Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain: In Memory and a Call to Action

As the tragic news of the death of fashion celebrity Kate Spade was announced this week, a number of my faithful friends were quick to think of me and wonder how I might be taking it.   Yes, it is very close to home; having recently been through a similar, semi-public loss by suicide of the love of my life, my partner, Jill.

Source Image: Bebeto Matthews/AP

In general, I have found any news coverage of poor Ms. Spade’s fate to be more sensationalism than journalism and I feel very much for the family while talking head pundits wonder “why.”

There is no Why is Suicide.

After questioning her motivations and disparaging her family, reporters went on to reveal that she may have had mental health issues, with a history of depression.

Mental health issues?   Ya’ Think?   

Source Image: CNN

Definitely, other factors such as those related to relationships, substance abuse, physical health, and job, money, legal, or housing stress definitely can all be catalysts.   But such act of despair itself is, I think, such a clear demonstration of mental health distress.

This morning, as I proofread this writing there is news of another celebrity suicide.  Celebrity chef and television journalist Anthony Bourdain has also died of apparent suicide this morning.

Maybe this is our wakeup call.

What is going on with the Suicide Rate?

Ironically, in these past few days, there was interesting reporting on the release of a CDC study noting a 30% rise in the national suicide rate since 1999 with concentrations in middle-aged women particularly.

"Middle-aged adults had the largest number of suicides and a particularly high increase in suicide rates. These findings are disturbing," said CDC principal deputy director Dr. Anne Schuchat.

Yes, disturbing.   Suicide is absolutely disturbing.

Suicide is uncomfortable to talk about (even to write about).  

It carries Stigma.  

This is the same Stigma that hangs over all of mental health disorders.   

And at the same time, not only is the suicide rate increasing, but our diagnosis of mental health disorders is also obviously increasing.    Mental Health has become a top concern across a country dealing with gun violence, economic and racial injustice, and a digitally connected society.

Practice Perspective

The book I was writing for Jill, in my best attempt to help her exercise her mind to try to manage her mental health, is called A Glass Half Empty?  …or Half Full?:  A Children’s Book for Grown-Ups.  It’s available on Amazon and such (end of plug).

 

In addition to raising donations with the proceeds going to the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, what I am hoping to do is to continue to push thinking and discussion about Mental Health … for ALL of us.   

Disorders of the mind make it very, very challenging to gauge whether your Glass is Half Empty or Half Full.     

Learning to manage your perspective takes repetitive practice, not unlike repetitive exercise we might do for physical fitness.

Just like other kinds of health issues, mental health issues can and often do develop at different stages of life.   If more and more of us are facing challenges with our mental health, then the two things we each can do right now to start helping:

1. End the Stigma around Mental Health – and even Suicide.   We’ve GOT to start being able to talk about this!
2. Take care of YOUR Mental Health first!   Do your exercises (physical and mental).  Nourish your body and your mind.   And Practice Perspective!

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Dan Schuck is an advocate for Mental Health Awareness and the author of A Glass Half Empty? ...or Half Full?: A Children's Book for Grown-Ups.   Available at Amazon.com in Kindle and print formats at booksellers near you.

A Glass Half Laurel? ...or Half Yanny?

Did you hear Laurel?   Or Yanny?

It’s been impressive that, despite all the other societal and political debates we are having, that the debate over this sub-second audio clip is the thing that captured so much of our attention over the month of May 2018.

WHY DO WE CARE?

Why is that?   Why do we care so much about this?

 53% of over 500,000 people answered on a Twitter poll that they heard a man saying the word "Laurel" while 47% reported hearing a voice saying the name "Yanny."    Those percentages may seem familiar (and a little eerie).     It seems that in this law-of-large-social-media-fed-numbers era, we are often seeing splits closer to a 50/50.

But why did this one capture our interest so much?   

In 2015, it was the Blue Dress – Gold Dress debate when that infamous washed out picture of a dress again went viral and 10 million tweets mentioned the dress, using hashtags such as #thedress, #whiteandgold, and #blackandblue

These two cultural events are obviously similar:

• One because they don’t matter all that much to any of us really,   
• but Two because they are both instances where we are debating our very sense of fact and truth.  

Some of us hear (or see) one thing … others hear (or see) something else.   

Of course, there is plenty of science to explain this.   We’ve probably all learned about the High Frequency/ Low-Frequency theory of why some people are more wired to hear one part of the sound vs. the other.       A similar explanation was given for the Blue Dress/Gold Dress illusion, and really for many of the optical and auditory (and event scent-based) illusions:

OUR BRAINS ALL WORK SLIGHTLY DIFFERENTLY

That is an important consideration when we are asking The Question.

How we consider whether OUR Glass is Half Empty?  …or Half Full… will clearly be affected by our own unique ability to perceive our Glass and what’s been poured into it. 

NOTE: If you haven’t read the book (A Glass Half Empty? …or Half Full?: A Children’s Book for Grown-Ups):

1. May I first suggest this book to you – it’s an easy read and benefits the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation;  available in multiple formats on Amazon.com.
2. For context, the “Glass” in this allegory is your Life and we need to consider What our Glass is being refilled with – whether we pour it in or someone else does.

I believe this is part of the reason this Question is so difficult to discuss with other people.   

When I look at someone else’s Glass, I am very likely using my OWN Brain (gosh I hope so) and my own mental model of what is in your Glass.  

• I will be using my brain to evaluate whether there is any Opportunity in your Glass. 
• Likewise, I may see Cracks in Your Glass – that you do not; or just as likely not be able to see the Risk in your Glass that you are so concerned about.

SO – WE ARE LEFT ALL ALONE TO EVALUATE OUR OWN GLASS?

We each need to find the balance in our own Glass…but we certainly don’t need to do that Alone.    Indeed, nothing could be further from the truth.

The help and love of others is critical to each of us in finding balance in our Glass between the part that is Half Full (or whatever it is full of) and the Half that is Half-Full-of-Opportunity.

We need to value our own understanding of what is in our own Glass.   HOWEVER, we also should remember that we might only be hearing “Laurel” when “Yanny” is right there to be heard.    

The help of others to share with us their perceptions about what is in our Glass can be very, very important and it is necessary for us to open our ears, hearts, and minds to the ideas that others may have about our Glass.     Remember that it’s YOUR GLASS and ultimately YOU have to decide when to drink, when to refill and how to manage your Glass….but all the more reason to get some advice and perspective from those we trust.

And also all the more reason to be wary of the advice we receive about our Glass from people we *don’t* trust.    They may be sincere in their beliefs about your Glass – but they may not have the same definition of Truth that you do.

HOW TO HELP OTHERS WITH THEIR GLASS: INVEST IN OTHERS

Naturally, this works both ways and the more we Invest in Others, the more we will see that Return on Investment in our own Glass.

But when we are helping someone else with their Glass; it is important for us to remember that we may have legitimate differences in perception and perspective.

This can be especially challenging when we are very close to the person with whom we are working.   Family members can easily slip into assuming that each other have the same perspective (after all, they are family) …when, in fact, we have ALL experienced the challenges of being misunderstood by family members.  

I can assert this with such great authority because I can assume all of us were once (or are now) Teenagers.

AGAIN, WHY DO WE CARE ABOUT LAUREL VS. YANNY?

Perhaps it was just a Social Media distraction for us as a Society.   We are definitely in an Era where our shared definitions of Truth and Facts are being challenged – although we can probably look back to almost any era of humankind and say the same.

The rather tame by comparison debate we’ve all had about hearing Laurel vs. Yanny in that tiny audio clip may be so interesting to us all; because in that less-than-a-second clip…we can so clearly prove that we each have different perceptions.

If we can harness this, and learn from it,  we have an opportunity to decrease the arguing and increase our ability to Invest in Each Other’s quest to find Balance in the Glass.

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Dan Schuck is an advocate for Mental Health Awareness and the author of A Glass Half Empty? ...or Half Full?: A Children's Book for Grown-Ups.   Available at Amazon.com in Kindle, iBook and print formats at booksellers near you.