Breaking Through: Combating the Silent Suicide Crisis in Men’s Mental Health Featuring Raymond Braun, James Longman, and Don Mordecai, MD

In this special episode recorded during NAMICon 2025, hear from a panel of mental health champions who bravely share their personal stories of struggle, survival, and hope. Raymond Braun and James Longman share their personal, lived experiences of mental health and serious mental illness while Don Mordecai, MD, shares his expert knowledge. 

Through this episode, listeners will be inspired by their commitment to challenge stigma, break down silence, and create spaces for connection, healing, and recovery. Listeners will also discover the critical work Calm and Kaiser Permanente are doing to support men’s mental health through awareness, education, and culturally responsive resources – and understand how to turn men’s mental health awareness into action.

You can find additional episodes of this NAMI podcast and others at nami.org/podcast.

"Hope Starts With Us" is a podcast by NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness. It is hosted by NAMI CEO Daniel H. Gillison, Jr.

Episode production is provided by NAMI staff, including Traci Coulter and Connor Larsen.

Transcript

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Hello everyone and welcome. My name is Raymond Braun and I'm very grateful to be with you all today to talk about the deeply important topic of men's mental health. I believe in the power of community. So when I had the opportunity to talk with our special guest today, I jumped at the chance. Today you're actually going to get two conversations in one. First, I'm speaking with international journalist and author of The Inherited Mind, James Longman. And then I encourage you to stay on to hear more from Dan Gillison, the CEO of NAMI and Dr. Don Mordecai. National Leader for Mental Health and Wellness at Kaiser Permanente. Before we get started, I do want to acknowledge that suicide prevention and a variety of mental health topics will be discussed today. So if you're in crisis, please call or text 988. You'll be connected to a trained crisis counselor. And you can also call or text 988 if you're worried about a loved one. Conversations about mental health are extremely important and personally meaningful for me. And I'm incredibly grateful for our panelists work in this space because I have benefited from it personally. I'm gonna share a little bit of my own mental health journey just to provide some context for the conversation today. So up until I turned 30, I struggled with very debilitating OCD and agoraphobia. That was all associated with germs, contamination, mortality, pandemics. So as you can imagine, when 2020 hit, a period that was extremely challenging for a variety of different folks, mental health and experiences, it hit me extra hard because it felt like all of my worst nightmares were coming true, compounded with the fact that I was grieving the loss of some people who were really important to me. So my compulsions went from two to three hours a day to six, seven, eight hours a day, oiling everything in my apartment, including my pillowcase and everything that I ate, my toothbrush. And it got to the point where I wasn't able to really function outside of my compulsions. At that point, through the loving encouragement of friends and family, I entered an OCD recovery program where my life completely changed. And I would say that there were two pillars of that experience that really transformed how I think about my own identity and mental health. The first was going through an exposure therapy program where I was confronting all of my irrational fears and phobias every single day. and learning that it is possible to reinvent how we think about ourselves and that today's mind is not always yesterday's mind. And then the second piece was actually participating in group therapy and specifically for me, a men's group. Eight men once a week with a facilitated, incredible trained therapist of all different backgrounds and experiences where we had a forum to talk about the challenges and support each other through a variety of different mental health challenges and experiences. And I'm proud to say that I'm still part of that men's group. We meet every single week. I don't care where I am in the world. I am logging into that Zoom. And it has been a pillar for me. And my mission really coming out of my own mental health recovery journey was to try to combat stigma, utilizing my experience as a journalist and working in media, and then my own firsthand experience, you know, having gone through a really intense period of mental health challenge. And so to do that, I... I started to really talk about the connection between the mental and physical and utilizing sport as a vehicle, particularly for us as men to talk about mental strength and resilience. Two years ago, I set a world record as the first person to do seven triathlons on seven continents in seven days. But what made that such a special experience for me was that two years prior to completing the record, I never run more than three miles and I wasn't athletic at all. I was afraid of sweat. It was one of the many things that that my OCD made me fearful of. And so I really did that less about the physical prowess, but more to show what's possible when we invest in our mind and when we invest in therapy, our whole world can literally open up. And I've been honored following that to be a mental health correspondent for the Olympics and Paralympic Games, speaking to athletes and other elite performers about their mental health. And again, in particular, I have a deep passion for speaking to men because we know that men can disproportionately be impacted by a variety of different mental health challenges and with high risks of suicidality as well. James, I wanna start by thanking you for being here and thanking you on a personal level because as a journalist, I've long looked up to your career, your courage, your bravery, you've traveled all over the world, reported so many important stories and always focusing on the human element of them. And that's actually where I wanna start with you is... You have been all around the world in some of the most intense crisis situations with people in some of the most vulnerable, scary, broken down moments of their lives. And I'm curious what you've learned about human resilience, human suffering in these moments and how to provide support to someone who's struggling. Well, thanks very much for having me. I mean, my number one takeaway from my work is that we have so much more in common than divides us. And that for me, is always what I go back to, whether it's actually in the reporting that I'm doing or just keeping in my own mind, because it makes me feel like I'm not in this alone. That actually wherever we are in the world, whatever our situation, we all kind of want the same things. Whether I'm speaking to a yoga instructor on Manhattan Beach or a mother of 10 in a refugee camp in Iraq. Those two people want the same things from their life. They want to be happy, they want to be healthy, they want their children to have a good future, they want access to healthcare and education, they want opportunity in their life. And so wherever I am in the world, just, I'm struck by that over and over and over again. And it makes me feel less alone because I feel like we're part of this struggle. And when I feel when depression has taken over in my life and anyone watching this, will recognize that feeling of isolation. It's the feeling that you are experiencing something which no one else can possibly understand, that you are sitting in a space where there's a kind uh of sheet between you and the rest of the world. Somehow how I describe my depression is where I'm almost behind two-way glass, where I can see what's going on, but I'm not part of it. And so I think it's trying to remember that. I also have a family who've dealt with all kinds of tragedy. And the fundamental takeaway from my book is even if you have these experiences or you're related to people with them or you come from one of these troubled perhaps backgrounds, it doesn't mean that you have to repeat these patterns going forward. My father had schizophrenia. He ended his life when I was nine years old. His brother had schizophrenia. My grandfather also ended his life and my mother deals with clinical depression. And so when I first hit a serious bout of depression, my number one concern was, is this just history repeating itself? That feeling of inevitability, like it was always meant to be, is something that depression reinforces in you anyway. But I really did think that perhaps this was in my code. So I went on this journey to try to figure out, well, what's the truth of that? How can I untangle that? And most importantly, how can I break this pattern? just your circumstances, the thing I learn from my life and from my work, circumstances do not have to dictate your future. And you have so much more agency than perhaps you maybe give yourself credit for. That is such a hopeful message, James, and I love how you speak on it in the book. Tell me a little bit more about that journey that you went on. and the work that you've been doing to break that cycle, both from learning about the clinical and scientific origins of depression and suicidal ideation, but also the personal exploration that you've done and healing. I feel very, very strongly that we as a society are doing great things to talk about mental health. There are mental health days, there's a mental health awareness month, there's all kinds of mental health. activities and awareness kind of activities that take place in the workplace. You constantly get emails about it. Corporate America, corporate Britain, very good at all of this sort of stuff. And that's great. We're not very good talking about mental illness. And those two things are different. We all have mental health needs because we all have brains, just like we will have physical needs because we all have bodies. We don't all necessarily have a significant and enduring mental illness. But we will pretty much all know someone who have come into contact with someone or be related to someone who does deal with a clinical mental illness. And I think that the focus on mental health, albeit very welcome, has maybe given us, and more specifically, I would argue, our politicians, permission to kind of ignore huge numbers of people in our society. mean if you take schizophrenia for example 22 million people are diagnosed with it worldwide but very difficult things diagnosed so the number is probably much larger. Any kind of psychotic illness, any illness that somehow makes people feel that you are a danger, it's given us permission to sideline them and uh what I really wanted to do with the book was to shine a light on the kaleidoscopic experience that is mental illness on from all kinds of different people, all kinds of different walks of life, all kinds of different backgrounds to maybe de-stigmatize a little bit of that. Because whilst I think now we've used the word depression, for example, it's a very big word, right? It means so many different things. But people who deal with clinical and enduring depression, it's debilitating for many people to a point where they can't go to work, let alone have a mental health awareness day. And then you move into something like bipolar disorder, paranoid schizophrenia. These are serious conditions and a walk in the park and a bowl of blueberries is not going to help. You know, these people need significant help and by help I mean money and resources and it isn't there. And so that was part of the book. It was an effort to shine a light on something that a problem in the world that is significant and only growing and also maybe to show people that they shouldn't be afraid of people with some of these problems. but also to show that the brain is so complex and so much of it is so unknowable that there are so many different pathways for dealing with one of these illnesses. I was also thinking about a story you shared, James, that really moved me around the first time that you experienced a panic attack and how you were working to get treatment and find resources, but ultimately you called your friend and she came and sat with you and just how regulating that was for you. Yeah, this is when I was 26 and I was at my desk and I'd been feeling in retrospect, you know, you when you're out of a situation, you can see it much more clearly. But at the time, I didn't know what was happening. But I I had been down for a few months and my breath started getting very shallow and I was essentially having a panic attack. So I was I just started Googling places I could go. I was in central London, found a clinic. So then I just left work and kind of jogged to this clinic. It's like a 10 minute run, got there and found out that it hadn't uh stopped functioning. And not only that, because of cuts, I mean, it was not intended for someone dealing with a mental health crisis. And so this person at the reception was like, you need to leave. Cause I tried to make a call and it was all just quite dramatic. I was sitting on the curb in the street and I just couldn't be bothered. And I had left a message for my friend, Melissa. And by that point she'd She heard it and she came and she found me sitting in the street and she took me to a doctor, my actual, my physician, but you need to get... What I would say is that people who run like mental health provision, mental illness provision, is that they need to make things much, easier to access because if you need to make a call or go online to make an appointment and you give 32 reasons why you need something... when the one thing you lack when you're in a crisis is energy. I had barely enough energy to make a call, let alone fill out form and explain myself. So she came and she did that for me. She was the kind of logistic kind of energy source that I needed to kind of do all that stuff. And um it was a, you know, she was a miracle. And I only got the help from her. because like I say, I had this, I call it my family, but these are friends, but I've known them for such a long time, they've become family to me, to support me. And if I had been on my own, and if I hadn't told anyone how I was feeling, you know, it sounds obvious, but just if you're in it, you've somehow got to use whatever energy you have to tell another person where you are. And when I had a subsequent dip, I remember, I knew I didn't think it would help, but I kind of knew that I needed to do it anyway. That makes sense. So even if I even if I thought that the second dip that I had wasn't like the first, I kind of in the back of my mind knew what was going to help long term, which is that I needed to tell someone that it was going on. And and that meant that I could come out of it the second time around. So the only experience the first dip of depression gives you for the second time around is the kind of latent knowledge that you do have the tools to do something about it, even if it means using all the energy you don't think you have. You bring up such a good point, James, about resources. And I just want to highlight again for people, 988, you can call or text 24-7 in the states for resources. And Nami and Nami Khan are also going to provide a wealth of resources that you can utilize for yourself and others. And we'll make sure to include them as part of this conversation. And I also hope that everyone has a Melissa in their life because it's a powerful example of friendship and appreciate you sharing that with us, James. And on a similar note, mean, you've spent your career interviewing, highlighting people's stories, very powerful moving stories and intense moments in their lives and in world affairs. And I'm curious about the decision to open up more about your own story and your own mental health. What were you thinking about before you... you made that first uh public declaration around some of the experiences that you've had. Well, at its heart, I just wanted to answer a question, which was, did I inherit a mental illness? That was at the very heart of this. I mean, a lot of people in my position get offered book deals. And I won't lie, a lot of them are not very good. People write books. I I felt to myself, I was like, well, I'm not Beyonce. Why would I write about my life? Who cares? I've got to write something which is useful for people who might be asking themselves the same question and a book which could be indicative or useful to people in the sense that I'd be kind of deconstructing some of the ideas they have around people who have significant mental illness. But I mean, I had this question from when I was 26 and I had that first dip when I was on the curb in the street. When I recovered from that, It was then that I thought, well, hang on, knew my dad by that point, I knew my dad had ended his life. I didn't really know the circumstances of his suicide, but I knew he died. I have, I continue to have a very difficult relationship with my mother. That's part of this. know, when your life is affected by suicide, I've said that, you know, suicide is like a bomb going off. It kills the person, but it injures a lot of the people who remain alive. And my relationship with my mother basically was annihilated. So I wanted to make sure that what I was doing was answering some questions which were important to me to figure out my life. And then I thought, well, maybe it might help other people. um But I did not want it to make it self-indulgent. And I had the thread of it was if this is not answering the question, then it's not going in the book. That was the most important thing. And I think that that's something that a lot of people who know someone em who has died by suicide might relate to is that questioning around, could I have done something different? Could I have done something more? How did I factor into this? um What kind of advice would you give to that person or counsel? And I've also just been thinking a lot about how the way we talk about suicide and people who die by suicide can get so pushed aside, can get so... you know, speaking around it, using every word except for talking about suicide itself. Like, what have you learned um about how we can navigate those conversations and also for people impacted by it, like how they can start to begin to process? Joan Didion in her book, The Year of Magical Thinking, which I quote in mine, but it's just the most extraordinary book she deals with. It's not suicide, but it's the death of her husband. And she says, she had processed the death of her husband not as something that had happened to him, but as something that had happened to her. And when she finally understood that that was the wrong way round, that it had not happened to her, it had happened to him, she started to find that her grief was dissipating slightly. She was able to separate herself from it. When people end their life, the number one thing I often hear, or if they try to, you often hear this, is how could he have done that? How could she have done that to her family? How could he have done that to his family? Or that they've somehow tried to do it to hurt someone. A suicide of a person is never about anyone but the person. It's almost too much about them. They feel, and it was the case for my father, and I hate to speak, I don't want to speak in generalities here, everyone is different, but for my father. and he tried to end his life multiple times, was a sense that he was unburdening the world of him. He was doing us a favor. It wasn't that he was trying to hurt us in any way or, you know, the idea that someone is going through a set of rational thoughts before going through with something like suicide is just not the case, I would say, in the vast majority of cases. So... You know, I think that if you've really got to try, uh it's such a personal and deeply, deeply traumatic act. I can imagine how healing and expansive writing and researching this book has been kind of alongside your own journey of healing and therapy and addressing your mental health challenges. And I'm curious, James, you talked earlier about happy and healthy. You know, that's what we're striving for here. When do you feel happiest and healthiest and what are some practices that you employ for positive wellbeing and mental health? I know you've talked, you've spoken about community and the incredible family that you have around you, but are there other things that bring you a lot of happiness? So I'm a big believer in visualization. So if I'm in a place or if I'm thinking about something which is, which I can, which I know is giving me anxiety, and I use that word advisedly. Again, it's one of these things which a phrase that everyone uses, people actually deal with significant crippling anxiety rather than just feeling a bit worried all the time. My most recent depression, I think, was characterized by serious anxiety. I could not stop my brain from being on. I had to try to find ways to turn it off. Constantly thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking, and exhausting myself through thought. But when I visualize a place that I really find happiness, it really does. And I have to be, you have to be, for me personally, you have to be so committed. It's work, right? It doesn't just happen. You really have to go for it. You have to rethink. if I think, if I visualise a place that I'm happy, I find that that is psychosomatic. It does bring the physical symptoms of anxiety down. My heart slows, my brain slows. And I really try to visualise very, very, very keenly the place that makes me happy, which is... the sofa at my husband's family home in the countryside surrounded by his family's two dogs and now our dog Nigel so we have three dogs in our life and thinking about it just makes me smile. Being present in moments which are making you happy so that you can try to take like you know a visual like a photograph in your brain of what of where you are. uh All these years later I remember I went on vacation with a friend to Oman when I was like I don't know, And I remember lying on the beach, feeling the sun on my skin, touching the sand, and just being so, so like kind of visual about trying to remember that moment. And now if I shut my eyes, I can feel the sand, I can feel the sun, and it relaxes me. And when I was just in France last week with the best friends I've had since I was 11, I took moments just to put my face to the sun, shut my eyes, and just think about where I am. So then I've collected these memories for when I'm in a place where... something might be more anxiety creating. The other thing, and this is a technique my therapist taught me which is brilliant, is if I'm in a situation where something is really getting to me, I then decide that the thing that's annoying me, whether it's a person or a situation, is a lamp. Now, he called it like a lamp theory, right? So... He said to me, you're getting, and this was about my mother, but this could be about anyone. He goes, you're getting upset because the lamp is not making you dinner. The lamp is an inanimate object. It is never gonna make you dinner, but you're really upset about something that is never gonna happen. So your emotions are not going to suddenly animate the lamp. The only thing that's gonna happen here is you just get more and more angry. Dinner never gets made. You have to decide that it's a lamp and it's never going to make you dinner. As soon as you've decided that, your emotions just fade away because there is no point in getting angry at that situation because your emotions don't change the reality. You have to decide that the reality is the reality and your emotions are yours to control. And the lamp thing has really helped me. I go through life being like, it's a lamp. I'm, know, being upset about this doesn't change it. So those are the things that help. Wow, I love that James. I'm going to definitely be thinking about the lamp and thanking you. And I just love that image of this kind of like immersive visual postcard of the moments when you're happiness that you you can always draw on. Just a little tip that I use sometimes that a friend shared with me is that scent is such a powerful memory driver and memory conjurer that like if you're going to be in a situation like vacation with your husband or something that you know you're really looking forward to, have a new scent for it. and just use it for that experience. And then in the future, when you go back and smell that, it'll bring you right back into that. Yeah. Yeah. Love that. I love that. But I love that. At NAMIcon, we've been talking a lot about hope and the importance of hope. Dan Gilson, the CEO says, you know, if you don't have hope, you're hopeless. And a big goal of the work that we're doing here and at NAMI more generally is to provide that hope to people. So. And closing with everything that you've personally experienced and all the research that you've done with your book and then the response to the book, the people reaching out to you. I'm wondering if you can offer a message of hope or advice to anyone watching right now who is struggling or who loves someone who's struggling. dear. People ask me how I can do my job because everywhere I go, something horrible has happened. It's like James has arrived, get out of town. And the thing that actually what I've really learned is that wherever you are in the world, all we really want is to try to be happy. That's the thing that unites us. There's a reason why if you go on any news website, you will find that the most clicked item will be either a weather story or it'll be about some squirrel which has learned to surfboard or a new panda or it'll be something like that. Why? Not because we're idiots. We're not all brain dead. just fundamentally we want to be happy. Happiness. I really believe happiness is our natural state. And if you can find a way to peel back some of this hopelessness, you will find that there is happiness underneath. It is not the case that your natural state is sadness and that you need to find a way to build happiness on top of it. That for me is an exhausting image. What you actually have to do is just try to shut shell off. some of this anger or sadness or resentment or anxiety that you're feeling, because you will find that there is happiness underneath. We all fundamentally want to be happy. We can be or are happy people. And that's what my job really has shown me all around the world. It is less exhausting to think of happiness as a natural state than it is as something that you need to reach. Wow. Thank you so much, James. I think your message is so empowering, particularly around breaking cycles and the way that you talk about all the agency that we have in our mental health, in addressing whatever predispositions or challenges we might have in our family history. Like we still have that agency. And I think that you perfectly summed it up there. So I want to thank you so much again for taking the time to speak with us this morning. And I want to encourage everyone again, please check out The Inherited Mind by James Longman. Such an honor to have you with us. And Stay tuned for part two of my conversation with Dan Gillison and Dr. Don Mordecai. Thanks everyone. It's my honor to introduce Dan Gillison, the CEO of NAMI and Dr. Don Mordecai, the National Leader for Mental Health and Wellness at Kaiser Permanente. I'm so grateful to be here with you both. And Dan, I want to kick off with you. You've said that NAMI is not just a mental health organization, you're also a community and a collective. And I know that this work is deeply personal for you. So, Talk to me a little bit about why NAMI's mission resonates with you so deeply and what brought you here to this leadership position. Well, Raymond, thank you for the opportunity. And uh as I start out with what brought me to the mission, I'll start out by congratulating you for moving from uh having run no more than three miles to now having run on seven continents and being such an accomplished runner and uh journalist. uh In terms of NAMI, uh We are community and we are collective. We were started by a group of parents and mothers and dads sitting around a kitchen table in 1979, looking at how to advocate and educate and really support their young people who are navigating mental illness. That organization has grown from its humble beginnings to the largest grassroots mental health organization in the US. Inside of that is the opportunity for us men. to actually be a part of NAMI aah in terms of in community, as that collective and in opportunities and leadership. In terms of uh my why here at NAMI is that uh growing up, um my contemporary and I grew up together, born the same year. We were uh the role models for our younger siblings. We were, uh you know, challenged to be the first to go to college and to you know, set the tone for our younger siblings in terms of, you know, style, behavior, and all those things to be, you know, young adults. uh And I successfully did get to college and my uh contemporary lost her life to suicide. The impact of that, as well as her dad, who uh actually taught me how to catch football, uh he passed away a few years later from substance use disorder. And it was all surrounding. uh what he was trying to navigate when he lost his daughter, my contemporary. Now for me, that ripple effect is that this happened in 1986 and up until right now, 2025, the family's never talked about it. So that ripple effect is what I want to change for other families. for men, it's critically important in terms of us being open to these conversations and That's a bit of my why. uh So thank you for giving me an opportunity to speak to that part of it. But it is a real big part of my why in terms of getting in front of it versus navigating it on oh after a loss uh and making sure we can talk about it. And men as a group, we don't talk about it. And it's something we need to do a much better job of. I'm so sorry for your loss, and really appreciate you sharing that context and why with us and what a powerful way also to honor her legacy. And I want to get into that stigma, the piece around you mentioned it's not something that the family necessarily discusses and this happens often where people use different phrasing or sort of don't address directly the cause of death in instances of suicide. And I'm wondering if you could speak a little bit more about how we can navigate those conversations. and support people who are going through that grief. Yeah, I think that as we're going through the grief, first of all, it is grief. We have to acknowledge what it is. That's the first part of it. Now there's science behind it and then we'll uh have Dr. uh Mordecai speak to that. But what I would offer to you is that it's that grief that you're managing after that what NAMI wants to do is to really find a way to get in front of that and to go upstream and to help uh young people and men um to actually have the conversations so that we understand one, we wanna meet you where you are, not where we want you to be. The other thing is to make sure that men know they are not alone. That's so powerful. Dr. Mordecai, I know that you've done a lot of work in this space and a lot of work in encouraging men to view. health holistically and recognize that the physical and mental are inextricably linked and that investing in the mental is just as important in the physical. What have been some strategies or ways that you've been able to kind of get that message through to men or to their loved ones who are really encouraging them to get that help and to seek those resources out? Yeah, well, thank you Raymond and Dan for joining us in this conversation. I've been inspired by both of your stories and Raymond, I appreciate both the the depth of meaning of your story, but also the hope that you brought to it. So appreciate that. um We've got a problem in this country that men don't like to talk about mental health in general, right? And we're taught as kids by media, like we should tough it out, not talk it out, right? And those messages keep coming externally in the movies we watch, know, whether it's celebrating the the tough guy, you know, um or uh just not seeing examples in media of men who are open about their mental health. uh And that gets internalized, right? So men carry around this feeling of, I'm supposed to be tough. I'm not supposed to talk about my feelings. I don't wanna burden other people. So those kinds of messages are both external coming at us and internal in that we're carrying them. um And I think in the healthcare field, we haven't done a great job of thinking about men in terms of their particular needs, right? So we do healthcare, we do mental healthcare, and that's what we deliver. And whether you're a man, woman, old, young, we deliver whatever that product is, but it really needs to be tailored. ah I think some of the things that work well for men are just talking about it in a different way, right? Talking about brain health. Right. As opposed even to mental health, which I know is particularly bad term, but you know, brain health, brain fitness, you you focus on your body, getting your body in shape, things like that. Well, focus on your brain too, right? Take, take care of your brain because it, because it will take care of you. It's, it's an important organ. Um, so I think those are important approaches. I mean, uh, things that we do within Kaiser Permanente that I think are particularly good. So we do a lot of what's called collaborative care. which is a very evidence, Dan knows, a very evidence-based approach to delivering mental health care in primary care settings, right? And it specifically addresses the most common mental health conditions of depression and anxiety. And it does it in primary care. And the advantage of that, I think, particularly for men is that they don't then have to go outside of their primary care doc. They trust their primary care doc. They don't wanna go to a building labeled psychiatry, right? They don't want to go to a mental health clinic. Great. If that's an issue, no problem. We can meet you where you are in primary care, where you're getting your, you know, your knee addressed or your back pain or whatever. We also should be asking you about your mental health, right? Just part of the checkup, not, hey, ah you seem kind of down. I'm worried about you. I'm going to tiptoe around it and eventually ask you, it's just, hey, we checked your blood pressure. We checked your cholesterol. Let's check up on your mental health. as well. So that kind of normalizing, I think can be very powerful. It's so exciting and inspiring, I think, to see more people who are in public positions, whether it is athletes, celebrities, other public figures talking about their mental health journeys and helping to reduce that stigma. But I'm also curious, Dan, in your work, what else you've seen that really does help chip away at that stigma and particularly get men comfortable to enter that first conversation, to ask for help, to make sure they have a mental health. experience, challenge, condition? One of the things that we've done at NAMI is we have an ambassador program and these ambassadors are, you know, as a society we judge a book by its cover and we don't get into the table of contents of the chapter. So let me go back to that book, the judgment of the book by the cover. We have athletes that we see performing at the highest level. And we, until they share with us, we don't know that they're navigating something or they have navigated something or they have a loved one. So we have an ambassador program. have NFL athletes. We have uh actors that we've seen in series and we've seen in movies that have, that are lending their voice to telling their story. So we're trying to meet people where they are and reach them in that way. And we have other partnerships that we do that with. very prominent people in the media saying these things. And then we need to be in the communities ready to essentially receive and connect with the men who hear those messages, right? Because if they hear those messages and then it's crickets in their communities, that doesn't work, right? And it speaks to me, and I think this is particular to men, is the loneliness epidemic that um our former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy talks about. know, loneliness. particularly affects men. course, it affects all people, but you look at the statistics and it's particularly heavy on men. And it's toxic, right? ah I think Dr. Murthy talked about it's the equivalent of smoking 13 cigarettes a day or something like that. So almost more than half a pack a day, just from being lonely and disconnected and the number of Americans in general, but men in particular who say they have no close friends to connect with, right? So we need to build systems that provide connection. mean, you can't create friends for people, but you can create opportunities for friendship, right? Whether it's in churches or gyms or in the workplace. I think the workplace is a tremendously important place to encourage people to connect at a different level. I think about mental health first aid, which I know you're aware of, that comes out of the National Council for Mental Well-being, which is an evidence-based training program for laypeople in workplaces. to understand how to recognize people who might be in distress and engage with them, right? So that, because that stigma appeals to people, appeals applies to people who are also trying to help other people, right? They think, oh, I'm not supposed to ask about these things because it's stigmatized. Well, a program like Mental Health First Aid helps people get over that and encourages them, you know, be that first connection for people who are struggling ah because A lot of people feel like there's nobody they can talk to. em And yet here are the huge members in our community who say, yeah, I want to help. I just don't know how. Well, we can teach them how. Yeah. And we'd use examples like that. And one of the other things that we do in the workplace, Dr. Mordekai, is so important because that's where we spend the majority of our time. uh And to your point, in the workplace, think about years ago when uh actually having a lead certified building uh made you top of the pyramid in terms of, hey, you know, a CEO said, well, I've got a lead certified building. We've, we've reduced the carbon footprint and we've done these things and all of that. What about that same CEO that went to their board to ask for the money to actually build that structure right to their workforce and saying, or enter their board saying, I want to create a stigma free workplace. And we have a program called stigma free workplace. And it's not that we. send everything to you, we work with your culture on, know, what are those kinds, what's the language you should use? What are the different uh ways that you should be speaking to uh the uh workplace? uh What kind of, maybe uh you have some different employee resource groups, how do we connect with them to actually change this dynamic? And we do know that, you know, uh men in the workplace really do need this and We got to go where they are versus where we want them to be. So yeah, thank you. Yeah. And I'm so curious to hear what has been some effective messaging to get through to those people in positions of power and decision making in the workplace, because there's definitely a mindset around everything is great. Or when you're at work, you're not necessarily bringing a lot of what some people may consider emotional baggage. I'm putting that in quotes. But I'm just curious, how have you gotten through to that man who might look a bit like the deer in the headlights when you start to talk about bringing mental health first aid and having people bring their holistic emotional selves into work. Yeah, it's a work in progress. It is not done by any uh stretch of the imagination. It is not done. But I would offer to you that where we're seeing some traction is when you can get with that senior team, that CEO or their team and do something else. Talk about Don't make it about mental health or mental wellness. uh Make it about what's important to them. And what's important to them is that shareholder value and what does it look like in their marketplace every 90 days? Well, guess what? It takes people for you to get there every 90 days. So how much money are you source, interview, recruit, hire, train, and what happens in that workplace if you're doing the things to help develop them and that they know that inside of their benefits, you really are respectful of mental wellbeing and you have some programs for them. Where I'm going is that that CEO that understands that for every person they hire, this is how much it is costing them or they're investing. And that if they don't continue to invest in them, that they're going to lose money. So it's more talking to that side of it for us. And then the other part of it is that many of the leaders, know, one in five live with mental illness. So if you can find a way to reduce the stigma around them opening up, even if it's just a one-on-one conversation and you say, well, this is what's going on and you you've shared something. How do we expand on that in the workplace? We've seen a few companies that have done this, you know, and are seeing great results from it. So it's really having that one-on-one conversation and also finding some opportunity. The other thing is it doesn't have to always be the CEO. can be the CHRO, the Chief Human Resource Officer. oh And also you can do it from the ground up, working with their employee resource groups that really are very interested in seeing that workplace look different. I think everything Dan said about, you know, hitting the CEOs with the numbers, the fact that mental health conditions taken together are the largest cause of disability in the world. Maybe that opens their eyes, helping them understand that this does affect their workforce, and then going into that personal. Because frankly, not only are we all connected with somebody who suffers with a mental health condition or addiction or things like that, but we all struggle with this stuff at some level. We all do. You know, and so normalizing the fact that we all deal with stress, we all deal with anxiety, worries, things like that. uh So trying to decrease the distance between normal life and oh mental health conditions, right? It's like it's a continuum, right? And so helping them understand that. I've been fortunate at Kaiser Permanente to have leaders like the late Bernard Tyson who just He just cared about mental health, right? And he wanted to meet with me every month to talk about, what are we doing about mental health conditions? And he used to talk about, need to put the head back on the body, reconnect ourselves to the idea that we have a brain and we all struggle with things like stress and things like that. We had another leader who uh he saw my team present about, we were looking at mental health apps, right? And we talked about like, these are some things we think we could do with mental health apps. And he was like, I wanna make calm, literally, available to all of our members. I was like, that sounds great. Let's do that. Let's put the tools in their hands. And those of you who have used Calm know it's a great uh tool for mindfulness. I mean, it has stuff for kids, sleep stories, all kinds of great stuff. But I can't tell you how many patients I have who say, yeah, I started using Calm and it really helped me get my head around what I was dealing with. so this idea of I think you need to be slow and sneaky in your workplace if the leadership is not quite as supportive as you might hope. ah But there's a way in. And as Dan said, either it's one-on-one with the CEO, the CFO, the Chief Human Resources Officer, or it's grassroots. It's connecting with other people in your workplace who know what you do, which is that all of these things are important and affect the workplace. And you build up from there. I'm so glad you mentioned calm as a specific step. that people can take. It's been so pivotal on my own journey, learning a mindfulness practice, being able to ground myself in that. And also a sleep practice and how important sleep is to our mental wellbeing as well. So that is a great action of step that people can take is introducing a service like Calm into their workplace. That's another normalizing approach, right? Which, you know, talk about sleep. Somebody doesn't want to talk about their mental health, but their sleep is disturbed, which it almost certainly will be. Well, sleep is fundamental not only to our mental health, but to our physical health. So talk about. the importance of sleep, how can they sleep better? What can they do to improve their nightly sleep? And they're gonna see their mental health improve as a result of that. I love that as a strategy. It reminds me earlier about how we were saying that certain phrases might get to the same truth, but create a different doorway for it. And I feel like asking someone, how have you been sleeping is different than saying, how's your mental health been the past week? Yeah, some of the same core insights. Yeah. I love what you were saying, Dr. Mordecai, about mental health first aid. I'm really curious if there's any lessons that you could share with us for a person who maybe does have the honor of someone approaching them and wanting to share their mental health journey. You know, that's a huge honor. They're showing that trust that they have in you. But for someone who might not have the training or tools, it can also be overwhelming or scary. I don't want to say the wrong thing. How do I handle this precious conversation? So what sort of tips would you give to, maybe it's a manager and someone on their team comes to them? Yeah, I think that's a really important question. And I think a lot of people are, they get alarmed, right, when somebody starts to open up to them because they're afraid. They don't know what to do. They don't know what to say. I would have a lot of humility about it. I would have gratitude if you can bring that, that you are somebody that this person trusts and cares about and feels like they can open up to. You can basically normalize the experience if you're willing to share with them your own struggles, if you've had them or family member struggles. So I think fundamentally somebody who's doing that is making themselves very vulnerable. They don't wanna feel alone. They don't wanna end up feeling like, wow, I'm the only person dealing with this or I have to keep my mouth shut in this setting. They want to feel a connection and so do what you can. to provide that for them. Doesn't mean you have to become their therapist. And in fact, you shouldn't ah unless you're trained to do that. ah But become somebody who is willing to listen uh when that's needed. And then if you can, and this is where mental health first aid comes in, is connect them with resources. Maybe those are resources in the company. Maybe it's an EAP, maybe it's the Calm app, because what they come to you with is that they're feeling overwhelmed with stress. maybe not depression or an anxiety disorder, ah are they connected with a church? Do they have friends? em So understanding where their connection points might be and helping them to take action on those, I think is crucial. And then basically letting them know that you're still there, you're glad that they chose to share with you and that you're willing to be that ear when they need it. Dan, have you seen any other lessons that you want to share with us, particularly as you speak so much about your work is building these communities, these collectives around mental health care? How do you support the people who are holding that space and providing support for others? First of all, oh the Calm app is outstanding. And we know that uh men uh really are looking for tools. They're looking for resources. So the more that we can point them to this resource, the better. oh because it is an outstanding resource. uh Listen, have empathy. oh We've seen that. We have a stigma-free program for the workplace. We're doing the work in some of these communities that I mentioned. And what we're saying is we're working to make sure that the men that are leading this work don't get exhausted by it and that we keep standing them up because they're making a difference in hosting the conversations and having the uh community and the collective uh groups, how are they doing? So uh that's one of the other things. So we've seen some lessons learned with that, but uh I would say that listening and being empathetic are the first. it's getting out of this fear when men talk to each other, it's, okay, you can tell me your story. Well, I open up and tell you mine. How far am I willing to go to make sure that you can trust me? A big part of this is, is that uppercase T, trust. ah And that's another part of it in terms of uh the assets. Now we have a program called Family to Family that's more downstream from the standpoint of families getting together once they have a loved one that's navigating mental illness. But what we're talking about is mental wellbeing upstream. And what does that look like? oh it's a part of ah all of the different sectors, the communities that we work in. ah What does it look like from the standpoint of with uh what we call the divine nine fraternities and sororities? What does it look like with universities? And we've got over 400 campuses with uh NAMI on campus. We're now working with high school athletes. So we're trying to go further upstream from the standpoint of we know that there are some mental health resources at the college level. What about at the high school level? What's happening with the coaches? What's happening with the educators? So there's a whole dynamic there. So we know that a lot of young people play sports. So we're trying to connect where they are. And that's on the athletic fields and on the baseball diamonds. I love hearing you both talk about all of the initiatives to really embed resources, storytelling, and a conversation about mental health into every fabric of society and all the different touch points that men are having to try to build that community and combat the loneliness piece. One element that we haven't explored as much, which I... I would posit is a huge impact on our mental health is social media. And I would love to hear from both of you. We can start with you, Dr. Mordecai, about how people can in positive ways utilize social media to improve their mental health and destigmatize it. And also maybe some of the considerations that we should think about in terms of negative or detrimental impacts that can have as well. I do believe that social media can, it's a tool, right? It's a way that people use to connect or disconnect. So it's positive and negative. But I do think for some people, can be a very negative force when they're spending eight, 10 hours a day engaged with their phone and not engaged with life, other people, things like that. We talked about loneliness. Loneliness is toxic. The antidote is connection. Can your phone be a connection point? Absolutely. Talk to somebody on the phone. You're texting with them, things like that. But it can also be a disconnection point as I was just talking about. ah We looked at this very specifically. uh I want to uh note that among young people, suicide is the second leading cause of death. People in the 13 to 24-year-old range. We were looking at that and we thought, how do we get at that group? Where is that group? Essentially, we've been talking about meeting men where they are. they're online, right? And where are they online? And one place in particular that uh skews towards men is gaming online. Not that women don't game, but more men are gaming online. And so we developed a program we called Presence of Mind, which was to actually get to young people in that gaming space, right? And we partnered with an e-sports team, Cloud9, and we worked with their basically we train them in terms of, you what are mental health conditions? How do you talk about these things? How do you support each other? And then they interacted with each other and they created media around mental health support that got embedded in the Cloud9 ecosystem. And so it was really cool to see this way of getting into a space where people are, particularly young men, getting these messages out to them and uh we feel like it was a tremendous success and a sort of example of you can have an attitude. And frankly, this was my attitude at the beginning, like, wait, why are we going to be working with an esports team when we think social media is part of the problem here? And then people within Kaiser Permanente talked me down and said, Don, this is where they are. You got to pay attention to that. And you can use that and bring the message out to them. So I think that's an example on the positive side where you can weave these messages. into the ecosystem and create positive waves that way. We got to go where people are. And I would offer to you that with what Dr. Mordecai has said that cause of permanent they did, you know, we talk about peer to peer and we have a peer to peer program at NAMI. But when we talk about who we are as the largest grassroots mental health organization, is lived experience. So we talk about lived experience. Seventy five percent of our board by our bylaws has to be representative. of lived experience. Why is that important to this conversation you're having? Because what Dr. Mordecai is talking about is now let's go to the peers, meeting people where they are, and people being men, and men in terms of a group, we probably do more gaming than any other group. And so let's go and meet people where they are and learn from them and see if we can build something to help them. So, oh and on our board, it is representative of uh many as well from the standpoint of, we have a gentleman on our board that works with the uh Las Vegas Raiders and also works with the soccer league, the national soccer league. So we're trying to do different things that really get away from the devices and gets into the community. But social media is huge. And if we can actually look at it from the lens of what it can be. We did a youth young adult summit in New York City, or we were in partnership. And there was a young man there that was a first year student at Columbia. And he heard all of us older folks talking about all of the bad things about social media, including what the surgeon general had talked about with social media, which was the right thing in the studies there. And he says, I need you all to understand that Social media is what's helped me navigate my first year at Columbia as someone that is new to this university that's not from anywhere around here. So we, I need you all, and this is a young man, he said, I need you all to help me and others figure out how we do the best with social media versus trying to get rid of it. I think that something so tied with the social media conversation is also this idea around masculinity, performing masculinity, what does it mean to be a man? What does it mean to be strong? And I know that this is a very hot conversation and we hear phrases like toxic masculinity, healthy, integrated, modern masculinity, all entry points to the conversation. Dr. Mordekai, I'd love to hear more from the patients that you see in your own experiences, kind of how you think that we can thread that masculinity conversation with the mental health conversation. I think that is a meaty question, Raymond. It strikes me that in some ways we've come a really long way in terms of conversations about mental health. um I think about, uh I sometimes talk to high school students who are from uh a disadvantaged part of San Jose, California, and they're in a sort of STEM high school science program looking at healthcare careers and things like that. And when I talk to them about mental health and the brain and things like that, it's very striking to me how open they are in that setting talking about like, oh, I have OCD or I'm on the autism spectrum disorder spectrum or things like that in ways that I don't think when I was growing up, we ever would have heard. And so that gives me hope. And yet I think as you're referring to that, If you really step back and look at the messages you're steeped in all the time as a man, the three of us, ah it's still about, are you tough enough? Are you strong enough? aah Have you conquered whatever field you're in? know, all that kind of stuff. ah And so, and that really doesn't allow entrance into the mental health conversation, the addiction conversation, right? That's all. weakness and stuff that won't let you achieve what you should achieve as a man. So ah I'm inclined to be hopeful because there are these openings, particularly among younger generations, ah but it's still a heavy lift. There is still a lot of this stigma out there causing the loneliness, causing the depression. ah so I... I don't know, I'm gonna kick it over to Dan, see what he thinks about this. Dr. Mordecai, I agree with you. It is a meaty question and it's a social question, Raymond, from the standpoint of what that looks like. And that's part of our mantra is meeting people where they are. And that's a part of it. And another part of it is that uh stigma is stigma, no matter where it's placed. the other... The last part of this is there was something years ago called a voice awards that was done in uh LA and it was done at UCLA at the Royce Hall. The whole intent of the voice awards was to acknowledge writers, producers, actors who were representing uh community and mental health in positive ways. So where I'm going with that is there's also a way, a positive way to talk about masculinity. And what does that look like? What does that really mean? And, you know, we have to think about that from the standpoint of, you know, we are a society that likes to put labels on things and then all of sudden that label either includes you or excludes you. I would offer to you that we have to be very inclusive, which is one of our values. We have five values and inclusiveness is one of them. In that work, we want to make sure that people are not alone and that we meet you where you are. So I can't really say, Raymond, what that looks like from the standpoint of that label, you know, oh the masculinity piece, because we don't really navigate that from the standpoint of meeting people where they are. So we actually want to make sure that we are more about the humanity than we are about the label. love that. What advice, would you give to young boys and young men today about protecting their mental health and growing up with a positive mental health practice that you wish maybe someone had told you or that you had learned about when you were younger? Wow. Wow, that is a million dollar question. Told me, first of all, be confident in who I am. uh Work hard on my confidence. Believe in me. uh whatever me is, believe in me. um Be that uh a student, be that an athlete, be that a musician, be that a dancer, whatever it is I wanna be, be it and be confident in it. So that is the first thing I would love to have really gotten comfortable with as a young person. And then also um focus, energy, and I also think about reflection. when I as a young man growing up oh looking in the mirror, what did I see? And then being honest with myself, not of the cosmetics, but of the inner me. And then finding someone I can talk to about the inner me. So that's what I would offer to young men. And the other thing is that young men can sometimes be feeling helpless. We want them to feel hopeful. So we have this podcast called Hope Starts With Us. That was intentional, Hope Starts With Us. So how does hope start with a young man? Hope starts with that young man being able to believe in himself, believe in themselves, and to find a network that provides that support that they're looking for. And if they need uh some type of help finding a way to get it. But if I had it to go back on and reflect on to your question, Raymond, for me, it would be, uh that confidence and also looking around at who in my community could I trust and I could go talk to. So identifying that person and then having that conversation with them. So slowing down in order to be able to be my best self. That's beautiful advice. Thank you, Dan, for sharing that. And Dr. Mordecai related to that. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the question as well as maybe what advice you would give to parents, teachers, coaches about what are some lessons that they could instill in young boys and men about mental health? I really liked what Dan had to say. So I feel like I just want to add a couple little things related to what we were talking about about social media. But I think it applies in the larger world as well, which is, you know, learn that if something or someone is a negative influence, makes you feel bad about yourself, tears you down. You may feel like, I wanna make that person my friend. I wanna win their trust. I wanna be in that group. Like walk away. That is not the place you wanna be, right? So gravitating towards people who make you feel good about yourself, who supports you, that you can laugh with, um that you enjoy being with and not chasing after. whatever ideal you think might be important, but makes you feel bad. ah And similarly, take care of yourself, right? If you're doing things that make you feel bad, whether it's actions or eating certain things that maybe taste good, but make your body feel bad or like, listen to what your body's telling you and take care of it. ah Your body and your brain, as we've talked about, right? uh do get enough rest. Like you can't short on sleep. Sleep is absolutely crucial to our wellbeing and acting like, I can get by on five and a half, six hours of sleep. Yeah, you can for a short period, but the degradation is pretty quick in terms of your performance and your mental health and things like that. So sleep, eating right, exercise. I mean, like to say to my patients, it's like all the stuff that your grandmother would have told you, you know, is actually true. And then you asked about parents, and it's a tough role today, maybe tougher than it was in the past. ah And again, I'm gonna point at social media, but the influence are not just local, right? There are influences coming at your kids from all over the world, frankly. And some may be positive, and that's great if they see role models or see things that they're like, I never even thought about being that. Like, I'm gonna pursue that, that's terrific. But there's a lot of negative, a lot of the comparison stuff. And so I think you have to be vigilant about what your child's media diet is. And you wanna start this process early, right? So early on when kids are first starting to be exposed to media in whatever form, understand what they're looking at, talk to them about it. How is it affecting them? What kind of thoughts are they having about it? Things like that. And help your child understand how to discriminate not just truth from fiction, right? But sort of good influences and bad influences and things like that. So that when it gets to that point where inevitably they're gonna be on their own journey with media and the world, whether it's at 13 years old or 17 years old, it's gonna happen, right? ability to discriminate and choose. um But really, partner with your child, because there's a lot going on being a kid in this world. What a powerful note to end on from both of you. Thank you, first of all, for caring. Dan Gelson, CEO of NAMI, Dr. Don Mordecai, Kaiser Permanente. Thank you for being an example that I can look up to in terms of men's mental health and all the work that you're doing in this space and for being so open to this wide-ranging conversation. And anyone out there who's watching this who may be struggling, um please take advantage of the resources that we've shared today. And I just want to close by saying the fact that you're listening and that you're here with us shows that you know there's that capacity for healing and growth and change. And I really appreciate you being with all three of us and the organizations represented here at Deeply Care. So thank you all so much. Thank you again to NAMI and NAMI-CON for hosting this wonderful conversation. Appreciate you. Thank you, Raymond. Thank you, Raymond. Thank you, Dr. Mordecai. Thank you, Dan.