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Dave’s exclusive video for World Mental Health Day 2020
In
2015, I was asked to do the social media at a Newcastle
University
event named Mind The Gap Conference (you can watch my vlog from the day here),
I had the honour of watching a sketch by the award winning Comedian; Dave
Chawner, before having the opportunity to have a 1:1 chat with him. I found him
so inspiring; his sketch was centred around mental health and his particular
experience with Anorexia, yet it had THE most hilarious moments! I believe he
has mastered what I think is a key difficulty around humour and mental health;
that some people have the attitude that mental health is so important it should
be taken seriously, and there should be no light to make of it.
I’d like to think that if you’ve been reading my blog for a little while – or even if you’ve just read one post – you can see from it that I regard mental health very highly and have nothing but respect for people struggling with theirs. Whilst this is so true, I’m also a firm believer that humour can have a place in most generally difficult topics/subjects. I like that phrase ‘if I don’t laugh, I’ll cry’ and completely agree that this is particularly true with mental health because it can really be the difference between someone feeling that things are bearable to a person being suicidal. I think that I mostly feel this way because I use humour myself as a very effective coping mechanism and find it incredibly encouraging of positive and safe thoughts and feelings.