[S2E8] Who We Really Are [CRACKED]

It's a bit of a mind-twister, though. Wells isn't old enough to have been a Carbon Creek resident during T'Mir's crashed survey mission in the 1950s, so his encounter with the (really poorly concealed) Vulcan team is yet another pre-First Contact first contact incident.

[S2E8] Who We Really Are

While commuting, Ross runs into Malfoy and they argue over who has the bigger penis (not literally, but isn't that what all of their tiffs are really about?). The answer is not revealed, but one thing is for sure: they're both pricks.

Ross continues to dig his hole deeper and deeper with tone-deaf statements like: "In the moment, I admit it, there was no thought of you" and "Perhaps I might've hoped for some understanding." Since words aren't really getting them anywhere, Demelza decides to communicate her feelings through flinging everything off the dinner table.

But Bob manages to avoid being eaten (for now), gets to the computer and navigates the awful, awful interface, which looks like it was designed by an alien lifeform suffering from autism. Is this really how computers worked in the eighties? How did anything ever get done?

TJC: For my research, I looked at psychological risk and protective factors of suicidality, which is both suicidal ideation and behaviours. So we were really interested in things that increased people's risk of suicide, but also things that would actually buffer or protect against suicide and go from a more positive psychology type of approach. So for our study, we looked at a range of different risk and protective factors that are quite well-known, and then we wanted to narrow those down and find out what was most significant for this particular group of people.

TJC: I mean, it probably would be helpful to start with how the project even came to be. We wanted to look, first of all, at young men because about 75% of suicide in New Zealand is men, and the highest group is this really vulnerable stage between 18-30 years old. That's where we wanted to start first of all.

A really sad statistic that came out of our study was around 10% of the men identified as having attempted to take their life at some point or had serious suicidal behaviour, which to us was quite striking and also identifies the vulnerability of this group and why it's so important that we need to think about where our resources are going. And, as I said before, 75% of suicide is men, yet we don't tackle this as a gender problem, so that's just something that we have to start to think about as well.

TJC: Yeah so we measured both people from urban and rural areas. The reason why we wanted to focus on rural men as well as their own type of group is because there are high rates of suicide in rural areas, and there's lots of things that contribute to that. For example you know social isolation, lack of supports in rural areas, poor mental health services, and also generally they're not really a group of people that are studied very often because they're quite hard to recruit.

A bit of, I guess a disclosure, I grew up rurally myself. So I grew up in the high country across the South Island in different places, and I kind of saw first-hand the impact of losing some people that I know to suicide, in rural areas, and seeing the wave effect it has on that society. Because in a rural area, it's a very small net of people. I also did work for a while for Youthline, which is a crisis line, and that kind of sparked my interest into wanting to research suicide. So it wasn't, probably, the easiest task to take, but yeah it was really rewarding.

TJC: Great question, we put a lot of effort into designing the questionnaire, and how we wanted to structure it. And we developed this questionnaire based on all of these valid questionnaires that were already out there in the world, and we kind of compiled it all together. And we measured over twenty different things, but for my research I focused on a couple of key constructs, so we focused on hopelessness, which is a really strong predictor of both suicidal ideation and behaviour. And hopelessness is a construct around, you know, just feeling really depleted and not knowing if they can get through each day by day. And we also wanted to look at things like resilience and grit, which are these quite new and emerging protective factors of suicide.

I also had a lot of amazing help from some organisations. For example, The Will to Live Foundation helped me with recruitment, Young Farmers and all sorts of other rural connections that I tried to have. I think there's a big movement in New Zealand, in general, and especially around rural health, and I notice when you actually ask the question, sometimes people are willing to talk about it. I think maybe we're too scared sometimes in society to ask the questions first. But we structured the online questionnaire, it was safe and confidential. And we got some really good results, and people were really open with us, and that was fantastic.

TJC: One interesting thing that we found with our study was this factor called grit. So grit's a term that's used in lots of different places, but we focused on the term that was invented by someone called Angela Duckworth. And so she's done a lot of research around grit, and she found that it kind of protects against all sorts of different negative outcomes for people. Basically, what it is, is passion and perseverance towards long-term goals and also being able to overcome challenges that people have in their lives, because life is really hard and everyone has bumps in their road and high grit means that you are able to persevere through those things and come out the other side. And we found that in the men that had high hopelessness, which is a strong predictor of suicide risk, but had high grit, had a lower score (in their suicide) in their suicide score.

So we measured a mixture of both suicidal ideation and suicidal behaviour, and we found that it just buffered against that relationship. They had some strengths, and I think we need to start to focus on that, because everyone has a strength in them, even if they don't feel like they do at the time, and we need to start focusing on the things that people are doing. So that's very exciting, it's very new, and there's still a lot of research that needs to be done. And I think it's really exciting that we're going to have more research come out about all these different types of protective factors.

TJC: I think it's that I got a lot of amazing support on this research and a lot of people are really interested in it, which tells me that it was a gap. You wouldn't think that there was that many people out there struggling until we asked the questions. And I was lucky enough to talk about this last year on the Man Enough campaign, so that was a TV documentary that was with Matt Chisholm, and that was really exciting to be part of that as well. I think that we need to keep growing and starting to move towards this protective approach against suicide, because the way we've been approaching it hasn't been working and our stats are continuing to rise and so I think it needs a huge uphaul from the way we tackle it.

TJC: One big change... I mean, as someone that works in the mental health sector, a billion dollars would be really nice. But definitely I think we need to focus on seeing what we can do in our communities, and starting to grow our connection. You know, it's a really difficult thing for anyone to come forward and talk about, so I really encourage people to go out there and reach out to them as opposed to, we have this message where we tell people: "oh reach out, reach out, there's supports reach out." But I think we actually need to turn the tables a little bit on that narrative. Social connectiveness, you know, is such an important factor in being mentally well, and so we need to really think about what types of groups and community supports we have out there that's beyond just the rugby clubs, for these vulnerable people out there. That's where I'd be wanting to see some change.

Here's an episode that really stands apart at times, with Marieof the Toronto area tracing a past with Tourette moments thatsurprise and sometimes startle -- though ultimately we'll all agreeMarie is a total delight to hear from and represents a seasonhighlight. Before we get to Marie, we hear listener feedback (andCarson gets an answer). After Marie, at the end of the episode, alittle podcast policy update.

Today . I'm really excited to have our guest , um, and I'm gonna have her you'll know why in a second, when I try to pronounce her name, gonna have her talk a little bit about the origins of her name, and maybe give us a little lesson on how to pronounce it. But honey Wilky of schools of excellence, and she'll tell me how close I was to getting that right. Um , is with us today, she's gonna be giving us some tips on how to create culture and community , uh , in your child , early childhood education centers, and specifically how to make your employees happy in their careers. I think this is a super relevant topic based on what we all know is happening in the industry right now with staffing and , um , retention and, and even recruiting challenges for a lot of , uh , childcare professionals. So excited to have her here. Um, just by way of introduction, Shawn Todd toddlers at the acclaimed preschool of the arts in New York city for eight years, she went on to earn her master's degree. She can tell that story, but I read a little bit about it on her bio that , uh , I think she did that while pregnant with her third child. So , um, adding a little degree of difficulty. Uh , and then she went on , uh , after that, after getting her master's , uh , in 2015, she began working with teachers and school leaders on how to create excellence in their schools. And , uh , I mentioned she , uh , was pregnant with her third job. I believe she's a mom of four . And , uh, you know , like I said today, she's gonna be talking about , uh , how to build culture and how to promote a career Latice in your school and how to create opportunities for everyone on the team so that everybody on your team can bring their best foot forward. So , um , with that being said, welcome to the show, Shawn , 041b061a72