Kevin Breel says there are two sides to a person, the first being the side that everyone sees. In his case, he’s a normal kid who everyone just assumed was happy. He was a straight A student, had numerous educational awards, was captain of the basketball team, and was a loving friend and family member. Then there’s the side that no one else sees- and that side of him suffered severely with depression. Breel explains that a lot of people mistake sadness for depression; for example, he says someone may think they have depression if they’re upset after a break up, or losing a loved one. But that’s not depression, it’s just natural of a human to be upset if something is going wrong in their life. Breel says depression is when you’re sad when everything is going right in your life. He goes more into depth about his experiences with suicidal thoughts, and feeling like that was the only way out. He finishes with saying more people should stand up and start talking about depression- we should be able to say that we’re depressed and not have people run away, but have people say “me too” and it be okay.
I fell in love with this TED talk about a minute or so into the video. The way that Breel communicates with the audience is so incredible; he’s extremely relatable and backs up almost everything he says with personal experiences or facts. I was drawn in almost immediately. His argument is basically saying that we as a society should be coming together to help each other with this disorder, not run in the other direction when we hear it mentioned. It is not talked about enough in this day and age because it’s something everyone is so afraid of. He brings up that every 30 seconds, someone in the world takes their own life- and that “it might be two blocks away, it might be two countries away, it might be two continents away but it’s happening.” We as a society tend to look at these sort of things and just say so what. We’re sad for a little while, but we think of it as their problem and usually don’t do anything to change that. He also mentions a great point by saying that everyone is so accepting of every body part breaking down other than the brain- that when you break your arm, everyone runs over to sign your cast but if you say you have depression everyone runs away. Hearing Breel speak was very life changing for me because I personally don’t have depression but I know people who do, and it’s so upsetting to see how it actually feels for someone to have that on them all the time. I could never deal with being sad to that degree, and I never really realized how big of a deal depression was until watching Breel talk about his experiences. He says he was one of the lucky ones, to be able to stand on the edge and not jump- but hearing what he says about suicide and our society was just so incredibly accurate to me. He definitely persuaded me to want to make a change.
Kevin Breel is just an average kid who suffers from extreme depression. It’s something he’s going to have to live with for his whole life and he’s accepted that, but he wants to make a change. He doesn’t want this topic to be pushed in a corner until it goes away because it won’t. He wants to shine a light on it and make it known to more people in this lifetime, and have everyone understand how big of a deal depression is and that it needs to be looked into.
Click here to watch Confessions of a Depressed Comic.