Suicide Prevention: Frank King’s Mission of Healing through Humor

[00:00:00] Dr. Brad Miller: And we're pleased today to have Frank King with us. Frank is a long-time stand-up comedian. He has been on Dry Bar Comedy. He has done a number of TED Talks. He was a former writer for Jay Leno on The Tonight Show, and he's here with us today. Frank, thanks for being with us here on Cancer and Comedy. Appreciate it.

[00:00:28] Frank King: I am delighted to be here. I must say I was also on the original Star Search with Ed McMahon. I won two episodes and then I lost to a puppet.

[00:00:38] Dr. Brad Miller: How about that? Oh man, we could probably go down that rabbit hole for a long time there, man. I didn’t know that part of things, but the original Star Search, that goes back a ways.

[00:00:49] Dr. Brad Miller: I used to watch that, and that is awesome. But nowadays, you travel the country. You and I got to meet at a conference a while back. You are a longtime experienced comedian, and I am a former pastor who's tried his hand at comedy a little bit. The very first time I ever tried stand-up comedy, I was following you! So, you were a tough act to follow, but here we are, live to tell the tale.

[00:01:30] Dr. Brad Miller: You're now the Mental Health Comedian, but you also focus on suicide prevention speaking and training. Those things don’t seem to go together. Let’s just talk about that a little bit. How did you get from where you were and all that we talked about, to where you are now—a suicide prevention speaker, trainer, and comedian?

[00:01:37] Frank King: Well, I started comedy in the fourth grade. I told a joke, kids laughed, and the teacher was hysterical. Nine years old, I decided I was going to be a stand-up comedian. In 12th grade, I did the talent show and won. Of course, I beat the accordion player and the folk dancers, so it wasn’t a tough victory. I wanted to go to L.A. right away and do stand-up, but my mom said, “No, you’re going to college first. I don’t care what you do when you get done. You can be a goat herder for all I care, but you’re going to be a goat herder with a college degree.”

[00:02:04] Frank King: So, I went to UNC Chapel Hill, got a couple of college degrees, and then bolted for the West Coast. There was a Comedy Store branch in San Diego. That’s where I started.

[00:02:13] Dr. Brad Miller: Okay.

[00:02:14] Frank King: April 1, 1984. First five minutes on stage, halfway through my set, I heard a voice in my head that said, “You’re home.”

[00:02:21] Dr. Brad Miller: It was for you, huh?

[00:02:22] Frank King: Yes, 18 months later, I said to my girlfriend—now my wife of 37 years—“I’m going on the road to do stand-up. Want to come along for the ride?” Figured she’d say no. She goes, “Yeah.” So, we gave up the apartment, our jobs, jumped into my tiny Dodge Colt, and we were on the road together—2,629 nights in a row non-stop, no home—that’s seven years and change.

[00:02:44] Frank King: I did a little radio in my old hometown of Raleigh, North Carolina, and as with most radio people, got fired. There are two kinds of people, Brad, in radio: people who’ve been fired and people who are going to be fired.

[00:02:56] Dr. Brad Miller: I’ve been there, done that myself, my friend.

[00:02:58] Frank King: Yeah. And the comedy club thing—the boom had busted. So, since I had a clean act, I thought, “Well, I’ll do corporate comedy.”

[00:03:06] Frank King: A friend of mine said, “What’s the difference between a club comic and a corporate comic?” Well, I found out: it’s $5,000 a night plus travel. I’m no math major, Brad, but that made sense to me. So, I rode that horse until 2007, the end of 2007—best year ever, grossed over $200,000 telling jokes. And then the bottom dropped out of the world economy. Speaking of comedy, dropped off 80% overnight. We lost everything in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

[00:03:36] Dr. Brad Miller: Are you talking about the economy as a whole dropping out? Or just you personally? Was that the big crisis of the late 2000s?

[00:03:44] Frank King: Yeah, the recession of 2007.

[00:03:44] Dr. Brad Miller: Okay.

[00:03:44] Frank King: Right. It wasn’t my fault. I think Goldman Sachs had a little something to do with it, and Washington Mutual Bank. But we lost everything in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, and that’s when I learned what the barrel of my gun tasted like—literally.

[00:04:05] Dr. Brad Miller: Okay. All right.

[00:04:07] Frank King: Spoiler alert for your audience: I did not pull the trigger.

[00:04:07] Dr. Brad Miller: Oh my goodness. Okay, so...

[00:04:14] Frank King: I came up with a keynote recently, and the guy had never heard me say, “I didn’t pull the trigger.” And he said, and I quote, “Hey man, how come you didn’t pull that trigger?” I said, “Hey man, because you're trying to sound funny. That’s disappointing.”

[00:04:29] Frank King: So, here you are.

[00:04:35] Frank King: That’s where the funny is, Brad, in suicide. No jokes, nothing to joke about, but funny personal anecdotes.

[00:04:41] Dr. Brad Miller: Yeah.

[00:04:41] Frank King: I’d been a comic for two and a half decades. When meetings and conferences came back, the speaker bureau said to me, “Frank, we love you. We just can’t pay you five grand anymore just to be funny. You’ve got to teach the audience something.” I had no idea what. I’d always wanted to make a living and a difference, but I had no idea what I had to teach.

[00:04:53] Frank King: A friend of mine, Judy Carter—if you’re looking to be a speaker, buy her book, it’s called The Message of You: Turn Your Life Into a Moneymaking Speaking Career. She gave me a copy of it. She said, “Read it. You’ll figure it out.” I went into it, Brad, thinking, “I’ve got nothing.” Halfway through, I thought, “Oh my Lord, I do have something to talk about, to teach.” Given that depression and suicide run in my family—my grandmother, my great aunt, my mother—it’s called generational depression and suicide.

[00:05:14] Frank King: More nuts in my family, Brad, than in a squirrel turd.

[00:05:17] Dr. Brad Miller: Oh my gosh.

[00:05:17] Frank King: Given that I came close to suicide and I live with two mental illnesses, I thought, “If I get some training, I can keynote on suicide prevention.” Second hurdle—who’s going to take me seriously after two and a half decades of stand-up comedy? So my wife said, “Do a TEDx.” I said, “What’s a TEDx?” That was 12 TEDx’s ago, by the way.

[00:05:38] Dr. Brad Miller: Wow.

[00:05:39] Frank King: I got an application in the mail from one in Vancouver, BC. I sent it in, I got an audition, and I booked it. And that TEDx actually garnered me two more. A couple of TEDx organizers saw it, called me, and said, “Do you have any more mental health topics?” Oh yeah. So, I’ve done 12—number 13 is booked for January.

[00:06:00] Dr. Brad Miller: Wow, that is awesome! Well, that kind of led you to what you’re doing now as the Mental Health Comedian. So, let’s go back to what seems to be the seminal moment of all this. What I’m picking up on is that you mentioned how you had suicide tragedy in your life and family, and as you said, your friend was disappointed—but you weren’t kidding. You had a gun in your mouth at one time.

[00:06:27] Dr. Brad Miller: This is the grim part. We talk about that on my podcast, the grim parts of life. We talk about people being diagnosed with cancer and other bad things. Then, how do they get turned around? You were kidding around with your buddy about it, but what did keep you from pulling the trigger? What were some of the aspects there that eventually led you to take a different track?

[00:06:54] Frank King: Well, very practical reason I didn’t pull the trigger: I sold insurance right out of college, and I had a million-dollar life insurance policy.

[00:07:02] Dr. Brad Miller: Okay.

[00:07:02] Frank King: But I knew that there was a 24-month waiting period. It's called a suicide clause. So I called my insurance agent and asked him how long I'd had the policy, hoping it was past 24 months. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I'd only had the policy for 22 months. I had to wait two months to kill myself. That's why I'm sitting here today.

[00:07:19] Dr. Brad Miller: So you were literally thinking about your wife or any other heirs. Is that what you were thinking about at the time?

[00:07:23] Frank King: Yes. In suicidality, a lot of people don't know this, but in suicidality, there's something called burdensomeness. You feel like the world would be better off without you. And I knew my wife would be better off without me financially.

[00:07:36] Frank King: I was worth more dead than alive, Brad. Right. So oftentimes, you know, people will say,

[00:07:42] Dr. Brad Miller: "If I'm just not here." Yeah, weren't—

[00:07:44] Frank King: Weren't they thinking about their relatives? Oftentimes, they are thinking about their friends, their relatives, the world. I figured the world would be better. It's irrational, but the world would be better off without me.

[00:07:53] Dr. Brad Miller: Sure.

[00:07:54] Frank King: But fortunately, I guess I had two months to wait. So I thought, well, I can wait two months.

[00:07:59] Dr. Brad Miller: Yeah, you know, so here you are. So, yep. Let me ask you that. What was that scene like? You're going through, you're playing this through in your mind. Was there any other aspect that just is vivid to you about that experience?

[00:08:16] Dr. Brad Miller: Like the smell, the view—were you outside? Were you inside? Was there an emotion that was going through there? Or was this kind of just a maze or a malaise or something like that? Was there any aspect that was vivid for you?

[00:08:31] Frank King: Well, there are eight—eight out of 10 people on average—eight out of 10 are ambivalent about suicide.

[00:08:37] Frank King: They can't make up their mind. Nine out of 10 give hints in the last week leading up to the attempt. I fell into neither of those groups. I had no doubt. I was not ambivalent, and I didn't give anybody any hints. Somebody asked me one time after a show, "You learned what the taste of the barrel of your gun was like. What did it taste like?" I said, "Relief."

[00:08:55] Dr. Brad Miller: Hmm.

[00:08:59] Frank King: Because a lot of people don't understand that most people who die by suicide don't really want to die. They simply want to end the pain. I didn't want to die; I just wanted to end the pain.

[00:09:09] Dr. Brad Miller: So there you are in that situation. You're there. You've also had these experiences with your family, and so you've got depression, you've got suicide ideation.

[00:09:19] Dr. Brad Miller: So that means something else has to happen after that.

[00:09:23] Frank King: Well, I wasn't going to get paid anymore to speak unless I could come up with something to teach people, which I'd wanted to do for years. I wanted to make a living and a difference. I just could never figure out what I had to teach.

[00:09:34] Dr. Brad Miller: Right.

[00:09:35] Frank King: Then it became patently obvious. As I mentioned, my grandmother died by suicide. My mom found her. My great aunt died by suicide. My mom and I found her. I was four years old. I screamed for days. So not only near suicide but also a suicide survivor several times. So, you know, people ask me, "How'd you decide to speak about suicide? How'd you pick that as a topic?" Well, the topic actually picked me.

[00:09:58] Dr. Brad Miller: Sure.

[00:09:58] Frank King: You know, it's in my DNA. So it just seems that my formula for speakers, Brad, is: take your pain, turn it into passion, your passion into purpose, and your purpose into profit.

[00:10:13] Dr. Brad Miller: Yes.

[00:10:13] Frank King: Speak on it. Go out there and change and save lives.

[00:10:17] Dr. Brad Miller: You're using the formula of humor to deal with it.

[00:10:17] Dr. Brad Miller: And there might be some folks who might say, "Oh man, Frank, I don't know. You know, I know you're a comedian by background, but is suicide really properly addressed with humor?" Now, there's such a thing as dark humor, of course, and there's silly humor—dad jokes. That's kind of my thing. Dad jokes, what have you.

[00:10:35] Dr. Brad Miller: But tell me, kind of break it down for me, as a kind of comedic, breaking it down a little bit. What was the reason for the format of humor, and what kind of humor do you use? Do you use dark humor? Do you use anecdotes? Tell me how you twist this around to make it something different.

[00:10:51] Frank King: Oh, very dark anecdotes. It's, you know, as I mentioned before, it's not a joking subject, but with funny personal stories and anecdotes. And there's a psychological principle: if you're going to tell somebody something serious, and you give them a little comic relief after that, their brain is much better prepared for the next piece of serious business.

[00:11:12] Frank King: People have asked me, does being a comedian keep you from getting booked to talk about suicide prevention? No, you've got it backwards. They want the lived experience. They want the teaching, the learning. And the fact that I can leaven that with organic, well-placed, tasteful humor... In my first TEDx talk, my first joke in my first TEDx talk was, "Well, I went to TED.com to see how other people handled the topic of suicide, figuring there'd be two, three dozen talks." There were three, only three. And then I said to the audience, "Well, duh, you're not going to be recording a TEDx talk..." Yeah. And they started laughing. They realized it was going to be a little different. So, you know, if you can just do that... Now, if I didn’t have two mental illnesses, I could never get away with that.

[00:11:57] Frank King: But in comedy, there's a rule: you can make fun of any group to which you belong. Yes. So I'm double qualified in that sense. You know, and it's... it's... and I... The other thing—humor and vulnerability. Going on stage as a man and saying that I live with mental illness, I came close to suicide... Men tend not to talk about those things.

[00:12:22] Frank King: That's why eight out of 10 suicides in the U.S. right now are men. That's part of the reason—men don't reach out.

[00:12:28] Dr. Brad Miller: Yeah, they’re tough, you know...

[00:12:30] Frank King: Yeah, they don't want to have that stigma.

[00:12:30] Dr. Brad Miller: You know, I think that's a whole 'nother thing we could talk about, is the stigma of mental health. Some figures, like a public figure... Somebody that comes to my mind is Robin Williams, who was a comedian, and there are some others—Anthony Bourdain. There's a bunch of people in the public eye who've taken their own lives. But, you know, a lot of people kind of think, "Well, why did they do that? They had everything else going for them."

[00:12:56] Dr. Brad Miller: So what do you... What do you make of that? That kind of stigma that people have—why would they do that when they’ve got everything going for them?

[00:13:03] Frank King: Well, it goes back to... Chances are, they didn’t want to kill themselves. They just wanted simply to end the pain. I worked with Robin Williams for a couple of shows in San Diego when he was down there filming a movie.

[00:13:15] Frank King: Nice guy. I believe he was living with bipolar disorder. Yeah. He never mentioned that on stage. He talked about his drug addiction, treatment, and recovery often, sure, at length, but never said anything about depression or thoughts of suicide. In part, I believe, because in LA and Hollywood, if they're going to make a movie and you’re going to star in it, you’ve got to get life insurance so the production company can, you know, recover their losses if something happens to you for any reason. And if you tell the insurance agent you're depressed and having thoughts of suicide, you might not get that policy. So I’m guessing that’s one of the reasons Robin kept that part of it to himself.

[00:13:50] Dr. Brad Miller: Yeah, there's a lot of layers to all this, isn’t there? The legal stuff... Well, you've mentioned insurance before, and I know, in one sense, you might say, well, that's kind of odd, can you be thinking about...

[00:14:02] Frank King: The important thing to be aware of is, again, that eight out of 10 people are ambivalent. Nine give hints, which means you don’t have to be a mental health professional to save a life. You can make a difference, you can save a life, anybody can, by doing something as simple as this—having a conversation, if you know how. And that’s what I teach people: how to spot the signs and symptoms of depression, thoughts of suicide, and so forth. So I’m empowering the audience to save people.

[00:14:26] Dr. Brad Miller: Yeah. Who saved your life, Frank? Who stepped in to help you?

[00:14:29] Frank King: My insurance agent, when he told me...

[00:14:36] Dr. Brad Miller: There you go, man.

[00:14:36] Frank King: I was not going to leave my wife brokenhearted and broke. So I had to wait 60 days. You know, if I was going to do it, I was going to make sure she got...

[00:14:45] Dr. Brad Miller: Let's talk about your wife for a second, if you're okay with that. How did she—how did the dynamic with her work out in this whole process? Was she aware of your suicide ideation?

[00:14:56] Frank King: She was aware that I struggled, but I don't think she was aware that I was living with major depressive disorder and chronic suicidal ideation until I did that first TEDx talk and came out on stage and stated those facts. And it's... I think you should share that with anybody you know, love, and trust.

[00:15:13] Frank King: That way, they can be there for you when things begin to, you know, spiral out of control. She has a wonderful sense of humor. She knows one of my triggers from my depression is disappointing her. So she'll make fun. I'll say, "Honey, you know, I'm sorry I did that. That was stupid. Are you, are you mad?" She'll go, "No, honey, I'm not mad. I'm disappointed."

[00:15:33] Dr. Brad Miller: Shoot you right through the heart, man. I could tell that one. So...

[00:15:41] Frank King: When I was spiraling downward—'cause it's a cycle, it's like a three-day cycle every now and then for me—I spiral down the first day, flatten out the second, and come back the third. I'll let her know I'm spiraling down so she doesn't think I'm angry with her, just by the look on my face or...

[00:15:56] Dr. Brad Miller: Yeah. So it sounded like at least a couple of people were important to you—your wife there. You even mentioned your insurance agent. I take it at face value that that's there. Have there been people in your life that you know you've been helpful to? Maybe in a show or maybe interpersonally? That you know you've been able to, in a way, say something that saved their life?

[00:16:16] Frank King: Oh yeah. It's one of the reasons that I don't kill myself—because of the people that I help. I feel like George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life.

[00:16:26] Dr. Brad Miller: What a great movie.

[00:16:27] Frank King: Because I meet people after the shows, and no... I think if I were to kill myself... We're not there just to be vulnerable, you know, share my story, because people line up oftentimes after I get done. I set aside an extra 30 to 45 minutes for individual stories once I'm done. I was on site at a construction company in Cincinnati. After I got done, there's a line—a half-dozen guys. Unusual; not many guys come forward with this kind of stuff. The last guy in line was a nice Black gentleman, probably mid-twenties. He was crying so hard he couldn't speak.

[00:17:01] Frank King: So I waited. When he gathered himself, I said, "What's up?" He said, "Well, I haven't slept in two nights. I work on the fifth floor of this building. I think about jumping off every day." I said, "Why is that?" He said, "Because I've lost three people close to me in the last year to violence, including my daughter, who died in my arms."

[00:17:22] Frank King: The gentleman who hired me was the HR manager. He was standing not far away. I waved him over. I said, "Look, you need to take this nice young man by the hand, go get the employee assistance program binder, find the nearest mental health facility, and get him there for evaluation immediately because he's circling the drain."

[00:17:41] Frank King: A couple of months later, I had occasion to talk to the HR manager again. I didn't want to ask—I was terrified to ask—but finally worked up my courage. "How about that nice Black guy, Frank?" He was evaluated. He was medicated. He's back on the job.

[00:17:53] Dr. Brad Miller: Right.

[00:17:55] Frank King: All right. My goal, Brad, is to save a life a day. And that was my life—my life-saving that day, I guess.

[00:18:01] Dr. Brad Miller: You mentioned there about how there's these niches of people that seem to have certain pressures. You know, I think it's cool and a little bit unusual that it may be, in my mind at least, for a construction company to have a comedian come in and do a show.

[00:18:15] Dr. Brad Miller: But I know colleges have comedy shows a lot, corporate things do a lot, I'm sure. And then, you know, in the world that we talk about here on this show, people with cancer and other debilitating diseases are people who deal with a depressed state a lot. Are you seeing some tracks or some commonality among various groups of people that you've been a part of? Are there any kind of common signs that we can be looking for—any stresses for a college student, for instance, or someone with cancer?

[00:18:46] Frank King: Well, the signs of depression... a couple of—I think the top three in my mind: one is eating too much, can't eat, sleeping too much, can't sleep, having trouble getting out of bed in the morning. So they're often late for school or work but then rally in the afternoon like a different person. And one you can observe visually: they let their personal hygiene go.

[00:19:06] Frank King: Normally, they're pretty well put together, but this day, the next day, their clothes are kind of dirty. Hair's not quite so clean. It may be because they're having trouble getting out of bed in the morning, running a little wash, taking a shower. So the question comes up: what do you say to somebody you believe is depressed?

[00:19:22] Frank King: Well, let's start with what you don't say. "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps." "Turn that frown upside down." "Have you tried fish oil?" Fish oil. At which point I go from suicidal to homicidal, by the way.

[00:19:32] Dr. Brad Miller: Yeah, there you go.

[00:19:34] Frank King: And if they admit they're depressed, or you suspect it, go with your gut. You have to ask them in no uncertain terms, and that's it. "Are you having thoughts of suicide?"

[00:19:44] Dr. Brad Miller: So just be straight up. Be really straight with them. No, don't try to nuance it or whatever. Just be straight up.

[00:19:49] Frank King: Yes. There's an old wives' tale that you should never mention the S-word in front of somebody who's depressed because it might give them the idea—like it never crossed my mind. The reverse is actually true. If you mention it, they're less likely to die by suicide. Let's say they deny they're having thoughts of suicide, but you suspect. How would you know? Well, they often talk about death and dying. You catch them Googling death and dying or how to die by suicide.

[00:20:15] Dr. Brad Miller: Sure.

[00:20:16] Frank King: They are getting their personal affairs in order, especially if they're giving away prized possessions because they want to make sure the possessions go to the persons they want them to go to when they're gone.

[00:20:26] Dr. Brad Miller: Yeah.

[00:20:27] Frank King: Gathering the means. Stockpiling medication or buying a firearm. And here's one that's counterintuitive but very dangerous: they've been depressed for a long time, and now they're happy for no apparent reason.

[00:20:40] Frank King: They may be happy because they've chosen time, place, and method, and they know the pain is coming to an end.

[00:20:48] Dr. Brad Miller: So they're on the high, so to speak, and they know that they're not going to go to the low. Okay.

[00:20:54] Frank King: Yes. And so at that point, if you suspect, or they tell you they're having thoughts of suicide, you say, "Do you have a plan?"

[00:21:02] Frank King: If they have a plan, ask, "What is your plan?" And if it's detailed—time, place, and method—you need to do your best to get them to a mental health facility. At the very least, get them on the phone to 988, the new three-digit Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

[00:21:16] Dr. Brad Miller: Okay.

[00:21:16] Frank King: Now, here's one that's not in the books—nothing I've ever read, no courses I've ever taken mention this—but what if they have a plan but it's not particularly detailed? What I would do is, I would say, "Okay, are you going to kill yourself?" And if they said no, I would say, "Okay, tell me why not." Make them give voice to whatever's... something that's keeping them here.

[00:21:40] Dr. Brad Miller: All right, so engage in a conversation. Engage them in the conversation.

[00:21:47] Frank King: Yeah, it can be as simple as a conversation if you know how and what to look for. And now you do, so.

[00:21:52] Dr. Brad Miller: Yeah. Yeah, and that whole process, it sounds like also another aspect I'm hearing from you here, Frank—you tell me if I'm on track or not—is you, it doesn't do any good if you freak out either, if you panic, you know. But you need to still be an action taker and not be in denial either. You need, you know, I don't think it helps if you go off the handle, you know, and cry or, you know, whatever.

[00:22:18] Frank King: No, I'd say, look, you know, if you're going to have a conversation with somebody about this, make sure you're in a good place mentally and physically. Don't go in with the flu. And be prepared for things that would ordinarily freak you out, but you don't want to overreact.

[00:22:36] Frank King: Make sure you don't have another appointment backed up against it, so you're looking at your watch.

[00:22:42] Dr. Brad Miller: Yeah. You want to be engaged. You want to be able to have that engaged conversation basically, however long it takes. Right? I mean, and in some cases you may need to be the person, you know, I'll just extrapolate some of my experiences.

[00:22:57] Dr. Brad Miller: You may need to be the person who says, "Okay, you're not going home tonight. You need to stay. I'm going to put you up in a hotel. I'm going to take you to my place," or whatever the action would be.

[00:23:08] Frank King: Also, I believe you should meet them where they are philosophically and religiously.

[00:23:13] Dr. Brad Miller: Yes. Okay. Say more about that. You apparently have had some sort of experience, either negative or something that has led you there.

[00:23:21] Frank King: Yes. My next-door neighbor said to me, after he learned I had come close to killing myself, he said, "You know, if you'd killed yourself, you'd have gone to hell."

[00:23:30] Dr. Brad Miller: Oh my God.

[00:23:30] Frank King: I said, "What you don't know is I was already there."

[00:23:33] Dr. Brad Miller: So now—

[00:23:34] Frank King: If the person you're talking to firmly believes that, then share that. But if they don't, you know, don't layer your religiosity and your philosophy on top of theirs. Meet them where they are. Now, let's say I'm not particularly religious. However, I would always ask, "Well, are you strong in Christ?"

[00:23:51] Frank King: "Oh yeah, I go to church every Sunday, Bible study on Wednesdays." I'd say, "What do you say, you, me, and your minister get together, form a little team, see if we can't conquer this?" I leverage whatever it takes that they are, you know. I mean, faith can be a very powerful force if they are firm in their faith.

[00:24:08] Dr. Brad Miller: Yeah. But it can also be, unfortunately, a not helpful weapon if it's weaponized as well. And that's sometimes what happens here, is what you're describing. And I just said, you know, I'm a retired pastor. I'll say that. I'm sorry that happened to you. I've seen that type of thing happen way too much.

[00:24:25] Dr. Brad Miller: Way too much. It's just flat out not helpful to anybody involved. You mentioned the concepts of tribe and vacuum, and I think you've kind of touched about here a little bit of some of our conversation. Can you describe what you mean by those terms and how they apply to this conversation?

[00:24:42] Frank King: My tribe is people who live with mental illness and for whom the option of suicide is always on the menu as a solution for problems large and small.

[00:24:50] Frank King: And I tell the audience, when I say small, my car broke down a couple of years ago. I had three thoughts unbidden. One, get it fixed. Two, buy a new one. Three, I could just kill myself.

[00:24:58] Dr. Brad Miller: Yeah, that's—which, on the surface for a lot of people, makes zero sense, but I'm sure to you and people in your tribe, it made perfect sense.

[00:25:07] Dr. Brad Miller: Is that a fair assessment of that?

[00:25:09] Frank King: Oh, yes. And almost every time I've spoken, Brad, since 2014, there's been at least one person in the audience who has chronic suicidal ideation. They have no idea it has a name. They think they're just some kind of freak and completely alone. I had a young woman come up after a college show and said, "Thanks for your keynote."

[00:25:26] Frank King: I said, "You're welcome." She goes, "But I gotta tell you, it made me weep." I said, "It made you weep?" She goes, "You know the story about the car? Get it fixed, buy a new one, kill yourself. I've been having those thoughts all my life. I thought that was just me. I was some kind of freak. And when I heard you say that you live with that, I realized for the first time in my life that I'm not, in fact, alone, and I wept." That's the power of telling that story.

[00:25:50] Dr. Brad Miller: Yeah. Yeah. So that, I'm sorry, just reminds me a little bit of a guy I knew who was in law enforcement years ago. We were talking about the death rate, how the death rate among young people is highest for accidents. But he was kind of hypothesizing that a lot of one-car accidents are people who, you know, they’re 18, 19 years old, they broke up with a girlfriend or whatever it is, and, you know, ran off the road or whatever it was. I don’t know. Yeah, who knows? But it just makes you wonder how those instantaneous decisions can come into play here.

[00:26:23] Frank King: Man, if you have chronic suicidal ideation and you're listening to me right now, then that sounds very familiar because that's one of the symptoms.

[00:26:30] Frank King: Driving down the highway, you see a bridge abutment up ahead, think to yourself, you know, I could just turn the wheel a little bit. Even if you're not depressed, the thought crosses your mind.

[00:26:39] Dr. Brad Miller: Just take care of it right then.

[00:26:41] Frank King: Yeah, yeah, that would do it.

[00:26:47] Frank King: So that's my tribe. And a vacuum—the vacuum I found was even though one person in the U.S. dies every nine minutes of suicide, and every 40 seconds worldwide, hardly anybody talks about it unless you bring it up. And then almost everybody—

[00:26:58] Dr. Brad Miller: Yeah, everybody has a story. That's what I found as well.

[00:27:07] Dr. Brad Miller: Let’s talk the nuance for just a second. Maybe it’s a part of your experience, maybe not. We talked a lot about mental health and mental conditions here.

[00:27:07] Dr. Brad Miller: Have you had much experience with people who deal with physical illness, you know, cancer or other things like that? You know, there are statistics that show when people have that, trauma happens in their life, whether it’s an injury or a disease, the likelihood of suicide ideation does go up. Has this been a part of your experience at all with some of the people you’ve encountered?

[00:27:29] Frank King: Yes, I’ve had two aortic valve replacements, a double bypass, a heart attack, and three stents. And oftentimes in my first heart surgery, my first aortic valve job in ’95, I was terribly depressed. I mean, beyond what I’d normally be depressed.

[00:27:45] Dr. Brad Miller: Right.

[00:27:47] Frank King: So that second, my second one, my wife said she kept waiting for me to get depressed.

[00:27:51] Frank King: I never got depressed. Maybe the drugs have gotten better. But yeah, chronic illness, chronic pain—chronic pain is a great source of depression. Depression is the number one source of people dying by suicide.

[00:28:04] Dr. Brad Miller: Yeah.

[00:28:05] Frank King: And, and I think we talked about this off the air—caregivers.

[00:28:12] Frank King: Yes.

[00:28:12] Frank King: Stressful. The rate of suicide among caregivers is higher than just the average human being who’s not caring for someone.

[00:28:20] Dr. Brad Miller: Yeah, right.

[00:28:20] Dr. Brad Miller: The people who are in that highly intense environment, you know, either you’re dealing with it every day whether it’s the health situation or you’re dealing with the care of it. As a former pastor, I’ve seen my share of that. And I’ve seen it more than once where the caregiver got sick and even died before the person who was ill.

[00:28:42] Frank King: Seventy percent of caregivers over the age of 70 die before the person they’re caring for.

[00:28:47] Frank King: Seventy percent.

[00:28:49] Dr. Brad Miller: Well, getting back to humor just for a second as we kind of bring us around here. How can humor be interjected, perhaps, into—you know, you as a comedian, that’s kind of your job, your career—to interject a little, you know, humor, dark or whatever it is, into this situation? Are there ways or methodologies, perhaps, that could be used to be helpful?

[00:29:10] Frank King: It’s supposed to be the best medicine and there’s no copay or deductible. So that’s how you go.

[00:29:10] Frank King: Yeah, I, you know, people ask me if my comedy was sort of self-medication, and that’s not the case. Part of me is I was born funny, and I was born with depression and thoughts of suicide, just all in my DNA.

[00:29:32] Frank King: So it was never—I never did that to assuage my other, you know, my negative feelings, my suicidality or my depression. If you can find something to laugh at, you know, sometimes the absurdity of things, if you can keep a sense of humor about you, dark—

[00:29:43] Frank King: And I’ve found, you know, people living with cancer, getting treated for cancer, often very dark humor.

[00:29:58] Dr. Brad Miller: Sure.

[00:29:59] Frank King: I think that may be, in fact, to lighten the load for the others around them.

[00:30:04] Dr. Brad Miller: Right, right.

[00:30:05] Frank King: I do that. When I had my heart attack, I was in the little—I went to the— The great thing about a heart attack in the hospital is when you get there, if you have a heart attack, there’s no waiting. So they rolled me back into my own little triage unit.

[00:30:18] Frank King: Now, bear in mind, I’m having a massive heart attack. The nurse said to me, “I’ve got to ask you one question.” Through the pain, Brad, I said, “I’m married, but I love the way you think.”

[00:30:33] Frank King: Laugh. Yeah. No, Frank, your full name is Frank Marshall King the Third, but what do you like to recall through the pain, Brad? I said, “Big Daddy, Big Daddy.” There you go. What I’m doing is I’m trying to make her comfortable, even though I’m—then they gave me some Dilaudid and I couldn’t care less.

[00:30:52] Frank King: You—

[00:30:52] Dr. Brad Miller: You were out of it, you know.

[00:30:53] Frank King: I’d be like, “Hey, give me a six-pack of that, I’ll go home.”

[00:30:57] Dr. Brad Miller: There you go.

[00:30:58] Frank King: Yeah, so it’s—comics, I’m in the business of making people feel comfortable.

[00:31:06] Dr. Brad Miller: That’s awesome. Do you ever— I know most of the comedians I know are constantly writing and working on stuff.

[00:31:12] Dr. Brad Miller: Have you ever written or come up with, like, a dark humor joke that you thought, “Okay, this one’s funny, but, you know, I just can’t go there. I just can’t go there yet”?

[00:31:22] Frank King: Oh, absolutely. Those just occur to me, Brad. The good, clean ones you can do for everybody take a lot of work, but dark or dirty jokes just pop into my pointy little head.

[00:31:35] Frank King: And you know what? Comics share them with each other. Yeah, I’ll call a guy and go, “Look, I’ve got to tell somebody this.” There you go.

[00:31:42] Dr. Brad Miller: There you go. There you go.

[00:31:52] Dr. Brad Miller: But hey, it’s a pleasure to be with you. I want to get one more thing out of you here before we let you go. And that is, what is your call to action?

[00:31:52] Dr. Brad Miller: You know, what is the word you want to give, Frank, to—

[00:31:56] Frank King: Well, I would—you’ve got a family name, young person or otherwise. I wouldn’t say, “But you’ve got so much to live for,” because as somebody who lives with chronic suicidal ideation, that doesn’t put a dent in it. It’s not situational like that. What I would say is to somebody who’s thinking they’d be better off without you, that you’re a burden—

[00:32:19] Frank King: And in no uncertain terms, we would never be better off without you, and you are not a burden. So you join the conversation in their head, because they’re thinking they’d be better off without me, I’m a burden. So join the conversation and just tell them flat out, “You’re not a burden and we would never be better off without you.”

[00:32:39] Dr. Brad Miller: Well, thanks for sharing that. How can folks learn more about you, what you’re all about with your comedy and other things regarding mental health and suicide prevention? How can people get connected with you?

[00:32:50] Frank King: MentalHealthComedian.com

[00:32:53] Dr. Brad Miller: MentalHealthComedian.com. And I know you’ve also mentioned the suicide hotline of some sort. I want to make sure we get that out there as well. It was 988.

[00:33:01] Frank King: 988. It’s a new three-digit number. It’s been about a year. New three-digit number. And it’s a text line as well because young people are more forthcoming in text. So you text the word HELP to 988, and there’ll be somebody there.

[00:33:15] Dr. Brad Miller: Right. And we’ll put all those connections in our show notes at CancerAndComedy.com.

[00:33:18] Dr. Brad Miller: Frank King, pleasure being with you for hearing Cancer and Comedy. Thanks for your insights. And I, for one, am super glad you’re here, man, and look forward to hearing more from you.