Translator: Leonardo Silva Reviewer: David DeRuwe
Did you know that by the end of this event,
three men in the UK will have died by suicide?
I can still remember exactly where I was
when my dad called me to tell me that they'd found my uncle.
He had taken his life,
and it had taken three weeks to find his body.
Richard was 47.
He was a doctor, super smart, creative, autistic,
he spoke new languages with ease, he played and wrote music
and he understood science and math like no one else I knew.
He was the kind of kid you'd really hate at school, right?
He saved people's lives for a living,
and yet, he decided to take his own.
I'd like to take you back to 2010.
I was at my new flat in Brighton, having dinner with a friend,
about to start my third year of university,
when my dad calls me to tell me that they'd found my uncle.
That feeling,
that sinking feeling in your stomach when your heart drops all the way down,
and all you can think is,
"What could I have done to stop that from happening?"
that feeling is not something I wish anyone ever has to experience.
Men are facing a crisis.
How many men do you think die by suicide each day in the UK?
Have a guess.
Raise your hand if you think it's under five.
Raise your hands. Under five?
Under 10?
It's 12.
That's one man every two hours.
While we're all enjoying our day,
we're going to lose 12 men to suicide today.
In my work, we talk a lot about the fact that 76% of all suicides are male
and that this silent killer is claiming the lives of more men under 45
than anything else.
And I can't help but find myself asking, "Why is that?"
Doesn't that trouble you?
Because it troubles me.
These are our brothers, fathers, uncles, partners, sons -
these are our friends,
and they decide to die.
I think there are some hard questions we need to ask about male suicide.
I don't believe there's anything wrong with men having suicidal thoughts,
but is there something wrong with how we react to suicide being thought about?
Let me explain.
We'll all die at one point or another, right?
Our bodies will fail us, and we'll die of disease or old age.
Or we'll have our lives taken from us, maybe in a tragic accident.
So, isn't it perfectly normal
to consider being in control of our own death?
Yes, suicide is intentional,
but does that automatically make it wrong?
I believe suicide is preventable,
and I believe we should do everything in our power to prevent it,
but I also believe there's nothing inherently wrong
in thinking about our own death.
I've considered what it's like to die.
I'd like to ask you all to close your eyes just for a minute.
I promise nothing scary will happen if you close your eyes.
Now raise your hands if you've ever had a really bad day
that's left you feeling maybe stressed or upset.
Okay.
Keep your eyes closed and keep your hands raised
if that bad day or bad week or bad month
has ever led you to think about harming yourself
or taking your own life.
Thank you; put your hands down and then open your eyes.
That was about half of this room.
I invite you to consider what might be different
if we didn't see having suicidal thoughts as wrong,
and what that might mean for the men in our lives thinking of suicide.
Let's go back to my uncle Richard.
For most of his life, he experienced what was most likely bipolar,
and he'd had suicidal thoughts on more than one occasion.
In fact, six years before his death, he attempted to take his life.
The sad fact was that Richard lived in a time
where suicide wasn't considered something that you spoke about.
It was swept under the carpet and a cause of shame amongst families.
There was something wrong with it.
I mean, it was only in 1961 that we stopped making suicide a crime.
Richard's parents were medics - an anesthetist and a nurse -
and they didn't understand suicide either.
They didn't think that it was real,
and I think they were probably in denial about what was happening with Richard.
What happened to my uncle isn't my grandparents' fault.
Suicide is complex and rarely attributed to any one factor.
But, when I reflect on Richard's experience
and on how we still struggle to speak about suicide today,
nothing's really changed.
We still struggle to talk about it.
We label it as abnormal or unusual,
and we make men wrong for having suicidal thoughts.
We say that they're unwell, or that they need to get better.
And because we think of it this way,
it stops us from being able to talk about it,
and we stay silent instead.
And suicide remains shrouded in this stigma.
That stigma is only perpetuated
by irresponsible and sensationalized journalism
that happens in the cases of celebrity suicide.
Just look at some of the reporting around Anthony Bourdain's recent death.
When I was thinking about how best to explain this point,
it made me think about sex and sex education.
Stick with me, okay?
(Chuckles)
It's really uncomfortable for us to talk to kids about sex.
It's so tempting to think
if we don't talk about it, it won't happen, our kids won't have sex.
But we know that teenage pregnancy and STIs are the risks
if we don't have that conversation,
and we take those risks seriously.
We introduced sex education into schools,
and it's now compulsory across the UK.
And, I mean, it's far from perfect,
but what it has been shown to do
is to improve positive attitudes towards safe sex,
to delay sex
and to reduce teenage pregnancy when used alongside other methods.
With suicide, we know it's a myth
that talking about it will plant that idea in someone's head.
And if suicide is claiming the lives of more men under 45 than anything else,
isn't it time we just start accepting
that suicidal thoughts are something that happen,
and instead start talking openly and responsibly about it?
I don't think there's anything wrong with men having suicidal thoughts.
But perhaps there is something wrong with our expectations of men in society
that lead them to have those thoughts.
Let's think about that.
What does it mean to be masculine?
What does it mean to be a man?
Society tells us men should be strong, dependable,
and able to provide for their family.
There's very little research into the reasons why men suicide,
but the recent research that does exist
speaks about how men's high suicide rates are linked to risk factors
such as history of being abused as a child,
single status or relationship breakdown,
and financial difficulty or unemployment.
So that means that if you're a man and you've had a troubled childhood,
you're still searching for the one or you're worried about money,
you're at risk of suicide!
How many of us know men in that situation?
I mean, I've definitely just described Richard,
and I've probably described half of millennial men in the UK.
Unsurprisingly,
these risk factors are linked to those traditional notions of masculinity,
of being strong, dependable, and able to provide for your family.
It seems as though when men feel they can't meet those expectations,
they make themselves wrong for that.
The research backs this up too.
Just last year, there was a paper confirming that there is a link
between men feeling unable to fulfill
the stereotypical characteristics of masculinity
and suicidal thoughts.
Now, I imagine a lot of us in this room don't agree with those stereotypes,
but some of us probably do, or at least know someone who does.
How many of us have been guilty of saying "Man up!" at some point in our lives?
I know I have.
The conversation is starting to change.
There are great campaigns like BBC Three's Real Men Do Cry
and CALM's L'eau de Chris,
that are trying to shift those perceptions of men and masculinity
and encourage them to be more open and vulnerable.
But is it just men who are perpetuating these outdated stereotypes
of what it means to be a man
and making themselves wrong for that?
I don't think so.
I'd like us to consider what our role is as women.
Just last month, I was chatting to a female friend of mine
who described the guy she was dating as "a sponge" and "too sensitive"
because he opened up to her
about some of the anxieties he was facing in the relationship
and how that was making him feel vulnerable.
I cannot begin to describe the look I see on some women's faces
when I speak about how men I know have broken down in tears in front of me.
It's somewhere between discomfort and disdain.
Men are already making themselves wrong
for not living up to these masculine ideals
of being strong, dependable, and able to provide for their families.
They're already shaming themselves for that.
But we're compounding the problem by making them wrong
and shaming them for demonstrating those open and vulnerable behaviors
that we say we want them to show us.
And we're making them wrong
for breaking out of these rigid stereotypes
and for just being fully human.
To the women in the room,
I'm not saying that male suicide is our responsibility.
I absolutely acknowledge
that men have a huge role to play in breaking down these stereotypes.
But as a woman, I can only speak to my experience
and how I do see our role.
What I'm inviting all of us to do, regardless of our gender,
is to reconsider the expectations that we have of men in society
and reconsider how we view men
who have the courage to show us their vulnerability.
I'm inviting us to ask the men in our lives how they're really doing
and if they're struggling with anything they haven't told us about.
And can we think about how we respond to that?
How we might choose to empathize with their pain?
Can we hold space for men and listen to them,
without trying to fix things,
tell them that we love them
and that it's okay for them to feel however they're feeling?
I'd like to tell you about another guy I know.
He's a really good friend of mine; I used to work with him, actually.
His name's Billy -
he's super smart,
he's genuine, authentic, kind, generous -
he's just the kind of guy you really want to spend time with.
So, imagine how I felt
when Billy called me at 11:30 a.m. on a Friday morning,
three years ago,
to tell that he'd spent the night in hospital
because the night before, he'd tried to take his own life.
He was 24.
You're probably thinking I felt shocked,
panicked,
uncomfortable.
Actually, I felt honored.
I felt honored that Billy felt that he could talk to me
about his suicide attempt and how he'd been feeling.
I thought back to my uncle,
and I knew that I had a chance to respond differently to Billy.
I met him with compassion and understanding,
and a safe space to talk about how he was feeling,
without judgment.
I didn't make him wrong for feeling the way that he felt
or for attempting to take his life.
I didn't try to label him as suicidal or as someone who needed to get better.
I simply gave him a space to talk about whatever he needed to.
I saw what he told me as incredibly courageous,
and not something he should ever be ashamed of.
I can't help but wonder if this can make a difference.
When I reflect on how my response to Billy was entirely different
to the response my uncle used to receive when he spoke about suicide,
I can't help but wonder what would happen
if we had different expectations of men in society,
if we had a different reaction to men
who have the courage to show us their vulnerability,
and a different reaction to men who have suicidal thoughts.
Would men feel differently about suicide?
I don't have the answers,
but I am inviting you to consider the questions.
Because I don't believe there is anything wrong with men having suicidal thoughts,
but perhaps there is something wrong with how we react to that
and our expectations of men in society.
So, what would happen if we all have the courage to go home tonight
and have conversations with the men in our lives
about how they're feeling and what they're thinking,
including their suicidal thoughts?
Yeah, it's going to be uncomfortable,
I get that,
but we do it with sex!
Every parent dreads having that conversation with their kids
about how babies are made.
But we know it's important to keep our kids safe,
so we do it anyway, no matter how uncomfortable we feel.
I wish I could have had a conversation with my uncle
like the one I had with Billy.
I wish I could have told him,
"There is nothing wrong with you.
There is nothing wrong with how you're feeling or what you're thinking.
It's okay.
I'm here to listen to whatever you need to say or talk about
because your feelings are important.
You're important,
and you don't have to do this alone."
Thank you.
(Applause) (Cheers)