What’s on your mind - a conversation about mental health.

wouldn't be accurate. But i do need to talk about this topic, and I'm very willing. I'm someone who has loved sharing. When things are going well, I'm a performer, always putting my best foot and face forward. When things are hard, I suck it up by walk it off. I use other metaphors for burying those uncomfortable feelings. At least I used to do that by default. Now that I've been in my forties for a few years, I'm taking a more integrated approach to my health that incorporates

the physical, spiritual, and mental. I've benefited from a beautiful relationship with a psychologist who helped me process the pain of my divorce years ago. I've embraced breathwork, meditation, coaching, all these things to become more attuned to my inner self and make space for processing those uncomfortable feelings. It's not always fun, I can't pretend that it is, but it does make me healthier. I'm learning that investing in

my mental health is essential. I'm also learning just how serious the effects of poor mental health can be on all of us. One in seven adolescents aged ten to nineteen is estimated to have a mental health condition, and among adolescents, suicide is the fifth most prevalent cause of death As students go back to school, seventies that identify well being as a top challenge. Overall, less than half of all Americans with the mental disorder get the treatment

that they need. The root causes of these mental health challenges are often trauma and neglect we experience at a young age. When we're loved at home, we go to school to learn. When we aren't loved at home, we go to school to be loved, and if we don't have a deep connection with a parent or caregiver, we feel a sense of threat, which impacts our emotional and cognitive development. Just at the moment when we're most vulnerable. If we take a look at the Black community, all

these indicators, they're just worse. In nineteen suicide was the second leading cause of death for black youth age fifteen to twenty four, and Black Americans generally are twenty percent more likely to experience serious mental health problems than the general population. Some of these root causes run deeper than our individual childhood, and they span generations of neglect and abuse based in a society and an economic system designed

precisely to neglect and abuse us. I've known and experienced pieces of these facts my entire life. I've lost people to suicide. I've lived in communities ravaged by neglect and abuse, places where we distance ourselves from those who are hurting, maybe because we fear it will highlight our own pain. I'm still learning that the way to a healthier society requires investment and participation by all members of society. Parents, educators, peers, policymakers, employers, everybody.

All of us must come together to support all of us so we can all be healthier and whole. This brings me to our guest, Charlemagne, the God co host of the nationally syndicated show of Breakfast Club. New York Times bestselling author and certainly one of the most influential voices in modern culture. Known for his outspoken and brutally honest rhetoric, Charlemagne is using his platform to amplify awareness

around mental health in the black community. Later in the episode, we hear from Benjamin Perk's Head of Campaigns and Advocacy in the Division of Global Communications at the United Nations Children's Fund. In his role, ben leads public and policy advocacy on issues related to the survival, development, and protection of children. Two incredibly insightful conversations leaving us with a lot to think about. Let's dive in. Charlemagne. I'm really good.

I'm really good. It's nice to be chatting with you right now. Listen. You're you're so well known for the Breakfast Club ten years. Congratulations on that. What does radio mean to you beyond a job, beyond the source of income? Oh man, I mean, that's what changed my life, is what gave me a sense of purpose. You know, prior to this, I was, you know, running the streets and monks on the South Carolina doing a whole bunch of things. I didn't have no business doing like I didn't. I

didn't know what my future was gonna be. My dad was telling me that if I didn't change my ways, you know, I was gonna end up in jail, dead or broke, sitting under the tree. And you know, when I started seeing people around me actually dying, when I started, you know, seeing people around me going to prison, when I started going to jail myself, I realized he was right.

And you know that that fear of literally being just some dude sitting under the tree with nothing to show for it but a can of bear every day, I didn't want that for myself. And you know, I pride myself on always being able to see, you know, what life is gonna look like ten years from now. Anything you do today directly impact what happens in your life tomorrow.

So I just started making the necessary adjustments. And so for me, radio just gave me a sense of purpose and it gave me a sense of of work that I didn't have before. I can feel the energy of that purpose and that worth shining through. It's still very much present you. You've evolved, you know, from radio host to author to activists and from the outside a lot of people can see that trajectory and say, what a

smooth ride this brother has been on. Would have been some of the hardest parts of building your career in this way. Oh man, there's nothing been smooth. I mean I've been fired, you know, four times. You have so many ebbs and flows in this business, not really professionally, but personally. There was a lot of things that I hadn't dealt with, you know, as far as unresolved trauma, and like, you know, I've been dealing with anxiety and

panic attacks my whole life. And in two thousand ten was the first time the doctor said, you know, you suffer from anxiety. And at the time, I have been fired four times from radio. I'm like thirty two years old. I'm back living at home with my mom. My first daughter is now like one or two. My now wife is back home living with her mom. We had to pack up from Jersey and come back home. And like when I had that really bad panic attack, I thought I was going to die, and the doctor was like, no,

that sounds like you had an anxiety attack. He was like, are you scratched out about anything? And I'm like, hell yeah, So in my mind all I gotta do is get another job, get back in position. That next radio gig ended up being the Breakfast Club. Fast forward three or four years, I'm having more success than I've ever had in my life. I'm just really growing and evolving. But I'm losing myself in the process because I started to become a character to myself, because I was doing anything

to survive. I was really like pushing the limits on that whole shock jock thing, you know what I'm saying. And it was because I was getting rewarded for it. It It was because I was getting right up since the New York Times and all these different magazines and they're like, oh, Charlemagne God is the hip hop Howard Stern and YadA, YadA, YadA. So I'm like, oh, this is what they want. I'm

gonna give him more of that. And I probably was being real and honest, but I was being real and honest from a really bad place in space, because you know, I was I hadn't done the work on myself. You started getting more real with yourself and sharing that in your book shook one anxiety planning tricks on me. And one of the things you did in this book is you know, I saw you describing it at one point

is you've gone to therapy for a while. You started looking at your notes, and you decided to write from those notes as someone who's been in therapy myself, but came to it late in life because another black dude friend of mine was like, you should talk to this person.

The idea that we don't have permission to that this is something black folk don't do along with swimming and eating mayonnaise, that the therapy is not for us, and that there's a stigma associated with it for all kinds of people, especially black people people in general, that you're weak, that you don't have it, that you can't cut it, that you can't hack it, and in the hyper competitive

industry like the one you're in. I guess that's a long way of saying, did you realize what you were doing to destigmatize conversations about mental health, to normalize conversations about mental health? Absolutely not. I was just literally sharing my experiences. That's why I tell people all the time, I'm not an expert, you know, I mean, I'm just

a brother who was sharing his experiences. But to your point, Yeah, when people started coming up to me, in the street telling me they started going to therapy because of me, when women were coming up to me saying my husband started going because of you, or my brother, my uncle. I remember Tracy and uh to Roger p Hinston. They got the boards Lawrence Hinton Foundation, one of the only other people out there speaking openly about mental health for me and her used to do a lot of things together.

And remember somebody introduced me as a mental health advocate and I'm like, nah, I'm not known mental health advocate. And Tracy was like, brother, whether you want to be or not, you are, and she said you need to embrace it. You know, clearly God doesn't call the qualified, He qualifies the call. And there's a lot of different things that have happened over the past few years, you know, along my journey of healing. That just makes me want to dedicate my life to helping black people. Hell, just

my life's work. And so it's just like, man, I'll be talking to some of these brothers. Not it's weird, right because I'm still on my journey of healing, but healed people here and see things differently. So it's things I hearing brothers and seeing brothers and I'm like, I don't judge them like I used to. I don't. I'm not ready to critique them like I used to and attack them like I used to, because I know that brothers just dealing with unresolved trauma. I know that brother

is dealing with pain. I know that brothers dealing with hurts. So I got a lot more empathy, you know, when it comes to us as people, because of the work I've done on myself, they're the saying hurt people, hurt people. You kind of balanced that there with you healing people in the process of healing, or at least bad are able to be a part of someone else's process of healing, all right, And the snap judgment and the willingness to attack. It's a big opening to be able to see that

that comes. You know that that pain and someone else maybe not be personal, may be historic, maybe intergenerational, may be built on some trauma from earlier in their life. We both love black people, and I can feel that love, and I see it in a lot of your work. And there are times when the size of what we've been through as people overwhelms me. Right, I look at all the beautiful things we've done but I also look at all the ugly things we survived, and I'm just

amazed we're even here at all. How do you think about the unique power of black people achieving a state of mental health? What what would that mean for us? And why is it such an important mission to you? I recently heard Will Smith say, paraphrasing, basically, it doesn't matter who broke it's it's up to you to fix it. My talk show to God's on His Truth on Comedy Central World Mental Health Day is Tintin. I'm doing a mental health episode this week, and I'm talking about healing

as a black person. And the question I'm asking is whose responsibility is it for you to heal? And the answer is you, nobody else, nobody else. So yes, I feel like man, there's so many things that we can't control. There's so many things that we're all fighting to change, you know, as far as systemic racism in this country, but as far as us and dealing with our traumas, it don't matter who broke us, It's up to us

to fix us. And I really truly feel like man, when we become a generation of people who really go out there and seek healing, I think we'll see such a change in our communities because I think there's so many different things that can be directly attributed to unresolved trauma. You've created this beautifully titled Mental Wealth Alliance with a mission to teach, and train and treat in part because you experienced this gap in resources, uh, and you've witnessed

it in the black community. Share with our audience a bit more about the gap you witnessed and how you've designed programs with the Alliance to address it. Yeah. Well, you know, um, teach, train, treat our three pillars. And I just was looking at a lot of people who are already out there during the work, you know, like an organization out of Philly called Black Men Hell. And you know, I donated some money to Black Men Hill

back in the day. And what I when I when I saw what they were able to do, you know, with the ten dollar donation I made, I was like, Wow, they were able to provide free therapy for all of these different black men. And I was like, man, how can we do this on a mass level? Because I'm able to raise more money than a you know, Black Men Heill can, So why not create a hub to where we get the funding and distribute the funding to the people that need it. And you know, that's that's

our mission statement. We want to provide you know, free therapy. And you know, when you look at the the amount of mental health care workers and clinical workers, I think we only make up like three or four percent. So it's like, I want to at least get that to where it reflects the population of black people in America. And the way we do that is through scholarships and through paying for training for individuals. So I'm just trying to use my platform and use my voice to to

do the right things. You know, I mean, I see, I see who needs the funding. I see where the funding is going. So if I'm able to raise more capital and get it to those people, why not. You have the a beautiful array of founding partners with the Mental Wealth Alliance. What did it require in terms of partnerships to get this group off the ground? Man, it was an idea actually that my man um Tim Striver actually hit me. And Tim Striver was like, man, you

should really think about opening up your own foundation. And I was like why I was? You know, I'd rather be out here supporting, you know, the boys Lawrence Nston Foundation, you know Project three seventy five, you know that Brandon Marshall's Foundation, and he was like, it gives you a different since the purpose, you know, and you know people may want to support what you're doing faster than you

know some of those those other organizations. And I'm like, you know, why not everybody that's involved in just people that I've met over the past four or five years in my journey of healing. You know, people like my my home girl, Debbie Brown. Debbie Brown, Me and Debbie been cool for damnit seventeen years. So you know, I've watched Debbie evolved to become this powerhouse in the mind fulm this space, you know, working with Deep poc Choper

and everything else. So it was sisters like that who helped me go out in and find a sense of healing and find a sense of purpose. So now that we're all in these great positions, why wouldn't I want somebody like Deviie Brown involved on the board? Yeah? Can you talk one more moment about this pillar of training the treatment. It's the most obvious people need help, and you're helping facilitate and provide places where they can get that help. But what's the training about and why is

that such a central pillar in your mission. We need people who are culturally competent. We need, you know, black people to be these these mental health professionals, you know, we need we need culturally sensitive mental health services period. If we can encourage people to go into that space, to go into that field, people that look like us, that talk like us, that sounds like us, that come from the same backgrounds as us, that's what we need.

There's a place in Armington, Michigan called Inception and it's rand by my man David mccullor. David mccullor is a brother, you know, from that area. When people go there and they go to Inception and they do brain training, or they do float therapy, or they do magnuts fear, it immediately opens you up and makes you want to talk. And David is a brother that they can talk to. He's a brother, you know what I mean. He listened to the same music we listen to and he talks

like us. But he's just really educated when it comes to the mental health space. That's what makes you want to open up even more because David understands things that somebody who's not from the environments we come from. Wouldn't understand when you got somebody who's from the hood and understands that your black people were not inherently evil. We're not trying to just be out here doing criminal stuff

because that's who we are. Like, it's a set of socio economic conditions that caused some of us to move a certain way. Sometimes that that can only come from somebody who's culturally competent, and you don't have to spend some time explaining yourself, your people, your history to their theoretically to help you understand yourself. On October tenth, you've got an expo coming up. That's a mental wealth expo.

I've heard of a wealth expo and how you can get rich and do all these wonderful things with their finances. I've never heard of a mental wealth expo. What can people expect from this? Who's involved? How is it different from the other types of expos that a lot of us are familiar with. It's not different from other expos, you know what I mean. It's a day of mental

health education and the day of healing. Like you always hear people say things like, you know, where do I start where do I start, you know, when it comes to like going on a healing journey. So for me, this is just like an entry point, you know. So what I've done is I put together. Man. We got so many different panels. Man. We gotta panel on Black men's mental health, black women's mental health. We gotta spiritual

intelligence panel. You know. We got all these different breakout rooms that are specifically for things like anxiety, PTSD, depression. We got rooms for people who are you know, dealing with family members who are bipoland skitz apriendic, because nobody ever talks about those individuals and what and what having somebody in your family with those kind of mental health issues does to your mental health. And so I got man, people that I just respect, like like deVie Brown, she'll

be doing her dropping Gym's podcast. They're live. Michelle Williams. You know, she has a great podcast called checking In when she really just checking in with people to see how their mental health and emotional well being is going. She's there, my man, Jay Barnett, Mr. Jason Wilson is gonna be there. David McCullough, Dr Rita Walker, I got Res Dominican, I got him in Angela Rye or be in conversation with each other and so man, it's just a day for us to love on each other from

eleven am to four pm. And it's free and open to the public, you know what I mean. That was very important to me to make sure that it was free and open to the public, because to your point, I not nobody for what they do. I just think that some of this information, if we're really trying to help people, if we're really trying to empower people, I can't charge for it, you know what I mean. I just I just simply can't do that. I don't not nobody for what they do. You know, everybody's got an

area of expertise, get your money, do your thing. Me personally, I'd rather stick up some of these corporate people and get these sponsorships and let them pay for everything, you know what I mean. All of these companies that say they want to invest in black people and they want to empower black people and they want to help black people, Okay, will help us unpack some of our traumas, then, you know, and sponsor this event. Yeah, that's what we're doing this Sunday,

and I can't wait. That's the Jesse Jackson method right there. The corporate stick up if the truth though, and you know, like we're gonna have, it's gonna be different booths there. You know, people are gonna be able to come there and get so much different information. Man and all. I'm hoping that people leave there with the wherewithal on how to start their healing journey. They at least nowhere to begin.

They know if they need to talk to us psychiatrists, a therapist, a grief counselor whatever it is, they know what to do on their healing journey. You might get into meditation. You might get into yoga, because we got all of that there, you know, so you might get into crystals. We got a lot of different things. You basically just described my mother as you rest in peace. All yoga, meditation and crystals. That are three strong memories

I have of her during my childhood. I wish I could actually be there, um, but I will definitely tell everybody about it, and certainly this this show is going to help tell everybody about it. We call this show force Multiplier because we think that there are some things you can do to have an outsize effect and outside impact. If you're a bit of leverage. What would you say, the force multiplier is enclosing the mental health gap in the black community, some of those few things we could

do that have an outside the impact. That's a great, great question, man. I think, honestly, just continuing to have the conversation because when I put out my my second book shook one anxiety playing tricks on me. I didn't know it was gonna start so many different conversations. But one of the conversations that it really sparked for me, which gave me a whole new understanding of the person, was the conversation that started with me and my father.

You know, one thing I realized about therapy was going to therapy was like my father was a source to a lot of my trauma. You know, my father was a source to a lot of my insecurities, my lack of self worth. He was a good father, but he was more so disciplinary And the reason I ended up having a lot more grace with him because I used to go to therapy and be in tears, like he used to punish me because I didn't know things he

didn't teach me. I always tell his one story in particular, I remember I was fifteen, sixteen years I think was six beause have my license, and so I'm driving behind him. He told me to follow him. He runs the stop sign, so I run the stop sign. He pulls over. I pull over. He gets out the car. I wrote a wind down. He smacks the ship out of me and he's like, wake up, pay attention, and I'm like, I'm following you. He's like, you didn't see that stop sign.

I'm like, did you see the stop time? I'm sixteen years old. I just got my life. But that's how it constantly was. I would always get disciplined, do as I say, not as I do. Oh, I hated that. I hated that line. I hated that line. But yes, I ended up having a um better understanding of him because he read my book and when he read Shook One. I also had a cousin. He was twenty five. He had tried to kill himself four different times. November was

the weakly things given. He finally completed suicide. And between that and my dad reading my book, my dad's and may you know I've been reading your book and you know he's like, you know, you know what just happened to your cousin? And he was like, man, he said, I went to therapy two and three times a week, you know, back in the day. And you know, I've been on tend the twelve different medications throughout my life.

And I tried to kill myself thirty years ago. Only reason I killed myself because of you and your sister. And so when he said that, I just realized, like, yo, Pops was just doing the best he could with with with with with the resources he had at the time. And I think we take that for granted. We don't realize, man, we're probably the first generation of black people who have

the luxury of healing. The generation before us, our parents, they were scratching and surviving like good times, you know what I mean, Like like they were just trying to make it. You know, they were too busy working keeping the roof of our head to have to deal with their mental and emotional issues. And then I remember even having conversations with my mom. I used to think my mom was so cool because she would be in her room listening to the Lord Hill X Factor over and over.

I to be like, damn, mama's mama's hip, you know what I mean. Come to find out that's when my mom and dad were going through a divorce and she was sad and she was going to therapy at the time. None of them told me that until I was a late thirties, almost forty year old person. So imagine if they would have told me all of that much much earlier, I would have understood where my anxiety stems from. I would understood when my PTSD, you know, stem from. I

would have understood what my depression stem from. If I had the language for what they were going through. If I even knew they was going through these things back in the day, when these things started impacting me, I would have known how to deal with him a lot better. So, you know, to you answer your question, we just got to continue to have these conversations, man, because these conversations sparked more conversations, and we can finally get to the

root of why we are the way we are. There's so many of us and of all people who think of freedom in terms of external factors physical freedom, uh, maybe financial freedom, but the freedom to kind of be at peace and the freedom to to look at your internal self and really know yourself is a real high level of freedom. And I like the way you talk about our generation's opportunity, you know, versus the ones that

came before. We have you called the luxury. I think of it as freedom in a different way, but very similar. So thanks for opening up and sharing that we are. We're coming up on time, but I want to get a few more things than one. Is what advice would you share with somebody listening to this who wants to get involved, wants to help support around mental health, black mental wealth in their own local community. Where would you

point them? How can they get started? I would, you know, go to the Mental Wealth Alliance dot com because we fully have a directory up there of you know, different people, different organizations in different locations that you could, you know, be a part of. Do your Google's man, go Google

Google local mental health organizations wherever you're from. You know what I mean I'm talking about in your town, put your town naming and google mental you know health organizations and and I can't think of too many cities who don't have, you know, a black mental health organization. They may not be getting the funding they need, they may not be getting the attention they need, but they exist.

So you know, reach out to these people, man, and you know, find out how you can help them continue to grow, and you know, just shine a spotlight on them, whether it's just with a tweet, whether it's with an Instagram post, whatever it is. You know, So I would just tell people, man, do your Google's. I guarantee you there's an organization in your city that is helping black people be more mentally healthy. But you just got to search them out. When I was a kid, they say,

go to the library. Today, Charlotte many says, do your Googles. Do your Googles for somebody who is who's working in the corporate world. Maybe maybe they run the company, Probably they don't. Most people in the corporal don't own the company. But what can they do to lend their support or the support of their companies. They need to let their companies know the importance of investing in their employees mental health.

You know, if you want the best out of somebody, man, you got to make sure that that person is there mentally, that that person is there emotionally, that that person is there spiritually. Spiritually really may not be what corporations are there for, but mentally and emotionally, man, you've got to create these environments to where the people who work for these corporations can thrive, you know, And I think that it's a I think everybody should be pushing for mental

health days, work life balanced days. You can't just be working people to death. Like you can't just have a person on a job for you hours a week, however many weeks a year and you're not giving them no breaks. You know, check in with your employees. That goes a long way to just reaching out to one of your employees and say, Yo, how are you? When I ask

people how are you nowadays? I really truly mean it because I want to know, and sometimes you're being an employee hearing that from your employer are simple how are you? That puts the battery in your back, makes you feel good about working for said company, you know, makes you feel like this company is seeing you outside of something other than being just a number that we can get

called to be fired. I just think, man, it goes back to what I said earlier about you just really doing unto others as you would have them doing to you. We hear so much about toxic work environments. A lot of these work environments are toxic because these corporations don't look at these people as anything but workers. They're humans. They have the same feelings you have, they have the same emotions you have. They probably have the same breaking

points that you have. So you know, make sure you're not scratching people too thin. Make sure that when you are scratching them, you're scratching them because it's an opportunity for them to grow and and staying in touch with their own humanity and the process too. I think a lot of us are able to to dehumanize others because we've in some way detached ourselves from our own humanity. That's right. Is there anything else you wanted to add?

Given everything we've been talking about, man, I just want people to come out to the Mental wealf ex Bol this Sunday tent tent from eleven am to four pm, and to marry out Marquee tom Square in New York City is free and open to the public, and it's the day of healing and education. And I really want people to tune into my my late night show, The Gods on His Truth every Friday night at ten pm

on Comedy Central. You know, I'm really getting an opportunity to talk about a lot of things that you know, matter to me. You know, first episode we talked about the de gratification of America and how the de notification in Germany that model could really be applied here in a real way in regard to white supremacy and racism

and Big Tree. And you know, second episode we talked about Jack Gohover and the FBI, and you know, asking the questions like, how can we ever expect these institutions that were founded before black people had civil rights and women had civil rights? How can these institutions that would

show up for us? And the last episode we discussed critical race theory, which I called critical racist theory because we know this is just the latest example of them trying to keep black people dumb, deaf, and blind because that Turner, a brother like Nat Turner, showed America the power of an educated Negro and from that point on, that's when they, especially in the South, they got rid of slaves being able to read and slaves being able

to write. So like, don't think that you know this whole keep critical race theory out of schools and keep the sixteen nineteen project out of schools. That's systemic, and it's been systemic for a long time. And you know this this week we're talking about mental health and more so about healing. So just you know, just tune in. Man. I'm just I'm really getting the opportunity to talk about

things that I really care about. So, like I say, the evolution will be televised, evolution of Charlemagne, but Nord mcklby will be televised. Well, Charlemagne, thank you for your care, your love, the use of your power and energy toward healing, not just for yourself, before all of us. It's been such a pleasure getting this time with your brother. Thank you, Thank you, Barn. They appreciate you. King. You're listening to

a podcast called Force Multiplier, Action meets Impact. Now you've probably grown to expect ads inside your podcast, but we're gonna do something a little bit different to walk the walk. We're gonna take a quick break and hear from one of the organizations featured in this episode. Be right back. Fifteen months and counting into the COVID nineteen pandemic, the world faces a difficult for reality, an unprecedented education crisis.

More than half of all students worldwide have been affected by school closures, putting their learning and development at risk, denying them contact with their peers and trained caring teachers, making them miss out on essential healthcare, nutrition and protection services, and affecting their mental health and well being. A recent Units of survey across seventy seven countries found the children and adolescents are reporting dramatic increases in stress, anxiety, irritability,

and substance abuse. The longer children are out of school, the worst the mental health impacts, impacts that make them vulnerable to abuse and exploitation, impacts that can last a lifetime, especially for those children who are already disadvantaged by poverty or children with different abilities. While COVID nineteen has closed schools, it has also decimated support services like mental health services and school counseling, leaving millions of children and their families

without this critical support when they need it most. As countries prepare to reopen schools, UNISV believes that this is also a moment to strengthen mental health support across education systems, which is why we have joined the World Bank and UNESCO to launch our Joint Mission to Recover Education. UNASF sees this as a critical moment to reimagine education and mental health systems in the years ahead to help the world's youngest generation through and beyond what has been a

devastating moment for them. As a global community, let us rally around their needs and let us make sure that they returned to schools where they can get their learning and the mental health back on track. Hey you, it's Baritone Day, host of the podcast you're listening to right now. When I was a kid, my mom told me to come up with a system we could live under after democracy had failed. Yeah, my mom was intent. I haven't finished that assignment, but I did make a podcast. It's

called How does Citizen? With Baritune Day. It reimagines citizen as a verb and reminds us how to wield our collective power. Find seasons one and two and whatever podcasts app you're using right now, and season three, all about tech, drops in October. Learn more at how does Citizen dot com.

You know, I've worked for most of my working life on what I would call the human rights of children all over the world, and that work has really accompanied my own kind of recovery from a tough background children's homes, poverty, homeless nurse the threat of crime as a child, And so for me, I have a real sense of urgency

about this. You know, I truly believe that if we could invest in strengthening parenting and helping parents who are affected by intergenerational transmission of trauma, if we can disrupt that cycle of transmission, then we can imagine a world where abuse and neglect is a thing in the past.

So if we took a simple parenting program, if we invested saying in every new parent having four or five, maybe six home visits in the first year of life to work on attachment between a parent and a child, to teach the basics, and to help them with coping skills.

If we did that across populations, and then we gave boosters a key moments during charge food, very simple intervention similar in scope of vaccine coverage through health systems or other systems, I think you would see a huge decline in abuse and neglect, adverse childhood experiences, and you would see the generational decrease in things like addiction, violence, and noncommunicable diseases. I think the world is waking up to

the fact that abuse and neglect is preventable. So that could be the legacy of our generation is to leave this for future generations. Just in the same way that people who came before us left things like clean water and vaccines and sanitation and so on. So I think we have an opportunity and a responsibility and we can really make a massive difference in the world on this agenda. Now.

Ashead of campaigns and advocacy at the Inanimation as Children's Fun, Benjamin Perks has seen firsthand how abuse, neglect, and adverse childhood experiences are the primary causes of mental illness. He shares their back strengthening parenting and helping those affected that intergenerational transmission a drauma. We can disrupt that cycle and imagine the world where abused and neglect is a thing

of the past. So abused and neglect, adverse child and experiences are perhaps the principal preventible cause of mental illness and many other connected poor life outcomes obesity, addiction, community and those type of things. It's really important to ensure that children and young people are able to flourish emotionally

and mentally. We know that when children are born their biologically programmed to seek the connection with the parents or a kere giver, and when that is absent, the child sees it as a threat, and that has a direct impact on their emotional development, their cognitive development at the moment when most vulnerable. I think over the past two to three decades, we've had this proliferation of evidence and research at the intersection of psychology, neuroscience, sociology, biology, pedagogy,

and it tells us a couple of really important things. Firstly, it tells us that the prevalence of abuse and neglect and dysfunctional parenting is much more prevalent than we ever thought it was before. Across countries, between five and six out of ten of any given population have had at least one form of adverse to other experience, and between

ten and tw have had four or more. And when we look at adults that have had four or more adverse to other experiences, we see that they do much worse throughout the course of life in terms of mental and physical health, in terms of learning and job outcomes, and also in terms of things like noncommunicable diseases, obesity, addiction, those kind of issues. So when researchers saw this, they realized it was a major social problem that was much

bigger than we ever thought it was before. So they then began to work with neuroscientists and others to try and determine what explains this link between adverse childhood experiences and poor life outcomes, and they came up with the concept of toxic stress. We all have stress right before an interview. You can have stress. When you lose your wallet on the way to work, you can have stress. It's something that affects all of us. You know what

happens to your body. You become tense, Adrenaline pumps through your body, and then when you find the wallet, your body comes down again. What happens with toxic stress. This is not the conditions in place to allow that calming down of the body. The threat is not something you can hide from or move away from, because the threat is at home. And for children, it's not just a threat to have the presence of violence. It's also a

threat to have the absence of love. So children who are neglected have an activation or chronic activation of the stress response system. And these derails almost every single aspect of their fragile and fledgling development, including their cognitive and emotional development, but also their physical development. And I think the point is this is a theme that is to Boo and people don't necessarily talk about, but it's something

that's very much experienced by everybody on some level. If people have not had adverse to other experiences themselves, they love somebody who has, or they leave next door to somebody who's still struggling with that. So this is very

much a human store eat. So what we're trying to do with all of this is bring these very complex issues to the level of human understanding and to the conversation to make them policy relevant, because the good news is that we can actually end adverse to other experiences, we can end abuse and neglect in the world and

reap huge benefits for society. UNISEF as a flagship report that we launch across the hundred ninety country offices that we have around the world in partnership with regional bodies like the EU World Health Organization, at the global level African Union, and it's the State of the World's Children Report, and this year, for the first time in our history, it's about mental health. One in seven adolescents is estimated to have what we call a mental health condition, that's

ad lessons between the age of ten and ninety. Suicide is the fifth most prevalent cause of death adolescence after road injury, tuberculosis into personal violence. It's one of the leading causes of death for children of adolescence and according to some research that will be sharing when we launch

the States of the World Children next week. The fifto year olds in twenty one countries self reported often feeling depressed or having little interest in doing things, and we think these are feelings that have been amplified by the COVID nineteen situation. COVID nineteen has certainly deepened inequalities on

all aspects of child well being, including mental health. We know that school relationship with teachers, access to peer groups is a really important and very simple, straightforward protective factor for good mental health. We know that has affected children in situations of poverty and exclusion much greater than other sections of society. So we've been calling very passionately for schools to be reopened as soon as possible, and that's

for three reasons. The first one is the learning gap is particularly hard to catch up for children in poverty, children affected by adverse child and experiences. Children whether in society is whether a racial, gender, or disability or other disparities. Secondly, we know that for children living in poverty, Things like school, nutrition and other services that come through school are really essential.

And thirdly, we know the children that are a risk of violence and neglect or harmful practices such as early marriage, trafficking, and so on, are much more likely to be at risk when they can't attend school to our protection services are much less likely to be able to access them, and children who are living with abusive or neglectful parents have been locked up with those parents for quite a while.

The mental health and the overall well being of children now returning to school is crucial, and that needs to be put at the heart of all the planning for that return. But it's also a moment for us to reimagine education. How can education systems end the inequalities that existed before the pandemic, the ones that have been worsened

by the pandemic. How can we use this kind of global pause to really reimagine an education system where every child is connected, where every child has means of digital learning, and schools in which children can flourish and are not affected by learning poverty, and when they're able to build up the skill set to be able to have meaningful citizenship and to have awarding life of work when they leave.

One of the challenges when you talk about mental health is the taboo and the confusion about the issue, the stigma and shame and what we've said with the state of the world's children and the On my Mind campaign is that we all have mental health at any given time. We all sit on a spectrum of mental health and in one should be okay to talk about it without shame.

It's something that we all need to understand much more about, and it's something where we should be able to turn our attention away from judgment and towards solutions and how do we build our societies and our families and communities in ways that people can have good mental health and flourish. So the idea of On my Mind as a campaign is that we need to build to talk about what's on our mind. We need to be heard and to hear,

to have the language to communicate about it. But we also need to recognize that this single biggest protective factor any person's mental health is to know that they are held in the mind and in the heart of another person, that their life is cherished, that they are valued, and then it matter as an individual and if we can ensure that every child on the planet has this message and has this understanding of self, and if we can make sure that every society is able to ensure that

every child is valued and every family member is able to talk about mental health, then this is going to be a real game changer in the whole area of well being. I think there's three really important relationships I'm just going to highlight. The first one is pair parents.

Parents have got to be able to keep the lines of communication open with understanding and empathy as children go through the very complex process of brain transformation that happens in adolescents, and parents need to be able to communicate with kids. Would also be supported to have the knowledge about what's going on, what's going on in terms of brain development, and what can you do to ensure a

child is protected, avoids risk, dangerous risk, and flourishes. The second one is teachers and other community leaders, whether they be health workers, please or other people that they interact with young people. They need to make sure that young people are seen and safe and sooth, but also understood

and listen to. So one of the things we're talking about in schools is that, for example, is a teacher needs to look at a class of fourteen year olds and recognize that a good proportion of those kids are going to be coming from difficult backgrounds, difficult home situations,

and they are particularly at risk. But you never necessarily know who they are, So you need to provide supportive environment for all the children in the class, and to make sure that environment is psychologically safe and that the teachers emotionally and tuned and it's trauma informed. So we need to mainstream that in the way that teachers think about teaching, the way that schools think about school policy. And I think that kids don't learn if they don't

feel connected to a teacher. The third important relationship is peers, because adolescents care much more about peer relationships than anything else. That's a normal part of adolescents. So we need to create healthy environments in which strong peer bonds can flourish, where risk behaviors such a is isolating kids from groups, and all of that is prevented and minimized, and children, to add lessons, have a space to grow and flourish safely.

When you think about technology, what's really important is the other things in the kid's life. Technology is often a reflection of the other vulnerabilities the child has. That said, we also think that the social media platforms must ensure that safeguarding measures are in place to prevent things like bullying online pr isolation, which is a form of bullying. All of these things really need to be governed properly by the social media organizations. I think that that's really important.

I think we have to also remember that the proliferation of social media and other technology took place so quickly that society didn't really adapt to keep up with it, and a lot of the vulnerability comes from that. So we need to have a very clear understanding of where responsibility sits. I go to many countries and a big question that people ask is about who's responsible for our children's safety online? And often parents think it's teachers, teachers

think his parents. We need to have stronger collaboration between parents, teachers, and others to protect our kids. We work with such a wide set of partners. We work very closely with World Health Organization who like us sorry the U n Body so for example, together but What Health Organization UNITSEF will be launching a Call to action on Global Parenting support in November. We worked very closely with some private sector companies that are really interested in children. So we

worked with Lego and Sesame Street, for example. These are very big partners important partnerships for us. But this is really in some ways very early on in a mental health journey for us, and we're hoping to expand those partnerships.

So we hope to work even more closely with the wider range of private sector partners and to expand the networks of governments and academics coming together really around these very sharp focused calls to action, around parenting, investments in mental health, changing the conversation on mental health to really bring focus, because the problem that's happened in previous decades is a whole agender on mental health has been very fragmented.

So we're trying to bring a range of partners together around that sharp focus and often people say this is just impossible, but you know, people said exactly the same thing about vaccines forty and fifty years ago. In two only t of the world's children under five were vaccinated against the major five Charter diseases. Those is easis were preventable, and when the world put its mind to it and massively increase the policy priority of vaccines. Within a decade,

it increased dramatically reducing child mortality. What was a game changer there was to have a very sharp focus that every child would have vaccines and one or two other very simple health interventions, and that became a galvanizing force for transforming all aspects of child health. As a result of that investment, public health system strengthened, rural services for

children strengthened. But it was that very sharp focus. I think when we talk about things like mental health and adverse childe experiences, which we have targets on for the sustainable development goals, it's hard to see progress for those targets unless we have a sharp focus on three or four or key caused to action, which you bring the full weight of the U N. Private sector, partner, governments, and civil society behind to really drive the agenda forward.

We also have a word like force multiplier. We use the word accelerator. So when we say accelerator, we mean the thing that will massively speed up the campaign but also is likely to achieve the highest number of results and impacts for a very focused intervention. So for us, the four force multiplayers are the governments need to invest. They dramatically under invest. Mental health is thirty percent of the non fatal disease burden, but represents less than one

percent of many governments overall health expenditure. In the content and of Africa, there is one mental health professional per hundred thousand population, so there needs to be a massive increase in spending. Second force multiplier for us is parenting. If we can get very minimum package of support to help parents learn some of the basics where needed, and also become more self aware as parents, that can transform

the situation of children, prevent abuse and neglect. Certainly, schools where every chance is connected, has a sense of belonging and can access help enforcefully a transformed conversation. These are our four main force multipliers and mental health. I say to people who you know what you want your legacy to be? You know, do you want to contribute to results? Do you want to transform something? And if you do,

you really need to focus on that. It's so easy in our careers to get locked up in process in bureaucracy. I advise people if they can, to cut out the noise and to go direct leave for that thing that will be a force multiplayer. I think the second thing is do what you love. When I work on recruitment, if the person is really passionate about the issue, you

know they're going to perform. And thirdly, be flexible, you know, to have the ability to completely change career, to innovate and try new skill sets, because that's what keeps you young and fresh and engaged. In two thousand and two, we had this huge campaign in Afghanistan to try and get millions of kids back into school. We say back, but it was mainly for the first time for most of them. You know. We brought in millions of tents and school books and then often they had to be

delivered to remote villages through donkeys and camel trains. It was an incredible, exhausting engagement. The first day of that new school. Yeah, to look out of your window and to see kids going to school for the first time

in their life was amazing. So I'm going to then fast forward fifteen years later when I get a call from somebody at Oxford and they told me they were sitting next to somebody on their program and they told me about their life journey and how, you know, how they've learned in a tent and ended up in Oxford. That's the real reward of the job, you know, is

knowing that this is really transforming lives. And I think that if things sometimes seem to go backwards, you know, in terms of children's rights, often it's a momentary thing, the thing that you've invested, I believe it stays and it remains. I hope that UNI Sev's legacy, wherever it is, never ends, because if you invest in children, that continues to come back in return, generation after generation. There's so

much unacknowledged hurt in the world. We see it in children around the world through organizations like UNI SEF and what Benjamin is working on. We see it in many American communities, but especially the Black community, these trauma that we have not been shown a way to acknowledge or

talk about. But there are weights, and there are people like Benjamin and people like Charlemagne, the network of folks that they work with who are helping us see that a love child shows up to school ready to learn and to love. As Benjamin shared, that a healed person can show up with more graceful another person and be a part of their healing the way Charlemagne said undoing that trope that is too true that hurt people hurt people. So we've got so many places to start around the

world and in our neighborhoods. Please find a resource for you near you, and contribute to one for somebody else. We do this better when we do it together. Thanks for tuning in, Thanks for listening to another great conversation how we can multiply our force. Do you want to dig in more on today's guests and the work they're doing, or maybe you want to understand what action you can take in your community. Either way, go to salesforce dot

org slash force multiplier. That's one word, force multiplier. Force Multiplier is a production of I Heart Radio and Salesforce dot Org hosted by me Barritton Day Thurston. It's executive produced by Elizabeth Stewart, produced by Von Chien, and engineered, edited and mixed by James Foster. Join us next time for more stories of how we can change the world, one relationship at a time. Listen to Force Multiplier on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. M HM