On Nov. 14, a crew of stand-up comedians gathered at Hecklers comedy club in Victoria to joke about mental health.
These funny folks are part of Vancouver comedian David Granirer's Stand Up For Mental Health (SUFMH) program, which, for 30 years, has helped people with mental health conditions gain confidence, foster connections and fight shame.
“People feel really ashamed of having a mental health condition,” said Granirer, who himself lives with bipolar disorder. “By talking about it openly and by having people laugh with them, it's just a wonderful, wonderful way of dispelling that internalized shame.”
Granirer began teaching the craft to general audiences at his Stand-Up Comedy Clinic course at Langara College in Vancouver. It was there he realized the positive impacts cracking jokes on stage can have.
“I saw the difference it made in people's lives who didn't have mental health issues, just in terms of confidence and self-esteem,” he said. “I thought, 'Wouldn't it be great to translate this over to people with mental health conditions who really, really need that boost?'”
In 2004, that’s exactly what Granirer did, founding SUFMH, through which he teaches comedy fundamentals to participants, each of whom have to perform a live set at the end of the program. Since then, the comedian, who is also a licensed counsellor, has led the class in over 50 cities in Canada, Australia and the U.S.
One of SUFMH’s hundreds of participants, Sasha Granneman, who performed at Hecklers on Thursday, spoke about the program’s positive impacts.
Diagnosed with OCD and bipolar disorder, the North Saanich resident has faced a slew of challenges, including breast cancer, which, in 2021, metastasized in her spine, breaking it in two places.
“This was a really low point,” she said. “My mental health was back in the tank.”
Thanks to SUFMH, though, Granneman was able to combat her mental health challenges with laughs.
“Every Friday, we got together, and we all chatted and laughed and came up with material,” she said. “It was great for my self-confidence and my overall self-worth, especially after performing for an audience.”
Granirer explained that when people joke about their own problems they help trigger what he calls a "cognitive shift."
“When people do comedy, especially in my classes, they take a lot of things they've been through that have been really tough or really bad and they turn them into stand-up comedy,” he said. “What that means is that, all of a sudden, all that bad stuff you've been through just becomes great comedy material.”
That shift is apparent in the way Granneman frames the problems in her life.
“It's nice because I have all this new material now, being mentally ill with stage-four breast cancer,” she said, soon reciting one of her jokes. “I had someone tell me to stop using cancer as an excuse to get out of things, and I said, 'I'd really love to try that, but I have cancer.'"
Local non-profits, Connections Place and the Umbrella Society, which help people with mental health challenges and substance-use issues, sponsored the event.
“Anytime someone is able to laugh and have fun in recovery, their mental health improves,” said Evan James, Umbrella Society's manager of strategic initiatives. “Being able to share in these moments with others and have that camaraderie is another hugely integral part of recovery.”
Connection Place’s executive director Neelam Pahal expressed a similar sentiment.
“There are folks ... who prefer to try to find the humour within life's difficulties,” she said. “It can be a way to empower oneself, face stressors and difficulties and overcome the hold that illness can have on one's ability to experience joy.”
The Hecklers event, which sold out days beforehand, proved a huge success, with laughter spilling out of the basement club onto Gorge Road for passersby to hear. Events like this one make Granirer proud of the folks courageous enough to hop on stage, stand under hot lights and crack jokes in a room chock-full of strangers.
"The biggest takeaways are the strength and resilience that you find in the mental health community and the courage and the bravery that people have," he said. "What I've realized is that when you take someone with a mental health condition and you give them something they really, really want to do, they will do whatever it takes to make that thing happen."
