If you are a veteran in crisis or are concerned about one, contact the Veterans Crisis Line by dialing 988 and pressing 1.

 

“This is the first time in my life where I don’t know how I’m going to die,” said Brad Bonar, who recalls having thoughts of suicide since at least the sixth grade.

 

“That’s not an option anymore. You know, I have something that’s bigger than me,” he told MOAA in an interview ahead of his appearance at TotalForce+. 

 

Bonar is the founder and CEO of 1 Degree of Separation, an international suicide prevention training program that uses comedy to address depression and self-harm. His troupe will put on a show at MOAA’s inaugural people-focused conference, taking place Oct. 28-29 in National Harbor, Md. He spoke to MOAA about how to find humor when discussing difficult topics.

 

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

 

 

Q. What excites you about TotalForce+?

A. The military lives by dark humor. It’s so much more fun to do shows for military events. It changes lives. At every event we do, we get a story of somebody who came forward.

 

We were recently in Virginia, and a commanding officer said: “We had a young sailor yesterday morning come to your show, and today he’s in the hospital because he says, ‘I need help. I need medication. I need something because all those things they’re talking about, that’s what goes through my head.’ And nobody had any idea, nobody knew.”

 

There’s value in what we do — this is real suicide prevention training. It’s really triage for mental health. And what better group than a gathering of veterans at TotalForce+? Because suicide, it’s preventable, and the first part is, you need to learn how to talk about it. That’s what we address.

 

Q. What is your typical show like?

A. Our program always involves four comedians. Everybody comes out and does five minutes of comedy; we’re not making jokes about suicide. We just want everyone to laugh and meet us in our happy place. It chemically alters the audience. We’re producing dopamine. We’re literally doping the audience.

 

In the second part of the show, we come out on four barstools with four microphones and we answer five questions. These questions are passed out — everybody gets a copy. These are kind of like your mental health triage. A first responder to a mental health incident isn’t going to be a doctor or a therapist. It’s going to be your buddy next to you. It’s going to be a fellow soldier, a fellow sailor or Marine. And just like any kind of triage, you’re going to assess, see where it hurts, get them stabilized, get them professional help. That’s what these five questions do.

 

So we all answer the questions. The first one is: What does your depression feel like physically? Just like an accident, if somebody was injured, you want to know where it hurts. It’s not about your feelings or emotions. Instead, what does your depression feel like? Where does it hurt? This acknowledges the depression is something real.

 

The second question is: What do others do that makes it worse? We talk about how people mean well but aren’t always helpful.

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Then there’s the gratitude question: What do others do that makes it better? If I had a cold, you wouldn’t try and fix my cold — you would make me comfortable while I have a cold because it’s going to last for a while and then it’ll be done. It’s the same thing with a mental health episode —just sit with me through this, take something off my plate. Whatever it might be, the answers are different. What helps some people pisses off others. You don’t know until you have the conversation.

 

The next question is: What do you do that makes it worse? This self-inventory, where you’ve got to recognize, for example, I drink too much, I isolate, I lie, I say I’m fine when I’m not — whatever your answer might be.

 

And then the last question, which is the positive point: What do you do that makes it better? We talk about individual and group therapy as well as inpatient and outpatient care. We talk about what medications do, and what we like and don’t like about them. We talk about having a core group of friends you can check in with.

 

We laugh, somebody cries, it’s emotional. It’s raw.

 

Q. What advice do you have for servicemembers, veterans, and their families who are hesitant about seeking help for their mental health?

A. One of the common things in our panel is that nobody figures out how to deal with their depression by themselves. The best way to kill the stigma is to talk about it — and for us, to laugh about it. There’s more laughter in the second part of the show than the first half when we do our comedy because somebody gets emotional and they cry, and then we make fun of them — that’s what we do. It breaks the tension, and then we go right back into this raw, real conversation. I can’t think of a better group of people than comedians to talk about something nobody will talk about.

 

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Q. There’s always a bit of truth to comedy. How has that outlet helped you?

A. We’ve been doing this show for 6½ years. This is the first time in my life where I don’t know how I’m going to die. I’d always known I would take my own life. I told my wife before we got married that’s how I’ll die. I’ve been struggling since at least the sixth grade. I found a suicide note I wrote in the sixth grade.

 

That’s not an option anymore. You know, I have something that’s bigger than me. I have these comics, I see their lives change, and I want to help change more of them.

 

Our title of the show, A Funny Look at Depression and Suicide, is a little disturbing, and we kind of wanted that because it’s a dark topic and we want to warn people. We’re called 1 Degree of Separation because if you don’t struggle with depression, you at least know somebody who does. We’re all connected to this.