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Speaker Snapshot: Frank King

Session: Electrifying Mental Health: Integrating Suicide Prevention into Workplace Safety  
Date: Saturday, September 27
Time: 8:00 AM – 9:00 AM
Location: Room 123

Preventing suicides in construction. 

SPARK speaker Frank King is 100% committed to using his abilities to create awareness, talk facts, and share personal battles surrounding this topic so that lives can be saved. 

“I have given 13 TEDx Talks on mental illness, I live with two mental illnesses, and I have come close enough to killing myself that I can tell you what the barrel of my gun tastes like. Spoiler alert…I did not pull the trigger,” Frank says. “More good news is that 8 out of 10 people who are considering suicide are ambivalent, and 9 out of 10 give hints in the last 7 days leading up to a suicide, which means you can make a difference, you can save a life, and you can do it by doing something as simple as having a conversation, if you know how. By the end of my SPARK session, you will know how.” 

Frank intends to address the following at SPARK: 

  • Signs and symptoms of depression 
  • Signs and symptoms of thoughts of suicide 
  • What to say and do 
  • What not to say and do 
  • How to find resources to help 

In one of his TEDx Talks, Frank tells how depression and suicide run in his family. He also talks about a typical behavior of someone like him who suffers with major depressive disorder, more commonly referred to as depression, and with chronic suicidality. There is the ‘face’ that he shows the world every day when he gets out of bed and pastes a smile on his face and puts one foot in front of the other as if nothing is wrong. Until it’s time to go back to bed and pull the cover over his head. 

“What chronic suicidality means is for people like me and my tribe, the option of suicide is always on the menu for problems large and small,” he says in that same TEDx Talk from 2018. “I had one of my cars break down, and I had three thoughts: one, get it fixed; two, buy a new one; three, I could just kill myself. I know it sounds absurd to normal people but there may be a couple of people here who are thinking ‘oh dear God, I have thoughts like that all the time I didn’t know there was a name for it.’” 

When he tells that story, inevitably there is at least one person who approaches him after the show and admits they’ve had similar thoughts. Both that person, and Frank, know they are not alone; there are others who think similarly. 

“If you have a mental illness and you are in crisis, there is help available,” Frank says. 

Resources 

About Frank

Frank was a writer for The Tonight Show for 20 years and has been a speaker and comedian for 38. He is a TEDx and How to Make Money Speaking Coach. His speaking on suicide prevention is informed by his lifetime battle with depression and suicidality. He has turned that long dark journey of the soul into a world’s record 13 TEDx Talks, sharing his lifesaving insights with colleges, corporations, and associations. Frank has shared the stage with comedians Jeff Foxworthy, Adam Sandler, Jerry Seinfeld, Dr. Ken Jung, Ellen DeGeneres, Dennis Miller, and Bill Hicks, as well as entertainers Lou Rawls, The Beach Boys, Randy Travis, and Nancy Wilson. On top of all of that, he has survived two aortic valve replacements, a double bypass, a heart attack, losing to a puppet on the original Star Search, and has lived to joke about it all.