Stand Up for Mental Health: Comedy that kicks stigma in the kishkas!
While performing at hotels in the Catskill Mountains of New York, Rodney Dangerfield first complained in the 1960s, “I don’t get no respect.” Born Jacob Rodney Cohen, he was one of many Jewish comedians, such as Jackie Mason, George Burns, Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, and Sid Caesar, who helped transform the Catskills’ dairy farms of the mid-20th-century into the “Borscht Belt,” a haven for vacationing Jews who were not welcome elsewhere.
Thus, it’s poetic justice that six decades later, several people living with mental health challenges would glibly proclaim their self-respect by performing standup comedy on the stage of the Villa Roma Resort in Callicoon, NY, not far from where Jewish dairy farmer Max Yazgur hosted the Woodstock Festival in 1969.
For the 10th year in a row, David Granirer, a Vancouver-based comic with a diagnosis of mental illness, taught a half dozen participants in the annual conference of the Alliance for Rights and Recovery, formerly the New York Association of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services (NYAPRS), how to knock dead an audience of their peers on September 27, 2023, with the kind of self-deprecating jokes that made those Jewish comics famous.
While I went on to little fame and no fortune as a member of the first class of crack-up artists in 2014, I have lived to tell the tale of Stand Up for Mental Health (SUMH), David’s one-man comedy classroom where he has trained online some 500 peers since 2004, leading to hundreds of shows in tens of venues that he has then stage-managed in person.
His students have not only performed at mental health conferences like NYAPRS’ but also for other behavioral health programs, colleges, corporations, and governments, throughout North America and Australia, including the U.S. Secret Service, which earned him “a place on the watchlist for bad comedians.” Of course, their most important audience is the general public.
One technique I learned from David is that for maximum impact (and rhythm) a punch line should have a series of three rejoinders. So, I asked him, “What are the three primary impacts of SUMH?” Without missing a beat, he replied:
- Building confidence and self-esteem: Performing is life-changing, making many peers feel they can do anything. (One of his students has become a headliner.)
- Tackling public stigma: “Chronically normal” audiences are shocked to learn that, for instance, a guy with schizophrenia can be funny.
- Laughing at (or with) Big Pharma: It’s a high that is free, legal, and without side effects (other than those listed above). And when going through rough times, peers can “self-medicate” by watching hundreds of videos on www.standupformentalhealth.com and YouTube—for example, mine (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6FYQwUabQo) and my classmate, Theresa Hall’s (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCI4-Wb8EQs )
To quote from his website, “We use comedy to give people with mental health issues a powerful voice and help reduce the stigma and discrimination around mental illness. The idea is that laughing at our setbacks raises us above them. It makes people go from despair to hope, and hope is crucial to anyone struggling with adversity. Studies prove that hopeful people are more resilient and also tend to live longer, healthier lives.”
[He] “got the idea for Stand Up For Mental Health™ from watching students in his Langara College Stand-Up Comedy Clinic course. ‘Though Stand-Up Comedy Clinic isn’t intended as therapy, I’ve had students overcome long standing depressions and phobias, not to mention increasing their confidence and self-esteem. There’s something incredibly healing about telling a roomful of people exactly who you are and having them laugh and cheer.’
“There’s something amazing about having members of your community take the stage at an event and rock the house. It’s incredibly empowering and a great way of fighting public stigma. Most so-called normal people would never want to go anywhere near stand-up comedy. Seeing people with mental illness do it forces the audience to re-evaluate their perceptions of and prejudices against people who have a mental illness.”
Granirer credited Harvey Rosenthal, CEO of NYAPRS, with recruiting peers who have innate talent as cutups. This year’s crop consisted of Luke Sikinyi, Chacku Mathai, Rebecca Atkins, Stephen Nawotniak, and Helen “Skip” Skipper, reflecting the diversity of NYAPRS’ membership.
Said Rosenthal, “David and his yearly group of brave and bold comedians have played a central role in bringing fun and laughter to hundreds of conference attendees for well over a decade. Together, the BBQ and comedy show have always represented the high point of the conference. I don’t think anyone in our broader NYAPRS family could imagine a conference without them…and I don’t believe they’ll have to.”
Here’s a sample of this year’s best jokes:
Luke: But really, I do love my job. It’s one of the only places where telling the interviewer that I’ve had mental health issues in the past made them say “Oh, that’s great!”
Chacku: I knew that something was terribly wrong when I started hearing what other people were thinking. It devastated me. It turns out I’m not as good looking as I thought I was.
Rebecca: I’m very sensitive to medications, so what works for me is a really low dose. One time I told a new psychiatrist what I was taking and he goes, “Well, a placebo effect has been observed at that dosage.” I’m like, “Then don’t tell me! You’ll ruin it! It won’t work anymore!” I was mad! But I showed him. I paid him with a placebo check!
Stephen: When I was in my 20’s, I did an 8-month, non-motorized trek where I hiked, biked, sailed, and canoed from Buffalo, NY to Key West, FL. When I was planning it, I was told you need to be crazy to do something like this. Turns out, they were right. And I now I have a doctor’s note to prove it!
Skip: My pillow is my buddy – I will fight to retain ownership!
While this year’s class may be considered “old-timers,” Granirer has worked with the young adults of OnTrackNY, the program for peers experiencing altered states of consciousness (so-called “psychosis”) for the first time. Just a day after the NYAPRS conference, he directed their encore performance of “Funny…in my head” at the New York Psychiatric Institute’s Pardes Auditorium.
Dan Frey, editor of City Voices and a member of an earlier SUMH class, put his publication’s “Making Mental Illness Fun Again” slogan in perspective:
“Making Mental Illness Fun Again is really just saying, Making Life Fun Again. I mean, this life is truly insane. Finding our true purpose or lasting happiness is irrelevant. Money, fame, and status are worshipped here. This is all Mentally Ill! So making Mental Illness Fun Again simply means taking what made life fun in our early years—a sense of belonging, community, friendships, and fun activities—and bringing those things into our later years.”
David Granirer’s own “up by the shoe laces” recovery story is instructive because he attempted suicide at age 17, and, as a young guitar player, aspired to rock stardom but a wrist injury ended his nascent career, plunging him into a “huge depression.” At the Vancouver Crisis Center, where his father and brother set an example by volunteering, he too volunteered, became a trainer, and then a counselor while taking so many meds that he “could have become a spokesman for a half dozen drug companies.”
Always the class clown, he tried out his shtick (“comic routine”) for amateur nights at comedy clubs but bombed. Then he took a standup course in 1994 and packed the house with family and friends to rousing applause. Voila! A star with bipolar was born.
I tested my hypothesis on David that because men are natural narcissists they either take themselves too seriously or think they are natural comedians. He confirmed that the comedy scene has been predominantly male for years, though women have been making inroads slowly but surely (including Shirley MacLaine).
In contrast, if the performers listed on www.standupformentalhealth.com, are representative, 60% of peers who have the chutzpah (“audacity”) to make fun of mental illness are female. This confirms my other hypothesis that because women are socialized to be giving they are best at giving mental illness a kick in the kishkas (“intestines”)
And, if you don’t think Stand Up for Mental Illness should be taken seriously, read Andi Cuddington’s M.S. thesis for the London School of Economics and Political Science: http://www.standupformentalhealth.com/documents/Cracking-Up-Mental-Illness-and-Stand-Up-Comedy-A-Social-Representations-Approach-to-Anti-Stigma-Resistance.pdf
Also, please consult these resources on the health benefits of humor:
https://www.verywellmind.com/health-benefits-of-humor-and-laughter-5101137
https://www.helpguide.org/articles/mental-health/laughter-is-the-best-medicine.htm
https://www.healthcentral.com/article/15humorous-mental-health-quotes
https://www.va.gov/WHOLEHEALTHLIBRARY/tools/healing-benefits-humor-laughter.asp
(To book David, who is also the author of The Happy Neurotic: How Fear and Angst Can Lead to Happiness and Success, email [email protected].)
(If you would like an outline of Carl Blumenthal’s curriculum, “Humor and the Healing Arts,” email [email protected]. A peer specialist for 20 years, Carl is the founder of Beyond Compare Peer Counselors.)
