How Storytelling Can Create Cultural Changes Featuring Frank Kosa

At NAMI, we know that sharing stories about mental health conditions helps reduce stigma still held by far too many. In this episode, NAMI CEO Dan Gillison is joined by award-winning documentary producer-writer-director Frank Kosa. Frank is also an executive producer of the podcast “Brain Stories,” which demonstrates commitment to changing mainstream culture by creating awareness and caring for people living with mental health conditions. During Dan and Frank’s conversation, listeners will hear about NAMI family education courses, the impact of sharing stories, and how storytelling can change minds and culture. 

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.

Co-executive produced by Traci Coulter and Connor Larsen.

Transcript

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Storytelling, I see is as an ultimate act of hope. Storytelling is how we inform, how we guide, how we pass on wisdom and ultimately, stories are about growth. Welcome to Hope Starts With Us, a podcast by NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness. I'm your host, Dan Gillison, NAMI's CEO. NAMI started this podcast because we believe that hope starts with us. Hope starts with us talking about mental health. Hope starts with us making information accessible. Hope starts with us providing resources and practical advice. Hope starts with us sharing our stories. And hope starts with us breaking the stigma. If you or a loved one is struggling with the mental health condition and have been looking for hope, we made this podcast for you. Hope starts with all of us. Hope is a collective. We hope that each episode with each conversation brings you into that collective so you know you are not alone. And now I'd like to welcome our guest, Frank Kosa. Frank is an award winning documentary producer, writer, director and journalist. And he is the executive producer of a podcast called Brain Stories. Frank, welcome. Thank you for being with us today. And we'd love to know more about you, your work, what brought you to this work, and why you're using your incredible talent and experience to tell stories about mental health conditions. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me and thank you for all the work that you do. I think it's phenomenal. I'm a huge fan. And I think, you know, just to briefly tell you what brought me into this, I mean, I've spent my life telling stories and have always looked for the underreported story. That's always been my thing. Looking for the stories that other people weren't telling often about people who were being marginalized or ostracized. And, at one point, a friend of mine ushered me into, a meeting, and, I'm not going to name names, but its initials were, the National Alliance on Mental Illness. And there were people sitting around in the meeting telling their stories about what was happening with them, dealing with loved ones with serious mental illness. It was a support group. And I sat there and I heard the first 2 or 3 sentences out of one person and I went like,"Wow, that's an amazing story!" That- that- I want to tell that story. Someone should be telling that story. And the next person spoke and I had the exact same reaction, and the next person spoke, and I had the exact same reaction. And I left that thinking. I'm just going to go find the film company that was telling these stories and go work for them. I'm going to tell them to hire me because I want to tell these stories. These are really important stories. And I'd never heard any of them before. So I went out and had a look, and no one was telling these stories in the film and television world. So I actually got together with a co-executive producer on this, Janet Yang, who is also very interested in telling stories and has her own stories. And ultimately we decided, we were going to do, we were going to do a podcast because we need to tell these stories. They need to get out there. And that became-and that began a long journey that, I vastly underestimated the length, duration, and amount of work went into. But, ultimately, found some stories that were incredibly powerful, really moving. You know, in the, in the making of them, I have to hear them like, like 5 or 10 times in the final week. I just, you know, have to listen to clean up little things. And every time I hear them, I'm still tearing up. Every single time. I know what's going to happen. I know these stories backwards and forwards, but they still they still cause me--they're just so moving that they cause me to tear up every single time I listen to them. They're beautiful stories. Really incredible stories. And I'm very, very proud of adding to the, you know, the great, the great, what I call the literature of serious mental illness that, you know, NAMI does. I mean, there's Ken Duckworth's book, Dr. Duckworth's book, the You Are Not Alone series. Same exact--same Exact Thing podcast. The podcast I do, just another way of telling some of these great stories and getting them out there. You know, Frank, again, this is just a really rich conversation that we're having and will continue to have. And our audience probably doesn't know this. So let me lead off by saying, in your career producing, writing, and directing work for major publications and organizations such as The Science Channel, Discovery, and National Geographic, what have you learned about the impact of telling stories? You've said a little bit about it, but I mean, think about that, and I really want the audience, if I could hold onto this for a second--the Science Channel, Discovery, National Geographic, so I mean, and major publications and organizations. So you, you, you know, about the narrative and the importance of that narrative. What have you learned over your over your expansive career about the, the power and the impact of telling stories? Yeah, that's a great question. And power really is the key word, I think. You know, I think, you know, as a species, we've been telling stories ever since we figured out how to make fire, and we sit around a campfire and we would tell stories to each other, and we would do that for really important reasons, because it gives us information, it helps us figure out how to survive, and ultimately provides connection. Stories connect us, and a really well-told story brings people closer together. And I think, you know, a lot of the work that I've done in television and journalism, that was my goal. It's not so much a stated goal in those in those particular fields. It's often just tell a great story and get as big an audience as you can. But I think I've always striven to get to connect people as much as possible with stories and always look for stories where people are going to connect, and especially take them into worlds that they don't know or might not know, or be unfamiliar with. And serious mental illness is one of those worlds where, as you, as you know, there's a lot of isolation, there's a lot of walling off, there's a lot of not talking about it. And the result is that average people, your person who might not have someone who lives, know someone who lives with a serious mental illness, doesn't know about the world. That world. Doesn't know what mean--what mental illness is like, doesn't know what psychosis is, and often are just scared by it or turned off by it. And I really-- my goal was to simply dissolve that as much as possible and really foster understanding, because that's what leads to connection. That's what makes storytelling so powerful. You know, Frank, I appreciate that. It is about connections and stories do connect us. And, you know, it's, it's kind of like, "Did you know?" and demystifying that which people do not understand. So thinking about those storytelling lessons, how does that extend to telling stories about mental health conditions? And you can lend your talent to so many different disciplines? How does this extend to telling stories about mental health conditions, and what impact can sharing stories have on our mainstream culture? Yeah, again, I think that your question goes right to the core of everything. I think a lot of people who don't, who don't know someone or don't know they know of someone who lives with serious mental illness feel like they have no connection to it. And, and they, they will hear serious mental illness and they will, you know, glaze over or they will just sort of step away. They'll just step back. I mean, I've seen it in-- it's interesting when I have conversations about this, I see-- I can tell right away, as soon as I say serious mental illness or schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, people either step back or they step in and it's like the lights going on or the lights going off. I think the, the, the, the power of telling these stories is that we're changing. We can change how the light, when the light goes off, especially. We can start helping people understand and see what this is like and become interested in it. Because these stories are fascinating. They're fascinating. I mean, I, I originally got really interested in stories because I came at it from a sort of a little bit of an intellectual point of view of like, well, how is the brain actually working, what's happening in people's brains? And I was curious to know, like, what is, you know, what is serious mental illness. What is schizophrenia, for example? And we talk about people having a break with reality. I'm like, what does that mean? That they go to a completely different reality? It's a partially different reality. It's a-- and so I got interested in working with the brain. But ultimately, what became really interesting to me, what I found the heart of the stories were where the, you know, people working with the differences that come up with serious mental illness and they, you know, can make life really hard, especially people who are really in the, in the throes of it. It's not the not-- I'm not sugarcoating any of this. But it's how inventive and creative people get in responding to it. And also, I think the other, the other biggest part of the story was, how poorly we deal with serious mental illness as a culture, as a nation. We really, I'm sorry to say we're really failing. And I, the more I heard and the more I saw, the more I looked at, the more clear that was. And I felt like that's something I really want to change in the way that we can change, begin to change that is through helping people understand what it is we're dealing with. Stories help that. It's one small part. Everyone's doing a part. NAMI is doing a huge part in that. Clinicians do a part in that. People and people who talk and advocates and activists do a huge part of that as well. We all, we all need to speak up. We all need to get the word out. You know, Frank, I--just first of all, thank you on behalf of NAMI for what you're doing and how you are bringing this to the forefront in terms of with your podcast, serious mental illness and, you know, individuals and families that are navigating this and individuals that are living with and succeeding with and actually doing the very best they can with what they're what they're navigating. So we so much appreciate, you know, what you do. And as you began doing this work, Frank, in terms of looking at serious mental illness, how--what are some of the stories that, you know, just from a big picture that you could share that kind of stand out, to you without disclosing any person, but just some of the kind of you know, notes that you've taken from some of the stories that folks have told you. Wow. How much time do you have? I can go on for about three days. I love these stories. I love the people who told these stories. I got to tell you, I love them. They're all so powerful and amazing. So-- but I will say this. I'm trying to say something gentle that in our first season of Brain Stories, we deliberately chose stories from people from as many different walks of life as possible. Because one of the first things I heard was mysterious mental illness strikes, you know, every group people, every ethnicity, every race, every culture, every income class. And, and I thought, like, okay, so I want to I want to get as many different stories as I can to-- because that's the way it is. So everyone can see that someone like them lives with mental illness, or knows someone who lives with mental illness and is supporting them. And, and so we tell a lot of different stories from a lot of different places. But, one of the first stories I heard, for example, the very first thing, this was one of the one of those stories that made my, that I was talking about earlier, that just made my eyes pop out was, Adrian's story where he said, yeah, I was, I was two years old when I began helping to take care of my dad, who had had a psychotic break and developed schizophrenia. And I went, two years old? How can you take care of somebody at two years old? And he described, like, he would-- his mom would call when it was time for his dad take his medicine, and he couldn't, he was too young to actually say the full word, medicine. And so we would just say the last couple syllables. Yeah."It's 'cine' time. It's medicine time." But the other thing that he said was that he grew up in a family where his dad lived with schizophrenia, and he knew no one else who had a parent with serious mental illness. And he longed to know just anyone at-- any one other person who did. And when he finally found somebody as an adult who said, yeah, oh, yeah, my mom, who's schizophrenic, went, "oh my gosh, tell me about it." And she said, well, she, you know, left the family and she was living on the streets when I was young. And, and Aiden realized, oh, my story is really different because my dad stayed with the family and my mom and, you know, worked to keep him there. He became a great dad. He loved his kids. He raised his kids. And he's gone on to do some really great work with extended members of the family, one of whom is a special need kid. And as Adrian said, he would have been--his dad would have been, like, tossed to the curb if his family hadn't done the work that they had done to help, you know, protect him and insulate him and the family as well. And it meant telling stories. It meant telling, you know, stories to the outside world about, everything's fine here. We're okay here because they were so afraid that if people knew, they would take their dad away. So that's the kind of story that I think is incredibly powerful to tell. That speaks to the kind of isolation that that can-- that is so common for serious mental illness and so harmful. It's so hurtful to--and the exact wrong thing to do with mental illness. Like isolation's not the thing to do. We need to connect. We need to support. We absolutely need to connect. You know, I liken it to a jacket cover of a book, Frank. We oftentimes will, you know, see a the jacket cover of a book and just think, oh my, this is going to be a fantastic read. But we, we don't get into the table of contents in the chapters. And what I mean by that is this is what we're talking about right here is that, you know, we see Adrian's home from the outside. We don't see what's happening inside. And you, you've got to examine that. And, you know, we say nothing about us without us. But he didn't know there wasn't us. He just knew him. That's one part of it. The other part of it is that this, this person, this youngster at two years old, became a caregiver with his family, a family of caregivers. And, as we've started a caregiver, line on without help line, we understand that caregiving is so important as well. I, you know, I, like you would talk about this forever in terms of as we say we want to reduce the stigma. We want to demystify, serious mental illness and, and, and talk about it more and change this, this conversation and change the narrative. Why don't you share with our audience about Brain Stories? How did it come about? What is it about? And, that kind of thing, if you don't mind. Of course. Yeah, I'd be happy to, I mean. So brain Stories is, a we are, we have 13 episodes in our first season. We're telling carefully crafted narrative stories, which, was again, it's--so it's what I do. And, I really, they're really, they're really profiles of people, their life stories. True life stories, obviously, of people that cover large spans of time, lifetimes. The tell true stories of people with mental illness or those who support them. The episodes are about 30 minutes long, and we are in the midst of releasing them right now. We'll go through the middle of April 2026, every-- there's a couple that are multi-part, but mostly they're 30 minutes. Tells a whole story. And they tell, as I say, this wide variety of stories, people from all over, people with very different situations. You know, Adrian, who I just mention who's got a dad who lives with schizophrenia. Michael Stewart, who lived with a serious mental illness and a substance use issue for decades, and finally, finally, got well, which is an amazing story when everyone else would have given up, he--and had given up on him. He's the ultimate story of hope, I think. Brain Stories is this wide variety of stories that deal with a lot of issues. And I'm really meant the first season to be, that offer something that almost anybody could relate to. But that's to say they're powerful, they're carefully crafted. We spent hundreds of hours working on them. So these are really carefully put together stories. And the ultimately--ultimately, I think I want to say that they're, you know, they're, they're deeply moving. That was really the goal. We're looking to change people's hearts around this. There's a lot of people who are doing great work to change minds, and, that's really important too. I don't think one is more important than the other. But we're looking to change people's hearts, and we're looking to reach people who, not just people who I call like, who already know this world. People who live with mental illness and people who support them, but the people who are curious, who may not know it directly, but are caring, compassionate people who, who really just, you know, would listen to the story and go, oh, oh, I never thought about serious mental illness. That's fascinating and really interesting. And now I have a better understanding. And when I hear a story in the news or I see somebody or that person in my family that I heard about, but never actually had a conversation with, they're going to start speaking up. They're going to start noticing that in a way that they haven't with more understanding and empathy. So that's, that's bring-- that's, that's why we do Brain Stories. And it's, you know, one small part, as I say, you know, you do so much work in this every day and books like You Are Not Alone and the, the You're Not Alone series just so important. I mean, it's all part of the same, the same work to get the word out and talk about something that we don't talk about enough. Yeah. And it's something that you said earlier, Frank. Thank you for that. Is that mental illness and serious mental illness does not know a party. It doesn't know an income level. It doesn't know what gender. It doesn't know what race and ethnicity. It doesn't know a community. It impacts all. So, as you are doing this work and have been doing this work, we, we absolutely appreciate, that lens that you're looking at it through and the people that you're bringing to the stories and what, what our audience may not know is that you were coming east and you got on the plane to come and see, see me and sit down and talk about brain stories. And I'm so appreciative for you doing that. And we're appreciative for you lending your voice to us today, for this, podcast. So I'd love if you could share, Frank, what is the one thing you wish more people knew about the experience of people living with serious mental illness conditions? I wish they understood how important the relationship is, how important it is to reach out, how important it is to--I hate to use this word again because I'm starting to sound trite, but to connect, to connect with someone who has serious mental illness. I think the hard-- one of the hardest things about living with a mental illness is that there's a lot of de-connection that's part of it. There's people with the serious mental illness are going through a huge amount themselves on the inside. That's-- it's a little hard for us to know exactly what's illness and what's their response to it, but they pull back. There's often-- they're afraid. They're often really afraid. Especially when it first begins to develop because they don't understand what's going on. They feel a difference and they see a difference, but they're withdrawing from the world. And what the best response is, is to reach out and connect and just say, hey, how are you doing? What's going on? And meet them where they are. I mean, I might think, oh, this person has a serious mental illness, but they might not think that. And it's important to just, I think it's really important to just say, like, so how are you doing? What's going on? And, and they maybe talk, they may talk about anything, but it's important just to listen and to show that we listen. And ultimately listening is a powerful act of caring. It's where caring begins. And so even if they're talking about something that sounds absolutely crazy about flying saucers or whatever, it's important to just to, just to be able to say like, oh, flying saucers, okay. And how does that sound? Scary? Is it scary or is it okay, or is it--just keep the conversation going? But to really reach out--let me just back up and say, like when I started this, I feel like I knew so little about serious mental illness. I mean, I really was, as I go into a lot of, a lot of the work I do, I don't know that much about the fields I'm getting into, and I go to try to find the smartest people I can to talk to. And, but what I've learned is it's really about the relationship. It is all about the relationship. To build a strong relationship with somebody with serious mental illness is the best way for them to get better. And for all of us to get better. It is, as I say, you know, I keep thinking about, you know, I was interested in the presidential election of the 90s, and James Carville was the guy who said"it's all about the economy, stupid." Like to try and boil it down to one issue. And so my phrase is like,"it's all about the relationship, stupid." That's what I feel like. It's about building the relationships because, you know, Dan, we know how to deal with serious mental illness. We know how to help people get the treatment we need for them to get better. And our success rate could be phenomenal, could be tremendous. We just don't put in the time. We just don't put in the time. Because time is money in our culture, in our world, we don't put it in and we're not willing to commit it. But when we do put in the time, we get great results. And that time is about building relationships because it doesn't happen overnight, it involves trust, and there's a lot going on for people who are, who are involved in serious mental illness. And it's about reaching out, building that relationship and spending the time, and we can get great results. You know, Frank, as you shared and you've talked about listening, you know, we say meet people where they are, not where we want them to be, meet them where they are. So your story in regards to the person saying flying saucers and that kind of thing, meeting them where they are at that moment, and then building relationships and connecting, it's absolutely phenomenal. What you're sharing in terms of, the basics of it, but really the, the critical elements of it. It is about relationships, and relationship management, relationship cultivation, and caring. You know, people really, there's a quote there that the team has heard me say often. People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. So if that is something we can demonstrate, then we can actually, you know, alter the trajectory of someone's life. So, with that said, there's probably so much more that you'd like to share. And then maybe even something you're thinking of that I should have said this, should've said that. If there's anything you'd like to share, we would welcome that. And, as we do that, there's one last question we always ask our guest. So, I can go there right now or leave it open for you to share anything that you may be thinking of that you'd like the audience to know before I get to this last question. Well, thank you for opening that up. And, I would say two things. One, one little thing is that, if you're interested in Brain Stories, you can find it anywhere you get your podcasts. Just look for Brain Stories. It's on Apple and Spotify and all the, all the places. We would love for you to listen and try one out and if you like it, the most powerful thing is all the relationships that you have. So tell your friends. Tell your families. That's the best way to get this word out. I'm very, very proud of these stories and the, and the team of people who put them together. And it's an incredibly talented, really unusual team that includes a couple of psychiatrists, mental health, mental health advocate, a writer. So a lot of really interesting people have got involved in this. And the stories are phenomenal. So please, if you like them, tell other people. You know, as I said in the beginning, storytelling I see, is the-- as an ultimate act of hope. Storytelling is how we inform, how we guide, how we, how we pass on wisdom. And ultimately, stories are about growth, how we grow. And all the stories in Brain Stories are about how people grow. They don't have Hollywood endings, by and large, it's not like people walk off in the sunset holding hands with everything being beautiful and perfect and all the problems solved. But every story is a story of triumph, and I think that's another thing that people often miss in serious mental illness, especially people who don't have experience with it, is that there's a lot of there's a lot of laughter still. There's a lot of fun. There's a lot of joy, and there's plenty of triumph. It's not this sorrowful, defeated, horrible thing that just makes us sad. Not at all. It's a deeply human experience that we all share. And I would say to that end, one of the things that I really would love to see is to change the way that we think about mental illness from, it's something that other people have or those people have to normalize it. Mental illness is something we all experience. Most of us don't think of it that way. We call it anxiety or we call it grief. These are illnesses of our moods, of our minds, and they're considered no big deal. And we deal with them. I mean, grief is sad and we understand that. Serious mental illness is just that. It's serious. It's harder to deal with. But it's all on the same spectrum. We are all on the same spectrum, and we are all dealing with the same thing, just at different levels. That is, that is so profound. Frank. Thank you for sharing that. And yes, we're all on that spectrum. Appreciate that. And, and I hope the audience also heard you when you mentioned your team. The team. You know, one of the things I want the audience to understand about Frank Kosa when he goes into this work, whatever the work is that he's doing, be that, for National Geographic or the Science Channel or something, there's always that logic model in terms of the body of work. So Frank mentioned the team that he worked with in creating the Brain Stories. So I just wanted to make sure that our audience heard that it's not Frank going out here and selecting this person. It is Frank working with a team and looking at that body of work as he selects the people that he is going to speak with and then sharing their stories. So I didn't know if there's anything Frank, you wanted to mention, because I have the advantage of having sat down with you and understood that a little bit more. So I didn't know if there's anything you wanted to say there, but I wanted our audience to hear that. Oh my gosh. Yes. Thank you for that opportunity. Thank you. Yeah, because that's so key. And yeah, what a pleasure it was to sit down with you. Thank you so much for making that time. But, yeah, I think honestly, one of the smartest things I did was bring in some of the smartest people, I think, in the field and get the heck out of their way. And these are people like Dr. Ruth Shim, who's a Cultural Professor of Psychiatry at UC Davis. Who not only does incredible work on serious mental health, prevention, does incredible work on race and structural racism and the effect of that on serious mental health. But is just a tremendous psychiatrist and person, has a brilliant perspective and was kind enough to lend her talents and considerable knowledge and actually voice an episode about Anita that again, it's so moving. It's just so moving and so brilliant with Ruth's perspective. Dr. Mark Ragins, another one who-- another psychiatrist who thinks very out of the box in his thinking in that I say he's like, got that uncommon common sense and approach to treatments. And was-- is incredibly smart in terms of outreach and did a lot of street psychiatry at one point. Again, he's got a great book, that's called Journeys Beyond the Frontier: A Rebellious Guide to Psychosis and Other Extraordinary Experiences. Like "a rebellious guide to psychosis?" That picked, that pricked my ears up right away. I'm like, what does that mean? Yes, yes, how about that? You can go to, you can go to the website. But then he explains much better than I'm going to do in these next couple of minutes. But I think he looks at psychosis as, you know, it's obviously people are seeing reality in a different way, but he humanizes it and he understands that, okay, you know, psychosis is a break from reality. But 98% of what, of what we see in someone is going through serious psychosis is the same. Most people still see the sky is blue and you're in front of me and I'm in front of you. They do have some significant differences and that is causing issues. But Mark looks at it in a very different way and has-- and is very human in how he approaches treatment. And he also embodies hope. He gave up on nobody, ever. And he had a huge amount of success in through a particular system called the Village, where people were treated with a great deal of dignity. They were met where they were, and had incredible, incredibly high recovery rates. Sarah Haufrect, another one. Mental health advocate. Also somebody who's very involved in NAMI, who has her own direct experience. I won't spoil it because it's part of the story, but, bringing in people. Boen Wong has also done a tremendous amount of work, who's a brilliant, brilliant writer and creator. He's a stay behind-the-scenes. He hasn't voiced any, but he's in done a lot of episodes. So the team has really been phenomenal in bringing different perspectives that I could never bring. And knowledge and experience that I just don't have. And my, my-- if I've done--if I did anything right, it was bringing them in and getting them to help out, to tell the stories. Well Frank, what an incredible team. And, what you, what you have done, what you do is tremendous. And, you know, just NAMI is so appreciative of this opportunity for us to work with you and, to know of Brain Stories and to see where we can go from here. So I want to say thank you on behalf of NAMI, and I want to ask you this last question that we ask all of our guests, as we, I guess you would call it the outtake. So, a bit intimidated that I'm talking to an executive producer that has done worldwide work, Frank Kosa. So, thank you very much for being so, so humble in terms of who you are and, and the body of work you represent. So, as we do this outtake, the question is this or the statement and then the question: the world can be a difficult place, and sometimes it can be hard to hold on to hope. That's why with each episode, we dedicate the last couple of minutes of our podcast to a special segment called Hold on to Hope. What helps you, Frank, hold on to hope? Other people. People. So, you know, you mentioned when, when you and I got together and that meeting for me just to get my side of it was I just felt like, wow, I've just met this fantastic person who's doing incredible work, who's really smart in running this organization that I wish I could make required reading for the entire nation about this organization. Like everybody should know about NAMI. But what grounded that for me was just meeting you and hearing you talk about it. Hearing you talk about your work. And in doing the work of Brain Stories, I've run into countless people who were phenomenal, fantastic people. Some of them became stories. Dr. Xavier Amador, became a story who, you know, I ran into, heard a story, and-- But he's doing phenomenal work. I mean, he's a brilliant, clinician, and researcher. And people would give me hope because I run into people with tremendous hearts, tremendous minds, doing great work. And especially in this climate, in this time when I don't know what we're going through. But cruelty seems to be making a huge comeback in the human experience. I don't understand why, but meeting people who are caring and smart and working to, in a in a compassionate way, is what gives me hope. And I hope I've told some stories to-- about those people that will give other people hope and provide those connections that I was lucky enough to get when you and I got together, and, and like, I get together with, numerous other people around these stories. People are, people are our best asset. And wow we can-- they can also seem our worst as well at times, people are my greatest hope. You know, Frank, as you said that, I kind of inverted the question and I've flipped it, the mirror back on myself. And what helps me hold on to hope is meeting incredible, incredible people like yourself. Just, you know, our lunch went, went a little bit longer because the connection. You mentioned that C-word, connection. And again, this is just meant to be what it is. You lending your talent to this work. It helps me hold onto hope that there's people that care, that people want to connect, that there's leaders out there, talented, talented, people like Frank Kosa that want to do this work and to help change the narrative. And so that helps me hold on to hope, Frank. And I just wanted to say that because you used--you

said, several C-words: 36:35

connection, caring, compassion. And then that other c-word was cruelty. And what's so interesting about that is that we know the difference. And it is so critically important that we lead with the connection with the caring and compassion. So I just want to say thank you. And my world is better from having met you. And I hope that our audience hears that, as they listen to this podcast. So as we wrap up, this has been Hope Starts With Us, a podcast by NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness. If you are looking for mental health resources, you are not alone. To connect with the NAMI HelpLine and local resources, visit NAMI.org/help. Text "NAMI" to 62640 or dial 800-950-NAMI. Or if you are experiencing an immediate suicide, substance use, or mental health crisis, please call or text 988 to speak with a trained support specialist or visit 988lifeline.org. I'm Dan Gillison, your host. Thanks for listening. Be well.