Hey, fam, I'm Jada Pinkett Smith. Check out this exclusive Red Table Talk bonus content o. R T T. FAM has so many questions for you. Let's roll the first one. Hi. My name is Damia Gordon. In the past, I attempted suicide while being pregnant and was giving medications, medication a band aid, just masking what's really going on. That's great that it's a great question. She said she tried to commit.
That's so the first thing I'll say is how touching it is that someone would be that open about their own experience. I want to honor that for her and just hold space for her because that's very moving, particularly while she's pregnant. In terms of the answer to the question, I think a lot of people have that idea, especially in communities of color, that medication is a band aid. Right, there's the fast way in the slow way. The slow way is talked arapy because everything that you said you
gotta did. You gotta dig it up, but don't table. You gotta look at it, you gotta like moveing around, you have to deal with it. The fast way is medication. Medication is not happy pills. That's what I tell It's not a happy pill. Think about it like this. Some people are struggling so much with mental illness they can't function. So if you can't function, how are you gonna do talk? There? You can't get out the bed right and you can't
move around. You're taking psychotropic medication or mental health medication or psychiatric medication. Really, what it's there to do is sort of to elevate your mood to a place where you're able to do the work that you need to do to be healthy. But if the medication will help you get to a place where you can do those things, then you can work on the talk therapy and that can help you. So I think it's both. I definitely don't think it's a band aid. Got it all right?
So we got another question for you. Hello. My name is Scott and I'm a lifetime sufferer of depression. I don't often share my feelings with other people. That's someone who keeps my emotions bottled up inside. Am I more at risk for just snapping or harming myself? Another wonderful question. Um, there's so many layers to that. I think anything that we don't address, we bottle it up and we give it the opportunity to grow in ways that we don't
necessarily want it to go. That's it, you're allowing it to best. Prevention is better than intervention. But if you're not able to prevent, you want to intervene early. So when you feel that depression is starting to creep up, those are the times I think we want to try to do things, not to push it back down, but to manage it. So it's a different thing to bottle it up and do nothing than it is to bottle
it up and work on it periodically. If you don't manage it, you really don't have any control or what's going to happen. If you manage it, you can shrink it back down. So you want them to be in a place where they shrink so small that they don't control your life, but are still a part of your life. They inform your life. Kathy from Illinois asks, my daughter is very social, but I am seeing some changes in her energy, mood, and sleep patterns recently. She says, she's fine.
What questions should I be asking her? I absolutely love this question. The answer is what we don't want to do is just say how you doing? Yeah, what's the answer? Always fine? Didn't tell you anything. So I tell people, don't say how you doing? Instead I tell everybody this, say tell me something good that happened in your day, and tell me something bad that happened in your day. Because the answer to that really can't be fine, right, you got to answer it, and that maybe it doesn't
always work with at least it opens the door. Are running a research based on our profit, and what we learned is that the parents who communicate more effectively with their children are more likely to see when things are kind of going haywire and they can intervene. You can't wait until there's something wrong in this that i' hey, baby, you want want to communicate. It's all the time, even when nothing's wrong. If someone's really determined to hurt themselves,
can you stop them? There's only but so much you can do, you know, And at the end of the day, the person has to be willing. I've driven across l A to go see friends who weren't returning my calls and that they were going through hard time. I tried to check in and I tried to give them space, but then those alarms were going off and I've just had to go over there. And just be like knock on their door and be like, hey, like, what's up. I'm worried about too. That's a big part of it
is that you're willing to do it. And I think the thing to remember for any one family that this happens to is too many. That's one completion too many. What do you think is the most challenging aspect for a person who is consider ring suicide? What is the driving force for a completion of an act like that? Is it because that person doesn't feel that they can be seen, that they can be heard, or they can't get out of a emotional problem. I'm just gonna say,
very very simply. I can think of overwhelming amounts of reasons, right, I don't necessarily know the people who want to die. They want to pain to stop. That's that's that's it. That's it. They just want to pain to stop because they don't see another way. So I think them not seeing another way is where we come in with the intervention. It is let me help you think through some other ways that this could go. Yeah, this is not the only way. So how do you approach someone who you
suspect may be depressed? How do you approach them about seeking help if you know someone is struggling, like when you go to the friend's house and you bang on the door and they open the door and they're disheveled and they just look a mess, and they invite you in and you sit down. At some point in the conversation, the question is is there any part of you that doesn't want to be here anymore? Yeah, sometimes we have to ask because people don't who wants to volunteer that
picking us, especially in our community. I'm not volunteering that because what are people going to say. You're gonna say, I'm gona see where you can sound crazy, right, and I want you to think I'm crazy, And then beyond that it is okay. And this is the hard part for people. What would you do? Do you have a plan? That's your assessment? You're really trying to understand how far down the path are they thinking about this? And I think it's really important to not avoid the question totally.
I know I've definitely been depressed in parts of my life. If I'm going through a hard time where I have so much on my mind, just like be pleasant, it's really difficult. So, yeah, how do we penetrate that. So I think the challenge is we go into it with the person we care about wanting to help. Right, they're not necessarily ready to receive help. Right. On top of that, they're not necessarily ready to see the help that we want to give because that might not be what they want. Right.
So I encourage people to say, think about what you were want in that situation, if you were struggling, what do you want somebody to do for you? I think most of us just want to know that somebody sees values and hears us, right, Just they just want to
know that we're present and available. You don't start with child you look depression, need to go get some help, right, And you don't want to say you need some professional help, right, it sounds like an attack on their like character, that's right. I would imagine you have to meet a tone in a way there's no pity, right, and it's just like, hey, just know I'm here. That's you know, that's exactly just
having the courage to just be persistent with that. Even if you get I'm fine, now, are you talking to me like i'd get it? Right, I'm glad you're good? Exactly that I couldn't have said it any better. And it's just know if you ever need anything, I'm here, right what about like every once in a while, just like calling or texting, be like hey, thinking about you, Like I just want to let you know. That's just
little little things. Really, I feel like I can help someone's emotional state when it's persistent and consistent, super persistent, but like and at least help break down walls a little bit. But then there's always that worry in the back of your head that you didn't do enough. If only I had. When is enough enough? It's such a state of helplessness for the people that are watching and sitting back and knowing that the person is going through something and not being able to offer the kind of
help that they need. So I think that's one of those questions that comes back to and with respect, who are we doing enough for them? For us? So enough is do you feel like in your spirit you have given everything that you can to try to support this loved one of this person that you're going to help And I think once you on that you can't fix it for them. I can't fix anything for other people.
People have to be ready to fix things for themselves, and our goal is not to fix There is one being up there, right, it's not me, so it's not on me to fix it. Thank you so much for listening to this bonus content.