, it’s tough topic, yeah, makes it more digestible, more memorable. That’s how I got to be the mental health comedian, right?

Manon Bolliger  09:41

Well, I mean, humor is gives a little bit of that gap, right? You’re, you know, when? Mean, you may actually be funny, but people who are bored, yes, but some people aren’t funny, you know, but if they use humor. It sort of helps them separate themselves from really, the actual pain they’re in, right? Because you can say things, you know, it’s, it’s almost like a distancing possibility, right?

Frank King  10:14

Yes, distance is often the key. There’s a there’s a rule in Comedy, tragedy plus time equals Comedy,

Manon Bolliger  10:23

tragedy plus time. Okay?

Frank King  10:25

Comedy, yes. And the longer you do comedy, the shorter the time. Queen. What’s happening in the punch line? I’m telling you, I had a heart had a heart attack. I’ve had health problems all my life. Heart problems. I inherited a cholesterol level from my mom of a deep fat fryer, and my dad had a bad heart valve. And I inherited all that, and I had a heart attack in the woods with the dogs. By myself. I had my cellphone, but had T Mobile, so I didn’t have service, and had to drive. I’d walk half mile the car, drive two miles home and take a 25 minute ride to the hospital. Comedian’s job is to make people comfortable. That’s nice. That’s why I struggle with sales. Because in sales, you have to make somebody uncomfortable where they are and then show them how your product will restore the comfort Exactly. Yeah, I just I make them feel uncomfortable. I just wait. I’m in the memo. Here’s a tip, by the way, if you arrive at the hospital with with a heart attack symptoms, no waiting. I’ve told you. I told you, look, if you break your nose and you go to the emergency room, there’s a long line. When they ask you what’s wrong, you say this, I broke my nose and I think I’m having a heart attack. No waiting. So I’m back in my little triage unit with a nurse, and you could tell she’s nervous, because I’m a rather large heart attack. I wanted to, I wanted to be comfortable. So she said, Frank, no paperwork, but I have to ask you a personal question. And I said, through my pain, honey, I’m married, but I love the way you think she’s laughing. She goes, No, no, no, no, no. Your full name is Frank Marshall King the third. But what do you like to be called through the pain? I said, Big Daddy. So to this day, 14 years later, 15 years later, when I go back to Oregon, heart and vascular and see somebody for that morning. Hey, Big Daddy. So, but I just wanted to make her now I’m literally having a heart attack and writing comedy at the same time. Yeah, yeah. I thought to myself, I’m having a good show. My second thought was, well, I better. This one may be my last. Again, writing comedy, having a heart attack.

Manon Bolliger  12:38

Well, well, I mean, it’s really like a passion lived in the way you perceive life, right? Yes, it’s, it’s everything can be seen with a sense of humor.

Frank King  12:51

Yeah, I’ve, I’ve people that made Tell me about yourself, like, Oh, I’m a comedian. And they go, no, no, not what you do, who you are. Well, redundant every fiber of my being. I can teach you to write comedy. I can teach you just to perform it. I cannot teach you to process the incoming information the way my brain does. It’s just unbelief that my imagination, comedic ability and so forth is simply the flip side of my depression and thoughts of suicide. Same brain, same wiring, right? How could it be any, any other way?

Manon Bolliger  13:22

Yeah, well, I was going to ask you that, because it’s, it is the flip side, if you look at it, if you see the world, you know, from a depressive perspective, or Doom, or suicidal, or this my last day, it is the flip side of that humor that takes any potential tragedy and just makes it lighter, right? It really is the same brain. It’s it feels like to me, at least. I mean, I don’t know, I don’t have that much experience with suicidal people in my clinic or when I was in clinic, but I certainly know of many people who that’s the way they went, you know, yes, yeah. And it’s, it’s interesting, it’s like, but you’re living it in a comedy, and because you’re teaching it is that the what drives you forward that you haven’t committed suicide at this stage?

Frank King  14:28

Well, yeah, when I speak, I have two mental illnesses. One is called major depressive disorder, and the other is chronic suicidal intensity, ideation or intensity, yeah, and every time I speak, I talk about chronic suicidal ideation, and I’ve met therapists of 20 years who when I say chronic suicidal ideation, they stare at me like a pig staring at a wristwatch. They have no idea what I’m talking about, because it’s not the DSM five. So. So I tell the story of my chronic suicidal ideation. I say to the audience, look, here’s what, here’s what it’s like for me and my tribe. Suicide is always an option on the menu as a solution for problems large and small, and when I say small. Couple years ago, my car broke down, I had three thoughts unbidden. One, get a fixed. Two, buy a new and three, I could just kill myself.

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Frank King  16:32

I know it sounds weird, but and then, almost every time I’ve spoken, there’s been somebody in the audience who has chronic suicidal ideation. They have no idea it has a name. They think they’re just some kind of freak and all alone. I’ve had more more. I’ve had a number of people come up with me crying, crying so hard they couldn’t speak. I was at a dental convention. A dentist came. Everybody’s leaving the room except this dentist woman walking toward me, and I can see she’s crying, and she gets to me, she’s crying so hard she can’t speak. So I said, you have chronic suicidal ideation. She nodded, yes. You didn’t know it had a name. Nod yes. You thought you’re just a freak. Yes. I said, Well, when you get back home, do you have a therapist? Nod, yes. Tell them everything you learned today, and for goodness sakes, tell them you Googled it. Don’t tell them you learned it from a comedian. I got an email a week later, Frank, I think I was at that dental conference, in large part simply to meet you. You’ve changed my life. And I can’t say that about a lot of people, and that happened over and over and over. And one time I was in Montana, University of Montana, Billings finished the show, standing outside, it’s winter time, waiting for the young man to come with his truck take me to the hotel. And So picture this, it’s winter, it’s dusk, starting to snow, and there’s a river nearby, dusk, snow river. And I thought to myself, Oh Lord, I am George Bailey, and it’s a wonderful life. I’ve been showing these people’s lives we like, if I weren’t there simply to tell my story and listen to theirs and it I can’t kill myself. Otherwise, I’d take a lot of those people with me. So I’m stuck. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. Friend of mine said, You can’t live with that. I go, No, you missed the point. I can’t die with that, right? Knowing that I could have helped somebody, it’s very therapeutic. My goal is to save a life a day, right, right? And every now and then I hear back. I did a military base in the US, Fort Irwin and outside of Barstow, California, they did a survey anonymous, 30% of the soldiers said in the last year they thought about suicide. So they brought me in, and I met base psychologist, did his podcast, and a couple of months later, I got a phone call from him. He said, Frank, I had a soldier walk into my office this morning and flat out say to me, I’m depressed and suicidal, and I’m here because Frank King said I had to tell somebody. Boom, yeah, it choked me up just to tell the story. But that’s, that’s what’s in it. For me, that’s the ROI very therapeutic for me, knowing that you can make kind of difference.

Manon Bolliger  19:08

And what do you feel? Because it’s bound to be a different understanding than what psychiatrists or psychologists might believe to be the case. But what do you think makes the difference for a person who has either suicidal ideation, or, you know, feels like on the verge or they’re considering it

Frank King  19:33

makes a difference how, in

Manon Bolliger  19:35

their in their decision to to stay. What? What do you think that the switch is? Because it feels like a switch, almost, yes.

Frank King  19:47

Well, when someone decides to in their life, oftentimes it happens within an hour, sometimes within 10 minutes. Now, if they survive, the chances of them attempting again are very low. My depression is not situational. I’ve been most depressed some of the best times in my life. And my depression isn’t actually connected the two, two illnesses, not actually connected the depression and the chronic suicidal because I’ve had, I’ve had suicidal ideations when I wasn’t depressed, right? And I met somebody, a woman, she goes, could I just have, just have the chronic suicidal aviation I don’t think I’ve got depression. I go, my you may be right. The it’s, it’s a sense of hopelessness. My depression is hopelessness. And I think it’s, it’s that why bother for young people? Because they tend to think in the immediate right not gonna be better than this. And I don’t think it is. Then why bother? And they in their lives, if you can interrupt it’s like I’m a co author on four books on men’s mental health, and we use the automobile as a metaphor. Automobile accidents aren’t generally the result of one thing. It’s not just because the road was slick, it’s not because just because it was nighttime. It’s not because it’s raining hard and it’s cut your visibility. It’s those things in a cascade. If you interrupt that cascade, if all sudden it clears up and you can see clearly, even though the road’s slick and it’s night time, then you may not have the accident. So I think suicides are oftentimes a cascade of things, and if you can interrupt that, and anybody can, you don’t have to be a mental health professional. That’s what I tell my audience. Look, the good news is you can make a difference. You can save a life, and you can do it by doing something as simple as what we’re doing right here. You doing right here, and that is having a conversation, if you know how. And before we leave, you will know how. So it’s, it’s, yeah, I think if the if you can interrupt that cascade, whether simply by saying to somebody, are you okay, there’s a, there’s a guy named Kevin Hines, one of the few survivors of jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. And he bipolar disorder, I believe, hears voices, and they told him to kill himself. He’s in the Bay Area, San Francisco. Well, how do I kill myself in the Bay Area? Well, helpfully, Google has the answer gave Melissa bridges, and so he found the one that was closes Golden Gate, and he went out and got on a bus, and he said to himself, if anybody asked me how I’m doing anybody I will tell him I am suicidal. Please call the police. I’m going to harm myself. Nobody on the bus ride. So he goes on to the bridge, walks out. He’s looking over the railing. Tap on his shoulder. It was a woman. She goes, Excuse me. He thinks, thank God. She goes. We’re visiting from Germany. Would you take our picture? No, being a gentleman, he took their picture, handed back the phone. As soon as they turned their backs over the rail, he went. But if somebody, anybody, just simply said to him, are you okay? It’s that easy to interrupt that cascade and perhaps stop, you know, stop a suicide.

Manon Bolliger  23:20

Yeah, it’s really putting that gap in, in, like, almost a train of consciousness, which isn’t fully conscious, but it’s like just one moment of another human being caring or noticing, or, you know, it’s a, yeah, no. It’s a very good point. And I think with humor, it’s easier to get through than even very seriously, you know? I mean, if you’re with the guy on the bridge, I guess humor might not be the right thing, or it could be, depends on the on the energy, right? But, but it’s the caring of, you know, yes, reaching out

Frank King  24:06

and humor, I think, in the right the the during the recession, I needed a job, a good job with benefits, and I always wanted to be a police officer, so I applied with 12 departments instead of Washington taking no chances. And they had several oral boards, but they said to me, what’s the connection between comedians and police? I said, Well, we are both paid observers. We notice things other people don’t. I mean, they see it, but they don’t take note. Secondly, when you step on stage, you have to read the crowd. When you’re in a squad car and you pull up on an intersection where people are milling about. Got to read the crowd. You got to take the temperature, and you got to figure out, you know, maybe, who’s, you know, who’s in charge of all these people and I, and with, with comedy and with the situation at an intersection, the first thing you say can either escalate the situation or deescalate the situation. Comedians can think that fast. They can say something that would de escalate. I was at a gate at the airport and the planes delayed mechanical. So everybody around me is grumpy. You know, they may miss a meeting, miss a wedding, who knows, but they’re grumpy now I’m standing on our television set above me, CNN is on, and you can hear it all over the gate area. The guy standing next to me, because I’m waiting for my opportunity to break the, you know, to break the tension. The guy next to me goes, how do we get this TV turned to Fox News in a loud voice so everybody heard so I thought that’s the opening I was waiting for. I said, Well, you kill me first, the place explodes. Everybody’s laughing. They’re still happy. They’re not going anywhere. But it broke attention. Just one sentence, yeah, the entire group of people that were there, and that’s, that’s if you can break that, you know, and there’s a new protocol, stop drop and roll, like the protocol for if you catch fire, you stop moving right drop. And the idea is that if you’re in that storm, if you’re you’re, you’re that cafe, you stop and pause. And you want to train yourself to a, not make any serious decisions at that moment. B, if you can give yourself a day, 24 hours, and then you know if you’re going to proceed, proceed then. But get, you know, give yourself some space to, you know, say Not, not like I said, if somebody decides, oftentimes, it’s within an hour, sometimes 10 minutes. I’ve had a friend, sadly, who was a cruise director and the boat docks, one of the pastors, who was, you know, a big time cruiser, lots of points in whatever their, you know, their club was complained. Cruise Lines are famous for this. They fired him unceremoniously. No, let’s see what you think. Let’s hear what they think. Let’s you know, just boom, you’re fired. And I’ve known him for 10 years. I mean, he knew what I did for a living, so I’m sure he had, had he been lived with depression? I probably wouldn’t know it. He was staying on the 10th floor of a building in Miami, and he went over the railing, and, you know, 10 stories. And I imagine it was the only way. There was no other means for him at that moment than going over there. I think, had he paused? And, you know, tried to get a good night’s sleep and then make that decision in the morning. That is a funny story. I met a guy who’s living in New York City, and he was going to go jump off a bridge in New York City. He’s really depressed. He was out, and he’s on his way out the door practically, and he hears behind him Monday Night Football. The Jets are playing. So he goes, Well, the bridge is going to be there tomorrow. I’m going to go watch the Jets game, right? That was enough the next day. You know, the thought had passed and is going to be there tomorrow. What’s the rush? Well, and a minor funny story. I was in the woods with the dogs post heart attack, and I’m 68 years old at time. That’s last year, and I was thinking about suicide, not the act, but just the, you know, the topic. And I stopped, and I went, Wait a minute. I’m 68 years old. Why rush it? How much time have I got left? Anyway, if I’m 38 okay, we can talk about it. If I’m starting another 40 years, okay, let’s chat about it. But 68 What’s the hurry?

Manon Bolliger  28:51

You know, I know when we’ve our time is almost up, but I just wanted to say right before we started, you know, I brought up this maids thing in Canada, right? Medically assisted aids and or deaths. Actually, that’s what it is and how. You know, currently, there’s more and more legislations making it easier for teenagers without the consent of their parents, for depressed people, for people who can’t economically figure out how to survive in this, you know, difficult at these difficult times. And I was thinking, you know, the whole intention or the what happens in those times is, it’s all taken very seriously, but there’s no gap. There’s no like, you know, I’m thinking how easy it is to just believe your thoughts, if you have the type of empathy that says, you know, well, you can end it rather. Than the type of empathy that says you know, like or that brings up a hockey game or something that you know want to miss, right, like you know. And I was just thinking it might be an incredible topic for Canadians, if you ever come you know, or want to do a talk here, because it has, you know, been it’s a very hot topic here, because a lot of people have ended their lives that just didn’t have another option presented to them. And then there’s people who have been suffering and are old enough, they’re in their 80s, 90s, whatever, and they’ve chronically suffered, and they really have had enough of this. So I think there’s, you know, there’s, it’s not a there’s a lot of gray zone, but it’s, it’s reaching populations that I think could really use a totally different solution. Before considering this, as

Frank King  31:00

we talked about in Oregon, you know Right to Die death with dignity. You have to be you have to have only a certain amount of time left. A psychiatrist signs off, a physician signs off. And what they discovered was that, if given the control the person who is going to end up dying by suicide, they live longer and better knowing they have the option and and, you know, chronic suicidal ideation, I have a friend who has it, and he said to me, Frank, if it weren’t for my chronic suicidal ideation, the fact I’m willing to kill myself at any moment, I probably would have killed myself a long time ago, right? Because, yeah, I’m a mortician friend who says I always try to take suicide off the table. I go, No, no, don’t take it on the table. Just move aside. Don’t, don’t cut off their only exit. Yeah, you might end up, you know, so, yeah,

Manon Bolliger  31:47

but I think it’s getting to the bottom of what is the education that is training these people to perform this work. I think that’s what has to be revisited, at least here, you know, because I agree. Keep it on the side. I think it’s if you, if you anything, you say you can’t have, people are going to want,

Frank King  32:12

yeah, absolutely forbidden food. Exactly well. And in the 20s, let’s say, in the US, they went from a model of psychology psychiatry, where they would try to figure out what was causing all this, and then they went to a medical model where it was more of them treat them with psychotropics. And then when insurance got involved, you have to have a diagnosis, which comes with a code, otherwise the practitioner doesn’t get paid, and so, for example, with ADD and ADHD, the symptoms are very similar to children who have suffered trauma, and they may not have ADD ADHD. They may be suffering from childhood trauma, so it’s but you know, you’re not going to find that out. It’s easier just to give them a prescription for Ritalin than it is to dig deep and figure out what’s wrong with the child Exactly.

Manon Bolliger  33:09

Anyway, our time is up, and I just want to leave you the last words. And yeah, thank you so much for sharing your wealth of knowledge and inspiration.

Frank King  33:19

Well, let’s leave it on a funny note. Here’s how a comedian would close out a podcast. You Ready?

Manon Bolliger  33:26

Ready?

Frank King  33:26

If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe, rate and review and tell your friends if you did enjoy this podcast. Well, we hope you have no friends.

Manon Bolliger  33:41

All right, thank you.

Frank King  33:43

You are welcome. Thank you.

ENDING: 

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