This TED Talk features storyteller Bill Burnett recorded live at TEDx Snow Isle Libraries 2017.

The one conversation that uplifted me more than any other in my life was with a woman who told me

how a few days earlier she drove her Jeep Wrangler to the edge of the Grand Canyon and sat

there revving the engine, thinking about driving over. Even though I had severe social anxiety,

in that conversation, I was totally at ease. She told me what was going on in her life in the days and months leading up what her thoughts were at that exact moment, why she wanted to die and why she didn't do it.

We nodded and half smiled.

And then it was my turn to talk about my journey to a dining table in the hygienic community area

of the mental health wing of a Mountain Town Hospital.

I took too many sleeping pills, and after they treated me for that, they were like,

hey, we would love it if you would be our guest in the psych ward.

We joked that her suicide would have made a way better postcard.

We talked shop.

She allowed me to be deeply depressed and have a genuine connection to another person simultaneously.

For the first time, I identified as somebody living with depression, and I felt good about it.

Like, I wasn't a bad person for it.

Now, imagine one of the people at that table

was a member of your family or a close friend.

Would you be comfortable talking to them?

What if instead of the hospital

they were at your kitchen table and told you they were really depressed?

The World Health Organization says that depression is the leading cause of ill health and disability

worldwide, affecting 350 million people.

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