Thank you for watching.
Thank you for listening.
Sean’s return was important to me, the subject matter was something very real and very personal, and when I was given the opportunity to tell this story, in the place I knew could tell it right, there was only one choice before me.
Suicide is a major public health issue, depression too. We live in a time where more people suffer and more people lose the battle than ever before and we ARE talking about it.
We all know how prevalent suicide is, especially among young men today, we have it shown to us constantly in dramas and statistics but what we aren’t told is what we can do about it. We so often feel helpless and lost when a loved one is suffering through something we don’t seem to be able to help with.
What I wanted to do with Sean, and what EastEnders allowed us to do was to start a conversation. Not about suicide alone, but about what we can do to spot the signs, what we can do to help our loved ones and what we can do to help ourselves. I want to start a conversation about things we can actually do to help.
That’s the first piece of the puzzle. The entire Sean Arc for me is about asking for help. We are so afraid to admit weakness, we see asking for help as being weak, but it isn’t, it takes enormous strength to ask for help. Sometimes we can’t do it alone, sometimes we can’t do it together either, but if you don’t ask for help, you’ll never find it.
There will be people and professionals who disagree with some things I say I’m sure, that’s okay! I want to offer my own perspective and my own opinion in the nascent hope that it does some good.
I have seen friends win and lose this battle, the ones that asked for help, that asked for the love and support of friends and family are mostly still here with me. The ones that didn’t? We didn’t even know anything was wrong. To think they suffered alone, in silence, thinking their pain was a burden they couldn’t share was never the truth. pain is never a burden, once shared it’s easier carried. Asking for help is the strongest and most powerful action you can take, and I promise, if you look for it, it will be there.
I live in America, where suicide is the second largest killer and yet it is a place where mental health is destigmatized, where going to your therapist is as weird as going to your dentist. Everyone I know goes to therapy at some point, it is a blindingly healthy and helpful choice.
I am not a therapist, I cannot provide to my loved ones the kind of professional guidance they need, but I CAN listen. I can be a supportive, non-judgmental source of love and support to someone who has a rational or irrational break.
I love the story of the nail in the forehead:
Paul
I have this nail in my forehead and
It hurts so damn much.
Matt
We’ll pull it out then.
Paul
You’re not listening to me, there’s
A nail in my forehead, I swear it’s
Killing me.
Matt
Then pull the bloody thing out!
Paul
Will you please just listen to me!
It hurts! The nail it hurts!
Matt
I get that it hurts Paul! Pull the
Bloody nail out and it won’t hurt!
Paul
Why don’t you ever listen to me?
Now the beauty of the story is you can see Paul’s logic, but Matt doesn’t want to talk about fixing the nail, he knows there’s a nail there, what he wants to talk about is the pain, he wants him to empathize with him, to understand the pain, not fix it.
We can’t fix it. It is one of life’s little mysteries that you can’t fix someone else. They have to do it, but you can be there to make them feel less alone, to make them feel heard and understood.
There is no cookie cutter for depression or suicide, there is no typical manifestation of illness, there is no simple cure. As many difficult and convoluted ways that one may find themselves in a place with no doors, there are an equal and myriad number of ways that that person can then knock through the walls.
There are resources, the Samaritans, other helplines, doctors, friends. We are never alone no matter how it may feel that way sometimes, there is always someone who will listen and help you.
We still live in a world where we are afraid to admit our mental fragility. In my industry if an actor admits they ever attempted or even considered suicide it becomes monumentally difficult for that actor to ever get insured to work again. Talking about their mental health ends their career.
I’m sure there are similar costs in every walk of life.
I didn’t come here to try and tell a story about suicide so that you all might know it exists, we know it exists, I came here to tell the story so that we; the people who aren’t in that place can create a world where it’s okay to be in the place and ask for help when we are.
Where it’s normal to need help and easy to get it, where when we can see the signs that someone is suffering, we know how to love them and when they need to get help, it’s as easy as going to the dentist.
And that it’s okay to ask for it.