TEDxTokyo - Kathy Pike - Don't Call Me Crazy [English]

Good morning! As we get started today I'd like to introduce you to 17 people each depicted here by a circle on the screen. I don't actually know their names, but I know two essential facts: one is that each has mental disorder, and two is that they will all commit suicide during the time of my talk. Let me give you a little context. How common is mental illness? How often is suicide associated with mental illness? Let's imagine that our TEDxTokyo community here of four hundred people represented the world population. We know that at any point in time 20% of the population has mental disorder. That would be 80 people here in our TEDxTokyo community. Now, a significant number of those cases will be mild. But, if we take the most severe, the most enduring, the most debilitating mental disorders, like schizophrenia, major depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, we are still taking about 6% of the population, 24 people right here in the auditorium. Mental disorder -- it's common, it's serious, it's global. Some current examples. In the US, we have soldiers returning from the Afghanistan and Iraqi wars. Returning alive and well. Last year 6,500 of these veterans returned home safely only to commit suicide when they were back. 6,500 suicides is more lives lost than the total number of deaths in combat for the US military since the two wars began. In Nepal, different culture, different segment of the population, similar story. Suicide has emerged as the single leading cause of death for women in child bearing years. At a time when their world should be expanding, these women have opted to take their own lives. And here in Japan, in the wake of the disaster of 2011, the devastation continues to climb in terms of psychological distress, disorder and suicide. The truth is no country has a monopoly on mental illness and no country is spared. This year we conservatively estimate, that 900,000 people with mental disorder, almost a million people with mental disorder, will commit suicide. That means that today, June 30 2012, 2,400 people with mental disorder will commit suicide, including the 17 whom I introduced you to at the beginning of my talk. In fact, seven of our 17 have already died. So, I can imagine you saying, "OK, I get it, it's common, it's serious, it's global. But it's not my problem." But I want to challenge you on that. It is your problem, it is our problem. Consider for a moment, the father who drinks too much, loses his job and can't care for his family. Consider the mother who develops postpartum depression, can't raise her baby. Consider the son with anxiety disorder, so difficult that he can't leave his room. Or the uncle, who on a manic episode winds up in the police station instead of at his desk at work. Or the daughter, the friend, whose eating disorder is so severe she lands in the a hospital instead of on the soccer field. But I've got good news. And the good news is that we have treatments that work. We have treatments that have been developed, tested and demonstrated to help the majority of people across the spectrum of disorders. That should be great news, right? But it's not great news because we've got one major obstacle. One major problem. Remember I said that if our TEDxTokyo community represented the world population, 24 of us would have serious mental illness? Well, let's imagine that you have schizophrenia and let's imagine that you have major depression, let's imagine you have bipolar disorder anxiety disorder, eating disorder. And now imagine that I ask you to stand and be recognized. If you were a cancer survivor, you might expect a round of applause, but that's not the case for mental illness. People with mental illness live with shame, with anxiety, with the fear that they'll be discovered. And those feelings are a product of the stigma of mental illness and it is this stigma that is the single greatest obstacle to improving the lives of millions of people with mental disorder around the globe. Some people don't agree with me. They say it's funding. But that is a smoke screen for the stigma of mental illness, because if mental illness were a priority, the funding would follow. And as long as mental illness is optional, something that we can take care of after we take care of the real problems, there'll never be enough funding. And the irony is that we are spending billions and billions of dollars every year around the globe ignoring mental illness. in lives lost, in disability, in lost work productivity. It's not about the funding. Some people say, it's just too complicated. The treatments are too sophisticated, too labour intensive. That again, it's stigma in disguise. Let's go back to cancer for a moment. Think about the research, the technology, the sophisticated protocols, the care that goes into every single case for someone who has cancer. Nobody says it's too complicated, it's too sophisticated, it's too labour intensive and so it should be for mental illness. And some people simply despair. Why bother? People don't get better anyway. But it's not true. Again, it's stigma in disguise. We have demonstrated that we have treatments that work. We can even show that these evidence-based treatments are effective in communities that, historically, have not had access to mental health care. In rural, remote communities in sub-Saharan Africa and Pakistan, women have received these psychotherapies, women with depression, not only recovered from their depression but their children have better health and education outcomes a year later. That's a investment worth making! The stigma of mental illness in all of its various forms has its roots dating way back -- it's really a very primitive emotional experience that dates way back to our way evolutionary history. To a time when we didn't understand anything about mental illness, we didn't understand how or why people develop mental illness, we certainly didn't have any treatments. But we know better now and given what we know about the ideology of mental illness, and given what we know about the treatments that are available, there's no excuse to continue acting as if these myths and misperceptions were true. We have the potential to dramatically improve the lives of millions of people around the globe, suffering from mental illness. By putting an end to this stigma, we can get people to the treatments and treatments to the people who need them. But we need your help. We need your help, acknowledging that, by acknowledging that mental illness is common, serious and global. By advocating for the rights and for treatment for someone suffering from metal disorder. And by acting now to debunk the myths, to correct the misperceptions, you can help put an end to the stigma of mental illness. 17 suicides, every ten minutes, is 17 too many. Millions of people suffering from mental illness around the world is millions too many. Some think it's crazy to make mental illness a priority. It's crazy not to. Thank you. (Applause)