Speaker 1: Welcome to Force Multiplier, a new podcast about leveling up
Speaker 1: the impact we can have in the world through our relationships.
Speaker 1: I'm barretton Day Thurston and in collaboration with I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and Salesforce dot Org, I sit with leaders from
Speaker 1: across the public, private, and nonprofit world who are forging
Speaker 1: partnerships to tackle some of the toughest challenges facing us today.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Force Multiplier. Today's theme is mental health.
Speaker 1: To say I'm excited to talk about this topic, it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be accurate. But i do need to talk about
Speaker 1: this topic, and I'm very willing. I'm someone who has
Speaker 1: loved sharing. When things are going well, I'm a performer,
Speaker 1: always putting my best foot and face forward. When things
Speaker 1: are hard, I suck it up by walk it off.
Speaker 1: I use other metaphors for burying those uncomfortable feelings. At
Speaker 1: least I used to do that by default. Now that
Speaker 1: I've been in my forties for a few years, I'm
Speaker 1: taking a more integrated approach to my health that incorporates
Speaker 1: the physical, spiritual, and mental. I've benefited from a beautiful
Speaker 1: relationship with a psychologist who helped me process the pain
Speaker 1: of my divorce years ago. I've embraced breathwork, meditation, coaching,
Speaker 1: all these things to become more attuned to my inner
Speaker 1: self and make space for processing those uncomfortable feelings. It's
Speaker 1: not always fun, I can't pretend that it is, but
Speaker 1: it does make me healthier. I'm learning that investing in
Speaker 1: my mental health is essential. I'm also learning just how
Speaker 1: serious the effects of poor mental health can be on
Speaker 1: all of us. One in seven adolescents aged ten to
Speaker 1: nineteen is estimated to have a mental health condition, and
Speaker 1: among adolescents, suicide is the fifth most prevalent cause of
Speaker 1: death As students go back to school, seventies that identify
Speaker 1: well being as a top challenge. Overall, less than half
Speaker 1: of all Americans with the mental disorder get the treatment
Speaker 1: that they need. The root causes of these mental health
Speaker 1: challenges are often trauma and neglect we experience at a
Speaker 1: young age. When we're loved at home, we go to
Speaker 1: school to learn. When we aren't loved at home, we
Speaker 1: go to school to be loved, and if we don't
Speaker 1: have a deep connection with a parent or caregiver, we
Speaker 1: feel a sense of threat, which impacts our emotional and
Speaker 1: cognitive development. Just at the moment when we're most vulnerable.
Speaker 1: If we take a look at the Black community, all
Speaker 1: these indicators, they're just worse. In nineteen suicide was the
Speaker 1: second leading cause of death for black youth age fifteen
Speaker 1: to twenty four, and Black Americans generally are twenty percent
Speaker 1: more likely to experience serious mental health problems than the
Speaker 1: general population. Some of these root causes run deeper than
Speaker 1: our individual childhood, and they span generations of neglect and
Speaker 1: abuse based in a society and an economic system designed
Speaker 1: precisely to neglect and abuse us. I've known and experienced
Speaker 1: pieces of these facts my entire life. I've lost people
Speaker 1: to suicide. I've lived in communities ravaged by neglect and abuse,
Speaker 1: places where we distance ourselves from those who are hurting,
Speaker 1: maybe because we fear it will highlight our own pain.
Speaker 1: I'm still learning that the way to a healthier society
Speaker 1: requires investment and participation by all members of society. Parents, educators, peers, policymakers, employers, everybody.
Speaker 1: All of us must come together to support all of
Speaker 1: us so we can all be healthier and whole. This
Speaker 1: brings me to our guest, Charlemagne, the God co host
Speaker 1: of the nationally syndicated show of Breakfast Club. New York
Speaker 1: Times bestselling author and certainly one of the most influential
Speaker 1: voices in modern culture. Known for his outspoken and brutally
Speaker 1: honest rhetoric, Charlemagne is using his platform to amplify awareness
Speaker 1: around mental health in the black community. Later in the episode,
Speaker 1: we hear from Benjamin Perk's Head of Campaigns and Advocacy
Speaker 1: in the Division of Global Communications at the United Nations
Speaker 1: Children's Fund. In his role, ben leads public and policy
Speaker 1: advocacy on issues related to the survival, development, and protection
Speaker 1: of children. Two incredibly insightful conversations leaving us with a
Speaker 1: lot to think about. Let's dive in. Charlemagne. I'm really good.
Speaker 1: I'm really good. It's nice to be chatting with you
Speaker 1: right now. Listen. You're you're so well known for the
Speaker 1: Breakfast Club ten years. Congratulations on that. What does radio
Speaker 1: mean to you beyond a job, beyond the source of income?
Speaker 1: Oh man, I mean, that's what changed my life, is
Speaker 1: what gave me a sense of purpose. You know, prior
Speaker 1: to this, I was, you know, running the streets and
Speaker 1: monks on the South Carolina doing a whole bunch of things.
Speaker 1: I didn't have no business doing like I didn't. I
Speaker 1: didn't know what my future was gonna be. My dad
Speaker 1: was telling me that if I didn't change my ways,
Speaker 1: you know, I was gonna end up in jail, dead
Speaker 1: or broke, sitting under the tree. And you know, when
Speaker 1: I started seeing people around me actually dying, when I started,
Speaker 1: you know, seeing people around me going to prison, when
Speaker 1: I started going to jail myself, I realized he was right.
Speaker 1: And you know that that fear of literally being just
Speaker 1: some dude sitting under the tree with nothing to show
Speaker 1: for it but a can of bear every day, I
Speaker 1: didn't want that for myself. And you know, I pride
Speaker 1: myself on always being able to see, you know, what
Speaker 1: life is gonna look like ten years from now. Anything
Speaker 1: you do today directly impact what happens in your life tomorrow.
Speaker 1: So I just started making the necessary adjustments. And so
Speaker 1: for me, radio just gave me a sense of purpose
Speaker 1: and it gave me a sense of of work that
Speaker 1: I didn't have before. I can feel the energy of
Speaker 1: that purpose and that worth shining through. It's still very
Speaker 1: much present you. You've evolved, you know, from radio host
Speaker 1: to author to activists and from the outside a lot
Speaker 1: of people can see that trajectory and say, what a
Speaker 1: smooth ride this brother has been on. Would have been
Speaker 1: some of the hardest parts of building your career in
Speaker 1: this way. Oh man, there's nothing been smooth. I mean
Speaker 1: I've been fired, you know, four times. You have so
Speaker 1: many ebbs and flows in this business, not really professionally,
Speaker 1: but personally. There was a lot of things that I
Speaker 1: hadn't dealt with, you know, as far as unresolved trauma,
Speaker 1: and like, you know, I've been dealing with anxiety and
Speaker 1: panic attacks my whole life. And in two thousand ten
Speaker 1: was the first time the doctor said, you know, you
Speaker 1: suffer from anxiety. And at the time, I have been
Speaker 1: fired four times from radio. I'm like thirty two years old.
Speaker 1: I'm back living at home with my mom. My first
Speaker 1: daughter is now like one or two. My now wife
Speaker 1: is back home living with her mom. We had to
Speaker 1: pack up from Jersey and come back home. And like
Speaker 1: when I had that really bad panic attack, I thought
Speaker 1: I was going to die, and the doctor was like, no,
Speaker 1: that sounds like you had an anxiety attack. He was like,
Speaker 1: are you scratched out about anything? And I'm like, hell yeah,
Speaker 1: So in my mind all I gotta do is get
Speaker 1: another job, get back in position. That next radio gig
Speaker 1: ended up being the Breakfast Club. Fast forward three or
Speaker 1: four years, I'm having more success than I've ever had
Speaker 1: in my life. I'm just really growing and evolving. But
Speaker 1: I'm losing myself in the process because I started to
Speaker 1: become a character to myself, because I was doing anything
Speaker 1: to survive. I was really like pushing the limits on
Speaker 1: that whole shock jock thing, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: And it was because I was getting rewarded for it. It
Speaker 1: It was because I was getting right up since the
Speaker 1: New York Times and all these different magazines and they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: Charlemagne God is the hip hop Howard Stern and YadA, YadA, YadA.
Speaker 1: So I'm like, oh, this is what they want. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna give him more of that. And I probably was
Speaker 1: being real and honest, but I was being real and
Speaker 1: honest from a really bad place in space, because you know,
Speaker 1: I was I hadn't done the work on myself. You
Speaker 1: started getting more real with yourself and sharing that in
Speaker 1: your book shook one anxiety planning tricks on me. And
Speaker 1: one of the things you did in this book is
Speaker 1: you know, I saw you describing it at one point
Speaker 1: is you've gone to therapy for a while. You started
Speaker 1: looking at your notes, and you decided to write from
Speaker 1: those notes as someone who's been in therapy myself, but
Speaker 1: came to it late in life because another black dude
Speaker 1: friend of mine was like, you should talk to this person.
Speaker 1: The idea that we don't have permission to that this
Speaker 1: is something black folk don't do along with swimming and
Speaker 1: eating mayonnaise, that the therapy is not for us, and
Speaker 1: that there's a stigma associated with it for all kinds
Speaker 1: of people, especially black people people in general, that you're weak,
Speaker 1: that you don't have it, that you can't cut it,
Speaker 1: that you can't hack it, and in the hyper competitive
Speaker 1: industry like the one you're in. I guess that's a
Speaker 1: long way of saying, did you realize what you were
Speaker 1: doing to destigmatize conversations about mental health, to normalize conversations
Speaker 1: about mental health? Absolutely not. I was just literally sharing
Speaker 1: my experiences. That's why I tell people all the time,
Speaker 1: I'm not an expert, you know, I mean, I'm just
Speaker 1: a brother who was sharing his experiences. But to your point, Yeah,
Speaker 1: when people started coming up to me, in the street
Speaker 1: telling me they started going to therapy because of me,
Speaker 1: when women were coming up to me saying my husband
Speaker 1: started going because of you, or my brother, my uncle.
Speaker 1: I remember Tracy and uh to Roger p Hinston. They
Speaker 1: got the boards Lawrence Hinton Foundation, one of the only
Speaker 1: other people out there speaking openly about mental health for
Speaker 1: me and her used to do a lot of things together.
Speaker 1: And remember somebody introduced me as a mental health advocate
Speaker 1: and I'm like, nah, I'm not known mental health advocate.
Speaker 1: And Tracy was like, brother, whether you want to be
Speaker 1: or not, you are, and she said you need to
Speaker 1: embrace it. You know, clearly God doesn't call the qualified,
Speaker 1: He qualifies the call. And there's a lot of different
Speaker 1: things that have happened over the past few years, you know,
Speaker 1: along my journey of healing. That just makes me want
Speaker 1: to dedicate my life to helping black people. Hell, just
Speaker 1: my life's work. And so it's just like, man, I'll
Speaker 1: be talking to some of these brothers. Not it's weird,
Speaker 1: right because I'm still on my journey of healing, but
Speaker 1: healed people here and see things differently. So it's things
Speaker 1: I hearing brothers and seeing brothers and I'm like, I
Speaker 1: don't judge them like I used to. I don't. I'm
Speaker 1: not ready to critique them like I used to and
Speaker 1: attack them like I used to, because I know that
Speaker 1: brothers just dealing with unresolved trauma. I know that brother
Speaker 1: is dealing with pain. I know that brothers dealing with hurts.
Speaker 1: So I got a lot more empathy, you know, when
Speaker 1: it comes to us as people, because of the work
Speaker 1: I've done on myself, they're the saying hurt people, hurt people.
Speaker 1: You kind of balanced that there with you healing people
Speaker 1: in the process of healing, or at least bad are
Speaker 1: able to be a part of someone else's process of healing,
Speaker 1: all right, And the snap judgment and the willingness to attack.
Speaker 1: It's a big opening to be able to see that
Speaker 1: that comes. You know that that pain and someone else
Speaker 1: maybe not be personal, may be historic, maybe intergenerational, may
Speaker 1: be built on some trauma from earlier in their life.
Speaker 1: We both love black people, and I can feel that love,
Speaker 1: and I see it in a lot of your work.
Speaker 1: And there are times when the size of what we've
Speaker 1: been through as people overwhelms me. Right, I look at
Speaker 1: all the beautiful things we've done but I also look
Speaker 1: at all the ugly things we survived, and I'm just
Speaker 1: amazed we're even here at all. How do you think
Speaker 1: about the unique power of black people achieving a state
Speaker 1: of mental health? What what would that mean for us?
Speaker 1: And why is it such an important mission to you?
Speaker 1: I recently heard Will Smith say, paraphrasing, basically, it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter who broke it's it's up to you to fix it.
Speaker 1: My talk show to God's on His Truth on Comedy
Speaker 1: Central World Mental Health Day is Tintin. I'm doing a
Speaker 1: mental health episode this week, and I'm talking about healing
Speaker 1: as a black person. And the question I'm asking is
Speaker 1: whose responsibility is it for you to heal? And the
Speaker 1: answer is you, nobody else, nobody else. So yes, I
Speaker 1: feel like man, there's so many things that we can't control.
Speaker 1: There's so many things that we're all fighting to change,
Speaker 1: you know, as far as systemic racism in this country,
Speaker 1: but as far as us and dealing with our traumas,
Speaker 1: it don't matter who broke us, It's up to us
Speaker 1: to fix us. And I really truly feel like man,
Speaker 1: when we become a generation of people who really go
Speaker 1: out there and seek healing, I think we'll see such
Speaker 1: a change in our communities because I think there's so
Speaker 1: many different things that can be directly attributed to unresolved trauma.
Speaker 1: You've created this beautifully titled Mental Wealth Alliance with a
Speaker 1: mission to teach, and train and treat in part because
Speaker 1: you experienced this gap in resources, uh, and you've witnessed
Speaker 1: it in the black community. Share with our audience a
Speaker 1: bit more about the gap you witnessed and how you've
Speaker 1: designed programs with the Alliance to address it. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, um, teach, train, treat our three pillars. And
Speaker 1: I just was looking at a lot of people who
Speaker 1: are already out there during the work, you know, like
Speaker 1: an organization out of Philly called Black Men Hell. And
Speaker 1: you know, I donated some money to Black Men Hill
Speaker 1: back in the day. And what I when I when
Speaker 1: I saw what they were able to do, you know,
Speaker 1: with the ten dollar donation I made, I was like, Wow,
Speaker 1: they were able to provide free therapy for all of
Speaker 1: these different black men. And I was like, man, how
Speaker 1: can we do this on a mass level? Because I'm
Speaker 1: able to raise more money than a you know, Black
Speaker 1: Men Heill can, So why not create a hub to
Speaker 1: where we get the funding and distribute the funding to
Speaker 1: the people that need it. And you know, that's that's
Speaker 1: our mission statement. We want to provide you know, free therapy.
Speaker 1: And you know, when you look at the the amount
Speaker 1: of mental health care workers and clinical workers, I think
Speaker 1: we only make up like three or four percent. So
Speaker 1: it's like, I want to at least get that to
Speaker 1: where it reflects the population of black people in America.
Speaker 1: And the way we do that is through scholarships and
Speaker 1: through paying for training for individuals. So I'm just trying
Speaker 1: to use my platform and use my voice to to
Speaker 1: do the right things. You know, I mean, I see,
Speaker 1: I see who needs the funding. I see where the
Speaker 1: funding is going. So if I'm able to raise more
Speaker 1: capital and get it to those people, why not. You
Speaker 1: have the a beautiful array of founding partners with the
Speaker 1: Mental Wealth Alliance. What did it require in terms of
Speaker 1: partnerships to get this group off the ground? Man, it
Speaker 1: was an idea actually that my man um Tim Striver
Speaker 1: actually hit me. And Tim Striver was like, man, you
Speaker 1: should really think about opening up your own foundation. And
Speaker 1: I was like why I was? You know, I'd rather
Speaker 1: be out here supporting, you know, the boys Lawrence Nston Foundation,
Speaker 1: you know Project three seventy five, you know that Brandon
Speaker 1: Marshall's Foundation, and he was like, it gives you a
Speaker 1: different since the purpose, you know, and you know people
Speaker 1: may want to support what you're doing faster than you
Speaker 1: know some of those those other organizations. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: you know, why not everybody that's involved in just people
Speaker 1: that I've met over the past four or five years
Speaker 1: in my journey of healing. You know, people like my
Speaker 1: my home girl, Debbie Brown. Debbie Brown, Me and Debbie
Speaker 1: been cool for damnit seventeen years. So you know, I've
Speaker 1: watched Debbie evolved to become this powerhouse in the mind
Speaker 1: fulm this space, you know, working with Deep poc Choper
Speaker 1: and everything else. So it was sisters like that who
Speaker 1: helped me go out in and find a sense of
Speaker 1: healing and find a sense of purpose. So now that
Speaker 1: we're all in these great positions, why wouldn't I want
Speaker 1: somebody like Deviie Brown involved on the board? Yeah? Can
Speaker 1: you talk one more moment about this pillar of training
Speaker 1: the treatment. It's the most obvious people need help, and
Speaker 1: you're helping facilitate and provide places where they can get
Speaker 1: that help. But what's the training about and why is
Speaker 1: that such a central pillar in your mission. We need
Speaker 1: people who are culturally competent. We need, you know, black
Speaker 1: people to be these these mental health professionals, you know,
Speaker 1: we need we need culturally sensitive mental health services period.
Speaker 1: If we can encourage people to go into that space,
Speaker 1: to go into that field, people that look like us,
Speaker 1: that talk like us, that sounds like us, that come
Speaker 1: from the same backgrounds as us, that's what we need.
Speaker 1: There's a place in Armington, Michigan called Inception and it's
Speaker 1: rand by my man David mccullor. David mccullor is a brother,
Speaker 1: you know, from that area. When people go there and
Speaker 1: they go to Inception and they do brain training, or
Speaker 1: they do float therapy, or they do magnuts fear, it
Speaker 1: immediately opens you up and makes you want to talk.
Speaker 1: And David is a brother that they can talk to.
Speaker 1: He's a brother, you know what I mean. He listened
Speaker 1: to the same music we listen to and he talks
Speaker 1: like us. But he's just really educated when it comes
Speaker 1: to the mental health space. That's what makes you want
Speaker 1: to open up even more because David understands things that
Speaker 1: somebody who's not from the environments we come from. Wouldn't
Speaker 1: understand when you got somebody who's from the hood and
Speaker 1: understands that your black people were not inherently evil. We're
Speaker 1: not trying to just be out here doing criminal stuff
Speaker 1: because that's who we are. Like, it's a set of
Speaker 1: socio economic conditions that caused some of us to move
Speaker 1: a certain way. Sometimes that that can only come from
Speaker 1: somebody who's culturally competent, and you don't have to spend
Speaker 1: some time explaining yourself, your people, your history to their
Speaker 1: theoretically to help you understand yourself. On October tenth, you've
Speaker 1: got an expo coming up. That's a mental wealth expo.
Speaker 1: I've heard of a wealth expo and how you can
Speaker 1: get rich and do all these wonderful things with their finances.
Speaker 1: I've never heard of a mental wealth expo. What can
Speaker 1: people expect from this? Who's involved? How is it different
Speaker 1: from the other types of expos that a lot of
Speaker 1: us are familiar with. It's not different from other expos,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. It's a day of mental
Speaker 1: health education and the day of healing. Like you always
Speaker 1: hear people say things like, you know, where do I
Speaker 1: start where do I start, you know, when it comes
Speaker 1: to like going on a healing journey. So for me,
Speaker 1: this is just like an entry point, you know. So
Speaker 1: what I've done is I put together. Man. We got
Speaker 1: so many different panels. Man. We gotta panel on Black
Speaker 1: men's mental health, black women's mental health. We gotta spiritual
Speaker 1: intelligence panel. You know. We got all these different breakout
Speaker 1: rooms that are specifically for things like anxiety, PTSD, depression.
Speaker 1: We got rooms for people who are you know, dealing
Speaker 1: with family members who are bipoland skitz apriendic, because nobody
Speaker 1: ever talks about those individuals and what and what having
Speaker 1: somebody in your family with those kind of mental health
Speaker 1: issues does to your mental health. And so I got man,
Speaker 1: people that I just respect, like like deVie Brown, she'll
Speaker 1: be doing her dropping Gym's podcast. They're live. Michelle Williams.
Speaker 1: You know, she has a great podcast called checking In
Speaker 1: when she really just checking in with people to see
Speaker 1: how their mental health and emotional well being is going.
Speaker 1: She's there, my man, Jay Barnett, Mr. Jason Wilson is
Speaker 1: gonna be there. David McCullough, Dr Rita Walker, I got
Speaker 1: Res Dominican, I got him in Angela Rye or be
Speaker 1: in conversation with each other and so man, it's just
Speaker 1: a day for us to love on each other from
Speaker 1: eleven am to four pm. And it's free and open
Speaker 1: to the public, you know what I mean. That was
Speaker 1: very important to me to make sure that it was
Speaker 1: free and open to the public, because to your point,
Speaker 1: I not nobody for what they do. I just think
Speaker 1: that some of this information, if we're really trying to
Speaker 1: help people, if we're really trying to empower people, I
Speaker 1: can't charge for it, you know what I mean. I
Speaker 1: just I just simply can't do that. I don't not
Speaker 1: nobody for what they do. You know, everybody's got an
Speaker 1: area of expertise, get your money, do your thing. Me personally,
Speaker 1: I'd rather stick up some of these corporate people and
Speaker 1: get these sponsorships and let them pay for everything, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. All of these companies that say
Speaker 1: they want to invest in black people and they want
Speaker 1: to empower black people and they want to help black people, Okay,
Speaker 1: will help us unpack some of our traumas, then, you know,
Speaker 1: and sponsor this event. Yeah, that's what we're doing this Sunday,
Speaker 1: and I can't wait. That's the Jesse Jackson method right there.
Speaker 1: The corporate stick up if the truth though, and you know,
Speaker 1: like we're gonna have, it's gonna be different booths there.
Speaker 1: You know, people are gonna be able to come there
Speaker 1: and get so much different information. Man and all. I'm
Speaker 1: hoping that people leave there with the wherewithal on how
Speaker 1: to start their healing journey. They at least nowhere to begin.
Speaker 1: They know if they need to talk to us psychiatrists,
Speaker 1: a therapist, a grief counselor whatever it is, they know
Speaker 1: what to do on their healing journey. You might get
Speaker 1: into meditation. You might get into yoga, because we got
Speaker 1: all of that there, you know, so you might get
Speaker 1: into crystals. We got a lot of different things. You
Speaker 1: basically just described my mother as you rest in peace.
Speaker 1: All yoga, meditation and crystals. That are three strong memories
Speaker 1: I have of her during my childhood. I wish I
Speaker 1: could actually be there, um, but I will definitely tell
Speaker 1: everybody about it, and certainly this this show is going
Speaker 1: to help tell everybody about it. We call this show
Speaker 1: force Multiplier because we think that there are some things
Speaker 1: you can do to have an outsize effect and outside impact.
Speaker 1: If you're a bit of leverage. What would you say,
Speaker 1: the force multiplier is enclosing the mental health gap in
Speaker 1: the black community, some of those few things we could
Speaker 1: do that have an outside the impact. That's a great,
Speaker 1: great question, man. I think, honestly, just continuing to have
Speaker 1: the conversation because when I put out my my second
Speaker 1: book shook one anxiety playing tricks on me. I didn't
Speaker 1: know it was gonna start so many different conversations. But
Speaker 1: one of the conversations that it really sparked for me,
Speaker 1: which gave me a whole new understanding of the person,
Speaker 1: was the conversation that started with me and my father.
Speaker 1: You know, one thing I realized about therapy was going
Speaker 1: to therapy was like my father was a source to
Speaker 1: a lot of my trauma. You know, my father was
Speaker 1: a source to a lot of my insecurities, my lack
Speaker 1: of self worth. He was a good father, but he
Speaker 1: was more so disciplinary And the reason I ended up
Speaker 1: having a lot more grace with him because I used
Speaker 1: to go to therapy and be in tears, like he
Speaker 1: used to punish me because I didn't know things he
Speaker 1: didn't teach me. I always tell his one story in particular,
Speaker 1: I remember I was fifteen, sixteen years I think was
Speaker 1: six beause have my license, and so I'm driving behind him.
Speaker 1: He told me to follow him. He runs the stop sign,
Speaker 1: so I run the stop sign. He pulls over. I
Speaker 1: pull over. He gets out the car. I wrote a
Speaker 1: wind down. He smacks the ship out of me and
Speaker 1: he's like, wake up, pay attention, and I'm like, I'm
Speaker 1: following you. He's like, you didn't see that stop sign.
Speaker 1: I'm like, did you see the stop time? I'm sixteen
Speaker 1: years old. I just got my life. But that's how
Speaker 1: it constantly was. I would always get disciplined, do as
Speaker 1: I say, not as I do. Oh, I hated that.
Speaker 1: I hated that line. I hated that line. But yes,
Speaker 1: I ended up having a um better understanding of him
Speaker 1: because he read my book and when he read Shook One.
Speaker 1: I also had a cousin. He was twenty five. He
Speaker 1: had tried to kill himself four different times. November was
Speaker 1: the weakly things given. He finally completed suicide. And between
Speaker 1: that and my dad reading my book, my dad's and
Speaker 1: may you know I've been reading your book and you
Speaker 1: know he's like, you know, you know what just happened
Speaker 1: to your cousin? And he was like, man, he said,
Speaker 1: I went to therapy two and three times a week,
Speaker 1: you know, back in the day. And you know, I've
Speaker 1: been on tend the twelve different medications throughout my life.
Speaker 1: And I tried to kill myself thirty years ago. Only
Speaker 1: reason I killed myself because of you and your sister.
Speaker 1: And so when he said that, I just realized, like, yo,
Speaker 1: Pops was just doing the best he could with with
Speaker 1: with with with the resources he had at the time.
Speaker 1: And I think we take that for granted. We don't realize, man,
Speaker 1: we're probably the first generation of black people who have
Speaker 1: the luxury of healing. The generation before us, our parents,
Speaker 1: they were scratching and surviving like good times, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, Like like they were just trying to
Speaker 1: make it. You know, they were too busy working keeping
Speaker 1: the roof of our head to have to deal with
Speaker 1: their mental and emotional issues. And then I remember even
Speaker 1: having conversations with my mom. I used to think my
Speaker 1: mom was so cool because she would be in her
Speaker 1: room listening to the Lord Hill X Factor over and over.
Speaker 1: I to be like, damn, mama's mama's hip, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. Come to find out that's when my
Speaker 1: mom and dad were going through a divorce and she
Speaker 1: was sad and she was going to therapy at the time.
Speaker 1: None of them told me that until I was a
Speaker 1: late thirties, almost forty year old person. So imagine if
Speaker 1: they would have told me all of that much much earlier,
Speaker 1: I would have understood where my anxiety stems from. I
Speaker 1: would understood when my PTSD, you know, stem from. I
Speaker 1: would have understood what my depression stem from. If I
Speaker 1: had the language for what they were going through. If
Speaker 1: I even knew they was going through these things back
Speaker 1: in the day, when these things started impacting me, I
Speaker 1: would have known how to deal with him a lot better. So,
Speaker 1: you know, to you answer your question, we just got
Speaker 1: to continue to have these conversations, man, because these conversations
Speaker 1: sparked more conversations, and we can finally get to the
Speaker 1: root of why we are the way we are. There's
Speaker 1: so many of us and of all people who think
Speaker 1: of freedom in terms of external factors physical freedom, uh,
Speaker 1: maybe financial freedom, but the freedom to kind of be
Speaker 1: at peace and the freedom to to look at your
Speaker 1: internal self and really know yourself is a real high
Speaker 1: level of freedom. And I like the way you talk
Speaker 1: about our generation's opportunity, you know, versus the ones that
Speaker 1: came before. We have you called the luxury. I think
Speaker 1: of it as freedom in a different way, but very similar.
Speaker 1: So thanks for opening up and sharing that we are.
Speaker 1: We're coming up on time, but I want to get
Speaker 1: a few more things than one. Is what advice would
Speaker 1: you share with somebody listening to this who wants to
Speaker 1: get involved, wants to help support around mental health, black
Speaker 1: mental wealth in their own local community. Where would you
Speaker 1: point them? How can they get started? I would, you know,
Speaker 1: go to the Mental Wealth Alliance dot com because we
Speaker 1: fully have a directory up there of you know, different people,
Speaker 1: different organizations in different locations that you could, you know,
Speaker 1: be a part of. Do your Google's man, go Google
Speaker 1: Google local mental health organizations wherever you're from. You know
Speaker 1: what I mean I'm talking about in your town, put
Speaker 1: your town naming and google mental you know health organizations
Speaker 1: and and I can't think of too many cities who
Speaker 1: don't have, you know, a black mental health organization. They
Speaker 1: may not be getting the funding they need, they may
Speaker 1: not be getting the attention they need, but they exist.
Speaker 1: So you know, reach out to these people, man, and
Speaker 1: you know, find out how you can help them continue
Speaker 1: to grow, and you know, just shine a spotlight on them,
Speaker 1: whether it's just with a tweet, whether it's with an
Speaker 1: Instagram post, whatever it is. You know, So I would
Speaker 1: just tell people, man, do your Google's. I guarantee you
Speaker 1: there's an organization in your city that is helping black
Speaker 1: people be more mentally healthy. But you just got to
Speaker 1: search them out. When I was a kid, they say,
Speaker 1: go to the library. Today, Charlotte many says, do your Googles.
Speaker 1: Do your Googles for somebody who is who's working in
Speaker 1: the corporate world. Maybe maybe they run the company, Probably
Speaker 1: they don't. Most people in the corporal don't own the company.
Speaker 1: But what can they do to lend their support or
Speaker 1: the support of their companies. They need to let their
Speaker 1: companies know the importance of investing in their employees mental health.
Speaker 1: You know, if you want the best out of somebody, man,
Speaker 1: you got to make sure that that person is there mentally,
Speaker 1: that that person is there emotionally, that that person is
Speaker 1: there spiritually. Spiritually really may not be what corporations are
Speaker 1: there for, but mentally and emotionally, man, you've got to
Speaker 1: create these environments to where the people who work for
Speaker 1: these corporations can thrive, you know, And I think that
Speaker 1: it's a I think everybody should be pushing for mental
Speaker 1: health days, work life balanced days. You can't just be
Speaker 1: working people to death. Like you can't just have a
Speaker 1: person on a job for you hours a week, however
Speaker 1: many weeks a year and you're not giving them no breaks.
Speaker 1: You know, check in with your employees. That goes a
Speaker 1: long way to just reaching out to one of your
Speaker 1: employees and say, Yo, how are you? When I ask
Speaker 1: people how are you nowadays? I really truly mean it
Speaker 1: because I want to know, and sometimes you're being an
Speaker 1: employee hearing that from your employer are simple how are you?
Speaker 1: That puts the battery in your back, makes you feel
Speaker 1: good about working for said company, you know, makes you
Speaker 1: feel like this company is seeing you outside of something
Speaker 1: other than being just a number that we can get
Speaker 1: called to be fired. I just think, man, it goes
Speaker 1: back to what I said earlier about you just really
Speaker 1: doing unto others as you would have them doing to you.
Speaker 1: We hear so much about toxic work environments. A lot
Speaker 1: of these work environments are toxic because these corporations don't
Speaker 1: look at these people as anything but workers. They're humans.
Speaker 1: They have the same feelings you have, they have the
Speaker 1: same emotions you have. They probably have the same breaking
Speaker 1: points that you have. So you know, make sure you're
Speaker 1: not scratching people too thin. Make sure that when you
Speaker 1: are scratching them, you're scratching them because it's an opportunity
Speaker 1: for them to grow and and staying in touch with
Speaker 1: their own humanity and the process too. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of us are able to to dehumanize others because
Speaker 1: we've in some way detached ourselves from our own humanity.
Speaker 1: That's right. Is there anything else you wanted to add?
Speaker 1: Given everything we've been talking about, man, I just want
Speaker 1: people to come out to the Mental wealf ex Bol
Speaker 1: this Sunday tent tent from eleven am to four pm,
Speaker 1: and to marry out Marquee tom Square in New York
Speaker 1: City is free and open to the public, and it's
Speaker 1: the day of healing and education. And I really want
Speaker 1: people to tune into my my late night show, The
Speaker 1: Gods on His Truth every Friday night at ten pm
Speaker 1: on Comedy Central. You know, I'm really getting an opportunity
Speaker 1: to talk about a lot of things that you know,
Speaker 1: matter to me. You know, first episode we talked about
Speaker 1: the de gratification of America and how the de notification
Speaker 1: in Germany that model could really be applied here in
Speaker 1: a real way in regard to white supremacy and racism
Speaker 1: and Big Tree. And you know, second episode we talked
Speaker 1: about Jack Gohover and the FBI, and you know, asking
Speaker 1: the questions like, how can we ever expect these institutions
Speaker 1: that were founded before black people had civil rights and
Speaker 1: women had civil rights? How can these institutions that would
Speaker 1: show up for us? And the last episode we discussed
Speaker 1: critical race theory, which I called critical racist theory because
Speaker 1: we know this is just the latest example of them
Speaker 1: trying to keep black people dumb, deaf, and blind because
Speaker 1: that Turner, a brother like Nat Turner, showed America the
Speaker 1: power of an educated Negro and from that point on,
Speaker 1: that's when they, especially in the South, they got rid
Speaker 1: of slaves being able to read and slaves being able
Speaker 1: to write. So like, don't think that you know this
Speaker 1: whole keep critical race theory out of schools and keep
Speaker 1: the sixteen nineteen project out of schools. That's systemic, and
Speaker 1: it's been systemic for a long time. And you know
Speaker 1: this this week we're talking about mental health and more
Speaker 1: so about healing. So just you know, just tune in. Man.
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm really getting the opportunity to talk about
Speaker 1: things that I really care about. So, like I say,
Speaker 1: the evolution will be televised, evolution of Charlemagne, but Nord
Speaker 1: mcklby will be televised. Well, Charlemagne, thank you for your care,
Speaker 1: your love, the use of your power and energy toward healing,
Speaker 1: not just for yourself, before all of us. It's been
Speaker 1: such a pleasure getting this time with your brother. Thank you,
Speaker 1: Thank you, Barn. They appreciate you. King. You're listening to
Speaker 1: a podcast called Force Multiplier, Action meets Impact. Now you've
Speaker 1: probably grown to expect ads inside your podcast, but we're
Speaker 1: gonna do something a little bit different to walk the walk.
Speaker 1: We're gonna take a quick break and hear from one
Speaker 1: of the organizations featured in this episode. Be right back.
Speaker 1: Fifteen months and counting into the COVID nineteen pandemic, the
Speaker 1: world faces a difficult for reality, an unprecedented education crisis.
Speaker 1: More than half of all students worldwide have been affected
Speaker 1: by school closures, putting their learning and development at risk,
Speaker 1: denying them contact with their peers and trained caring teachers,
Speaker 1: making them miss out on essential healthcare, nutrition and protection services,
Speaker 1: and affecting their mental health and well being. A recent
Speaker 1: Units of survey across seventy seven countries found the children
Speaker 1: and adolescents are reporting dramatic increases in stress, anxiety, irritability,
Speaker 1: and substance abuse. The longer children are out of school,
Speaker 1: the worst the mental health impacts, impacts that make them
Speaker 1: vulnerable to abuse and exploitation, impacts that can last a lifetime,
Speaker 1: especially for those children who are already disadvantaged by poverty
Speaker 1: or children with different abilities. While COVID nineteen has closed schools,
Speaker 1: it has also decimated support services like mental health services
Speaker 1: and school counseling, leaving millions of children and their families
Speaker 1: without this critical support when they need it most. As
Speaker 1: countries prepare to reopen schools, UNISV believes that this is
Speaker 1: also a moment to strengthen mental health support across education systems,
Speaker 1: which is why we have joined the World Bank and
Speaker 1: UNESCO to launch our Joint Mission to Recover Education. UNASF
Speaker 1: sees this as a critical moment to reimagine education and
Speaker 1: mental health systems in the years ahead to help the
Speaker 1: world's youngest generation through and beyond what has been a
Speaker 1: devastating moment for them. As a global community, let us
Speaker 1: rally around their needs and let us make sure that
Speaker 1: they returned to schools where they can get their learning
Speaker 1: and the mental health back on track. Hey you, it's
Speaker 1: Baritone Day, host of the podcast you're listening to right now.
Speaker 1: When I was a kid, my mom told me to
Speaker 1: come up with a system we could live under after
Speaker 1: democracy had failed. Yeah, my mom was intent. I haven't
Speaker 1: finished that assignment, but I did make a podcast. It's
Speaker 1: called How does Citizen? With Baritune Day. It reimagines citizen
Speaker 1: as a verb and reminds us how to wield our
Speaker 1: collective power. Find seasons one and two and whatever podcasts
Speaker 1: app you're using right now, and season three, all about tech,
Speaker 1: drops in October. Learn more at how does Citizen dot com.
Speaker 1: You know, I've worked for most of my working life
Speaker 1: on what I would call the human rights of children
Speaker 1: all over the world, and that work has really accompanied
Speaker 1: my own kind of recovery from a tough background children's homes, poverty,
Speaker 1: homeless nurse the threat of crime as a child, And
Speaker 1: so for me, I have a real sense of urgency
Speaker 1: about this. You know, I truly believe that if we
Speaker 1: could invest in strengthening parenting and helping parents who are
Speaker 1: affected by intergenerational transmission of trauma, if we can disrupt
Speaker 1: that cycle of transmission, then we can imagine a world
Speaker 1: where abuse and neglect is a thing in the past.
Speaker 1: So if we took a simple parenting program, if we
Speaker 1: invested saying in every new parent having four or five,
Speaker 1: maybe six home visits in the first year of life
Speaker 1: to work on attachment between a parent and a child,
Speaker 1: to teach the basics, and to help them with coping skills.
Speaker 1: If we did that across populations, and then we gave
Speaker 1: boosters a key moments during charge food, very simple intervention
Speaker 1: similar in scope of vaccine coverage through health systems or
Speaker 1: other systems, I think you would see a huge decline
Speaker 1: in abuse and neglect, adverse childhood experiences, and you would
Speaker 1: see the generational decrease in things like addiction, violence, and
Speaker 1: noncommunicable diseases. I think the world is waking up to
Speaker 1: the fact that abuse and neglect is preventable. So that
Speaker 1: could be the legacy of our generation is to leave
Speaker 1: this for future generations. Just in the same way that
Speaker 1: people who came before us left things like clean water
Speaker 1: and vaccines and sanitation and so on. So I think
Speaker 1: we have an opportunity and a responsibility and we can
Speaker 1: really make a massive difference in the world on this agenda. Now.
Speaker 1: Ashead of campaigns and advocacy at the Inanimation as Children's Fun,
Speaker 1: Benjamin Perks has seen firsthand how abuse, neglect, and adverse
Speaker 1: childhood experiences are the primary causes of mental illness. He
Speaker 1: shares their back strengthening parenting and helping those affected that
Speaker 1: intergenerational transmission a drauma. We can disrupt that cycle and
Speaker 1: imagine the world where abused and neglect is a thing
Speaker 1: of the past. So abused and neglect, adverse child and
Speaker 1: experiences are perhaps the principal preventible cause of mental illness
Speaker 1: and many other connected poor life outcomes obesity, addiction, community
Speaker 1: and those type of things. It's really important to ensure
Speaker 1: that children and young people are able to flourish emotionally
Speaker 1: and mentally. We know that when children are born their
Speaker 1: biologically programmed to seek the connection with the parents or
Speaker 1: a kere giver, and when that is absent, the child
Speaker 1: sees it as a threat, and that has a direct
Speaker 1: impact on their emotional development, their cognitive development at the
Speaker 1: moment when most vulnerable. I think over the past two
Speaker 1: to three decades, we've had this proliferation of evidence and
Speaker 1: research at the intersection of psychology, neuroscience, sociology, biology, pedagogy,
Speaker 1: and it tells us a couple of really important things. Firstly,
Speaker 1: it tells us that the prevalence of abuse and neglect
Speaker 1: and dysfunctional parenting is much more prevalent than we ever
Speaker 1: thought it was before. Across countries, between five and six
Speaker 1: out of ten of any given population have had at
Speaker 1: least one form of adverse to other experience, and between
Speaker 1: ten and tw have had four or more. And when
Speaker 1: we look at adults that have had four or more
Speaker 1: adverse to other experiences, we see that they do much
Speaker 1: worse throughout the course of life in terms of mental
Speaker 1: and physical health, in terms of learning and job outcomes,
Speaker 1: and also in terms of things like noncommunicable diseases, obesity, addiction,
Speaker 1: those kind of issues. So when researchers saw this, they
Speaker 1: realized it was a major social problem that was much
Speaker 1: bigger than we ever thought it was before. So they
Speaker 1: then began to work with neuroscientists and others to try
Speaker 1: and determine what explains this link between adverse childhood experiences
Speaker 1: and poor life outcomes, and they came up with the
Speaker 1: concept of toxic stress. We all have stress right before
Speaker 1: an interview. You can have stress. When you lose your
Speaker 1: wallet on the way to work, you can have stress.
Speaker 1: It's something that affects all of us. You know what
Speaker 1: happens to your body. You become tense, Adrenaline pumps through
Speaker 1: your body, and then when you find the wallet, your
Speaker 1: body comes down again. What happens with toxic stress. This
Speaker 1: is not the conditions in place to allow that calming
Speaker 1: down of the body. The threat is not something you
Speaker 1: can hide from or move away from, because the threat
Speaker 1: is at home. And for children, it's not just a
Speaker 1: threat to have the presence of violence. It's also a
Speaker 1: threat to have the absence of love. So children who
Speaker 1: are neglected have an activation or chronic activation of the
Speaker 1: stress response system. And these derails almost every single aspect
Speaker 1: of their fragile and fledgling development, including their cognitive and
Speaker 1: emotional development, but also their physical development. And I think
Speaker 1: the point is this is a theme that is to
Speaker 1: Boo and people don't necessarily talk about, but it's something
Speaker 1: that's very much experienced by everybody on some level. If
Speaker 1: people have not had adverse to other experiences themselves, they
Speaker 1: love somebody who has, or they leave next door to
Speaker 1: somebody who's still struggling with that. So this is very
Speaker 1: much a human store eat. So what we're trying to
Speaker 1: do with all of this is bring these very complex
Speaker 1: issues to the level of human understanding and to the
Speaker 1: conversation to make them policy relevant, because the good news
Speaker 1: is that we can actually end adverse to other experiences,
Speaker 1: we can end abuse and neglect in the world and
Speaker 1: reap huge benefits for society. UNISEF as a flagship report
Speaker 1: that we launch across the hundred ninety country offices that
Speaker 1: we have around the world in partnership with regional bodies
Speaker 1: like the EU World Health Organization, at the global level
Speaker 1: African Union, and it's the State of the World's Children Report,
Speaker 1: and this year, for the first time in our history,
Speaker 1: it's about mental health. One in seven adolescents is estimated
Speaker 1: to have what we call a mental health condition, that's
Speaker 1: ad lessons between the age of ten and ninety. Suicide
Speaker 1: is the fifth most prevalent cause of death adolescence after
Speaker 1: road injury, tuberculosis into personal violence. It's one of the
Speaker 1: leading causes of death for children of adolescence and according
Speaker 1: to some research that will be sharing when we launch
Speaker 1: the States of the World Children next week. The fifto
Speaker 1: year olds in twenty one countries self reported often feeling
Speaker 1: depressed or having little interest in doing things, and we
Speaker 1: think these are feelings that have been amplified by the
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen situation. COVID nineteen has certainly deepened inequalities on
Speaker 1: all aspects of child well being, including mental health. We
Speaker 1: know that school relationship with teachers, access to peer groups
Speaker 1: is a really important and very simple, straightforward protective factor
Speaker 1: for good mental health. We know that has affected children
Speaker 1: in situations of poverty and exclusion much greater than other
Speaker 1: sections of society. So we've been calling very passionately for
Speaker 1: schools to be reopened as soon as possible, and that's
Speaker 1: for three reasons. The first one is the learning gap
Speaker 1: is particularly hard to catch up for children in poverty,
Speaker 1: children affected by adverse child and experiences. Children whether in
Speaker 1: society is whether a racial, gender, or disability or other disparities. Secondly,
Speaker 1: we know that for children living in poverty, Things like school,
Speaker 1: nutrition and other services that come through school are really essential.
Speaker 1: And thirdly, we know the children that are a risk
Speaker 1: of violence and neglect or harmful practices such as early marriage, trafficking,
Speaker 1: and so on, are much more likely to be at
Speaker 1: risk when they can't attend school to our protection services
Speaker 1: are much less likely to be able to access them,
Speaker 1: and children who are living with abusive or neglectful parents
Speaker 1: have been locked up with those parents for quite a while.
Speaker 1: The mental health and the overall well being of children
Speaker 1: now returning to school is crucial, and that needs to
Speaker 1: be put at the heart of all the planning for
Speaker 1: that return. But it's also a moment for us to
Speaker 1: reimagine education. How can education systems end the inequalities that
Speaker 1: existed before the pandemic, the ones that have been worsened
Speaker 1: by the pandemic. How can we use this kind of
Speaker 1: global pause to really reimagine an education system where every
Speaker 1: child is connected, where every child has means of digital learning,
Speaker 1: and schools in which children can flourish and are not
Speaker 1: affected by learning poverty, and when they're able to build
Speaker 1: up the skill set to be able to have meaningful
Speaker 1: citizenship and to have awarding life of work when they leave.
Speaker 1: One of the challenges when you talk about mental health
Speaker 1: is the taboo and the confusion about the issue, the
Speaker 1: stigma and shame and what we've said with the state
Speaker 1: of the world's children and the On my Mind campaign
Speaker 1: is that we all have mental health at any given time.
Speaker 1: We all sit on a spectrum of mental health and
Speaker 1: in one should be okay to talk about it without shame.
Speaker 1: It's something that we all need to understand much more about,
Speaker 1: and it's something where we should be able to turn
Speaker 1: our attention away from judgment and towards solutions and how
Speaker 1: do we build our societies and our families and communities
Speaker 1: in ways that people can have good mental health and flourish.
Speaker 1: So the idea of On my Mind as a campaign
Speaker 1: is that we need to build to talk about what's
Speaker 1: on our mind. We need to be heard and to hear,
Speaker 1: to have the language to communicate about it. But we
Speaker 1: also need to recognize that this single biggest protective factor
Speaker 1: any person's mental health is to know that they are
Speaker 1: held in the mind and in the heart of another person,
Speaker 1: that their life is cherished, that they are valued, and
Speaker 1: then it matter as an individual and if we can
Speaker 1: ensure that every child on the planet has this message
Speaker 1: and has this understanding of self, and if we can
Speaker 1: make sure that every society is able to ensure that
Speaker 1: every child is valued and every family member is able
Speaker 1: to talk about mental health, then this is going to
Speaker 1: be a real game changer in the whole area of
Speaker 1: well being. I think there's three really important relationships I'm
Speaker 1: just going to highlight. The first one is pair parents.
Speaker 1: Parents have got to be able to keep the lines
Speaker 1: of communication open with understanding and empathy as children go
Speaker 1: through the very complex process of brain transformation that happens
Speaker 1: in adolescents, and parents need to be able to communicate
Speaker 1: with kids. Would also be supported to have the knowledge
Speaker 1: about what's going on, what's going on in terms of
Speaker 1: brain development, and what can you do to ensure a
Speaker 1: child is protected, avoids risk, dangerous risk, and flourishes. The
Speaker 1: second one is teachers and other community leaders, whether they
Speaker 1: be health workers, please or other people that they interact
Speaker 1: with young people. They need to make sure that young
Speaker 1: people are seen and safe and sooth, but also understood
Speaker 1: and listen to. So one of the things we're talking
Speaker 1: about in schools is that, for example, is a teacher
Speaker 1: needs to look at a class of fourteen year olds
Speaker 1: and recognize that a good proportion of those kids are
Speaker 1: going to be coming from difficult backgrounds, difficult home situations,
Speaker 1: and they are particularly at risk. But you never necessarily
Speaker 1: know who they are, So you need to provide supportive
Speaker 1: environment for all the children in the class, and to
Speaker 1: make sure that environment is psychologically safe and that the
Speaker 1: teachers emotionally and tuned and it's trauma informed. So we
Speaker 1: need to mainstream that in the way that teachers think
Speaker 1: about teaching, the way that schools think about school policy.
Speaker 1: And I think that kids don't learn if they don't
Speaker 1: feel connected to a teacher. The third important relationship is peers,
Speaker 1: because adolescents care much more about peer relationships than anything else.
Speaker 1: That's a normal part of adolescents. So we need to
Speaker 1: create healthy environments in which strong peer bonds can flourish,
Speaker 1: where risk behaviors such a is isolating kids from groups,
Speaker 1: and all of that is prevented and minimized, and children,
Speaker 1: to add lessons, have a space to grow and flourish safely.
Speaker 1: When you think about technology, what's really important is the
Speaker 1: other things in the kid's life. Technology is often a
Speaker 1: reflection of the other vulnerabilities the child has. That said,
Speaker 1: we also think that the social media platforms must ensure
Speaker 1: that safeguarding measures are in place to prevent things like
Speaker 1: bullying online pr isolation, which is a form of bullying.
Speaker 1: All of these things really need to be governed properly
Speaker 1: by the social media organizations. I think that that's really important.
Speaker 1: I think we have to also remember that the proliferation
Speaker 1: of social media and other technology took place so quickly
Speaker 1: that society didn't really adapt to keep up with it,
Speaker 1: and a lot of the vulnerability comes from that. So
Speaker 1: we need to have a very clear understanding of where
Speaker 1: responsibility sits. I go to many countries and a big
Speaker 1: question that people ask is about who's responsible for our
Speaker 1: children's safety online? And often parents think it's teachers, teachers
Speaker 1: think his parents. We need to have stronger collaboration between parents, teachers,
Speaker 1: and others to protect our kids. We work with such
Speaker 1: a wide set of partners. We work very closely with
Speaker 1: World Health Organization who like us sorry the U n
Speaker 1: Body so for example, together but What Health Organization UNITSEF
Speaker 1: will be launching a Call to action on Global Parenting
Speaker 1: support in November. We worked very closely with some private
Speaker 1: sector companies that are really interested in children. So we
Speaker 1: worked with Lego and Sesame Street, for example. These are
Speaker 1: very big partners important partnerships for us. But this is
Speaker 1: really in some ways very early on in a mental
Speaker 1: health journey for us, and we're hoping to expand those partnerships.
Speaker 1: So we hope to work even more closely with the
Speaker 1: wider range of private sector partners and to expand the
Speaker 1: networks of governments and academics coming together really around these
Speaker 1: very sharp focused calls to action, around parenting, investments in
Speaker 1: mental health, changing the conversation on mental health to really
Speaker 1: bring focus, because the problem that's happened in previous decades
Speaker 1: is a whole agender on mental health has been very fragmented.
Speaker 1: So we're trying to bring a range of partners together
Speaker 1: around that sharp focus and often people say this is
Speaker 1: just impossible, but you know, people said exactly the same
Speaker 1: thing about vaccines forty and fifty years ago. In two
Speaker 1: only t of the world's children under five were vaccinated
Speaker 1: against the major five Charter diseases. Those is easis were preventable,
Speaker 1: and when the world put its mind to it and
Speaker 1: massively increase the policy priority of vaccines. Within a decade,
Speaker 1: it increased dramatically reducing child mortality. What was a game
Speaker 1: changer there was to have a very sharp focus that
Speaker 1: every child would have vaccines and one or two other
Speaker 1: very simple health interventions, and that became a galvanizing force
Speaker 1: for transforming all aspects of child health. As a result
Speaker 1: of that investment, public health system strengthened, rural services for
Speaker 1: children strengthened. But it was that very sharp focus. I
Speaker 1: think when we talk about things like mental health and
Speaker 1: adverse childe experiences, which we have targets on for the
Speaker 1: sustainable development goals, it's hard to see progress for those
Speaker 1: targets unless we have a sharp focus on three or
Speaker 1: four or key caused to action, which you bring the
Speaker 1: full weight of the U N. Private sector, partner, governments,
Speaker 1: and civil society behind to really drive the agenda forward.
Speaker 1: We also have a word like force multiplier. We use
Speaker 1: the word accelerator. So when we say accelerator, we mean
Speaker 1: the thing that will massively speed up the campaign but
Speaker 1: also is likely to achieve the highest number of results
Speaker 1: and impacts for a very focused intervention. So for us,
Speaker 1: the four force multiplayers are the governments need to invest.
Speaker 1: They dramatically under invest. Mental health is thirty percent of
Speaker 1: the non fatal disease burden, but represents less than one
Speaker 1: percent of many governments overall health expenditure. In the content
Speaker 1: and of Africa, there is one mental health professional per
Speaker 1: hundred thousand population, so there needs to be a massive
Speaker 1: increase in spending. Second force multiplier for us is parenting.
Speaker 1: If we can get very minimum package of support to
Speaker 1: help parents learn some of the basics where needed, and
Speaker 1: also become more self aware as parents, that can transform
Speaker 1: the situation of children, prevent abuse and neglect. Certainly, schools
Speaker 1: where every chance is connected, has a sense of belonging
Speaker 1: and can access help enforcefully a transformed conversation. These are
Speaker 1: our four main force multipliers and mental health. I say
Speaker 1: to people who you know what you want your legacy
Speaker 1: to be? You know, do you want to contribute to results?
Speaker 1: Do you want to transform something? And if you do,
Speaker 1: you really need to focus on that. It's so easy
Speaker 1: in our careers to get locked up in process in bureaucracy.
Speaker 1: I advise people if they can, to cut out the
Speaker 1: noise and to go direct leave for that thing that
Speaker 1: will be a force multiplayer. I think the second thing
Speaker 1: is do what you love. When I work on recruitment,
Speaker 1: if the person is really passionate about the issue, you
Speaker 1: know they're going to perform. And thirdly, be flexible, you know,
Speaker 1: to have the ability to completely change career, to innovate
Speaker 1: and try new skill sets, because that's what keeps you
Speaker 1: young and fresh and engaged. In two thousand and two,
Speaker 1: we had this huge campaign in Afghanistan to try and
Speaker 1: get millions of kids back into school. We say back,
Speaker 1: but it was mainly for the first time for most
Speaker 1: of them. You know. We brought in millions of tents
Speaker 1: and school books and then often they had to be
Speaker 1: delivered to remote villages through donkeys and camel trains. It
Speaker 1: was an incredible, exhausting engagement. The first day of that
Speaker 1: new school. Yeah, to look out of your window and
Speaker 1: to see kids going to school for the first time
Speaker 1: in their life was amazing. So I'm going to then
Speaker 1: fast forward fifteen years later when I get a call
Speaker 1: from somebody at Oxford and they told me they were
Speaker 1: sitting next to somebody on their program and they told
Speaker 1: me about their life journey and how, you know, how
Speaker 1: they've learned in a tent and ended up in Oxford.
Speaker 1: That's the real reward of the job, you know, is
Speaker 1: knowing that this is really transforming lives. And I think
Speaker 1: that if things sometimes seem to go backwards, you know,
Speaker 1: in terms of children's rights, often it's a momentary thing,
Speaker 1: the thing that you've invested, I believe it stays and
Speaker 1: it remains. I hope that UNI Sev's legacy, wherever it is,
Speaker 1: never ends, because if you invest in children, that continues
Speaker 1: to come back in return, generation after generation. There's so
Speaker 1: much unacknowledged hurt in the world. We see it in
Speaker 1: children around the world through organizations like UNI SEF and
Speaker 1: what Benjamin is working on. We see it in many
Speaker 1: American communities, but especially the Black community, these trauma that
Speaker 1: we have not been shown a way to acknowledge or
Speaker 1: talk about. But there are weights, and there are people
Speaker 1: like Benjamin and people like Charlemagne, the network of folks
Speaker 1: that they work with who are helping us see that
Speaker 1: a love child shows up to school ready to learn
Speaker 1: and to love. As Benjamin shared, that a healed person
Speaker 1: can show up with more graceful another person and be
Speaker 1: a part of their healing the way Charlemagne said undoing
Speaker 1: that trope that is too true that hurt people hurt people.
Speaker 1: So we've got so many places to start around the
Speaker 1: world and in our neighborhoods. Please find a resource for
Speaker 1: you near you, and contribute to one for somebody else.
Speaker 1: We do this better when we do it together. Thanks
Speaker 1: for tuning in, Thanks for listening to another great conversation
Speaker 1: how we can multiply our force. Do you want to
Speaker 1: dig in more on today's guests and the work they're doing,
Speaker 1: or maybe you want to understand what action you can
Speaker 1: take in your community. Either way, go to salesforce dot
Speaker 1: org slash force multiplier. That's one word, force multiplier. Force
Speaker 1: Multiplier is a production of I Heart Radio and Salesforce
Speaker 1: dot Org hosted by me Barritton Day Thurston. It's executive
Speaker 1: produced by Elizabeth Stewart, produced by Von Chien, and engineered,
Speaker 1: edited and mixed by James Foster. Join us next time
Speaker 1: for more stories of how we can change the world,
Speaker 1: one relationship at a time. Listen to Force Multiplier on
Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcast. M HM