Buddy Check for Jesse: Full Transcript

Jesse

Stu GershmanJesse. He was this idyllic child who slept on schedule and ate anything you put in front of him. Jesse loved being in nature. He loved hiking from a really young age. This was his — it's his sanctuary. He really enjoyed it. Here's the two hikers holding hands, hiking to the ocean. [Home video.] Very good. Wow. Look at you guys. Sitting on the edge of the world.

We introduced all kinds of different sports, and he was quite athletic. You know, he was playing T-ball, but he'd be like, why are there all these rules? Can we just have fun? It was like, okay, well, there are some rules you have to follow. Thinking back to that right now, he had the right idea.

We started realizing he looked pretty sharp. You could give him the alphabet, and he was spelling "airplane." You know, your first kid, you don't really notice different things. I mean, sure, he was bright. He was very into math and numbers. He was counting all the stairs that we would go up wherever we went. Go to a hotel and stay on the 28th floor, and you want to go up the stairs because you want to count them. He kept a running tally of these stairs, into the hundreds of thousands.

I introduced him to golf, and that was it, because he saw a yardage card for all the holes and all these numbers, and it was an individual sport, and he got hooked on that. Golf was his big thing, and he was quite a good golfer. I remember one time he's 14. He said, well, I think I'm probably in the top 100 in the province. That's good enough. And he'd win golf bags and balls, and then he'd sell them for profit on eBay. It was hilarious.

He was unique, obviously quite bright, and sort of started getting labeled as a brainiac — and a little bit of bullying for that. We could see a little bit of a sense of compulsiveness in him, more in retrospect. You don't really know when you're going through it. And we didn't need him labeled. I was just trying to support him and get him through. This is who he is.

He went from grade 9 to 12 in two and a half years and graduated just before he turned 16. Started university at UVic on a full scholarship, got his undergraduate degree and won the Governor General's Award. All that is wonderful and good for him. But all I ever wanted for him was to be happy. Whatever that means for him — not my idea of happiness, but whatever that means for him.

Mountain View

Stu GershmanHe started a master's in computer science, but he had already gone down and done an internship at Google in Mountain View, California, and enjoyed it and did well. The greatest thing in the world for him at that point was coding. He loved it. It suited his brain. They offered him a job partway through his master's, and at this point he was now 20.

So I drove down with him to Mountain View, and we set him up in a place, and he started working at Google. And yes, we were concerned in terms of how he's going to do. He's 20, our son's leaving home and going by himself. I wasn't sure which direction his mental health was going to go. He was starting to have some insight into that, which was great. And I always had hope that as he grew into a man, that insight would keep growing, because the insight is huge.

In June 2014, he called, said that he's not working at Google anymore, that he got let go. And he was devastated. It turns out they had talked to him months before that — he's not working well with the team, he has to be a little more flexible. He didn't share any of that with us. Eventually they let him go. That was devastating for him, because this really fed his soul. A lot of his identity was working there. He went pretty downhill after that.

Loss

Stu GershmanHe started talking about suicide and harming himself, and we could hear how much he was struggling. So I went down there, drove him home and brought him back, and we were trying to get him some help here and support him. It was a big challenge. He was suffering, and it's a suffering that helps me to this day, because no matter what I'm going through, it's nothing compared to what he was going through at that time.

Eventually, he was voluntarily hospitalized. He was feeling suicidal, but it was still somewhat atypical in a way. Eventually, he took his life, on October 29th, 2014.

It's hard to understand exactly what was going on in his head at the time. Obviously, he felt that not being here was better than being here. I can't fully identify with that feeling. I don't judge it. At that point he was pretty close with his stepsister, his sister Ashley, his brothers Max and Zach. It all changed, right there. It happens. It happens to a lot of people.

On the night when he died, I knew that life was going to be different — very different — for the rest of my life. But I've got two other kids, and they don't deserve to grow up the rest of their life and say "that was the day it all stopped" after Jesse died. Because that would serve no one well.

The First Green-Tape Talk

Stu GershmanAt the time, I was coaching his younger brothers — Max, who was 13, and Zach, who was ten. I was determined to keep their lives as normal as possible. That included them continuing with their hockey. We weren't hiding anything. I decided that these kids need to know that something is going on with one of their teammates, one of their brothers. They look normal, they look fine coming here, but something huge is going on in the background that they don't really understand yet — that I didn't really understand at the time — and it should be talked about.

It's okay to come up to them and just say you're thinking about them, or pat them on the back, a tap on their shin pads — and that can mean a lot. I didn't get into a deep, dark discussion about suicide and mental health in the dressing room. Just something on their level. At the same time, another parent on the team talked about using green tape for the sticks, because green was the colour of mental health.

The next year, my son Will said to me, are you going to do the green-tape talk again, Dad, to the kids in the dressing room? Trying to think, what did I actually do last year, what did I say? It didn't matter what I said. It's the fact that a coach, a youth leader, is actually saying something and addressing the subject. Unfortunately, there's an incredible stigma still around talking about feelings, approaching somebody and asking them how they're feeling. And you guys are the generation that's going to change that.

I did the talk, and then the next year, 2016, did the same thing. And in 2017 I thought, okay, I've done this every year. There's a lot of positive feedback — from my own kids who keep asking me to do it, from some of the kids in the dressing room, from some parents. This is a pretty important role that coaches have. Why can't other coaches do this?

An Idea for Other Coaches

Stu GershmanSo that morning, at the end of October 2017, I called my wife and said, I think I have an idea that other coaches can do this. I called another friend to say, am I crazy thinking of this? And they both just said, let's get started.

I spoke to the CEO of BC Hockey and said, I have this idea — you saw me do this talk in the dressing room with our kids, I think more coaches can do this. He goes, Stu, I'm behind you 100%. We need this.

So here I was with an idea, and I don't have a skill set in how to take this forward whatsoever. I didn't have money to put into this. But I did know a guy. I met with Jeremy, said I have an idea, and we sat down in a coffee shop and he loved it. At the same time I saw him doodling on a napkin — sticks in the air, coming up with names of things — and I realized he's already trying to solve this. Jeremy calls me back and says, I pitched this idea to my design and marketing company, they think it's got legs, and they would love to back you on it, all pro bono. I realized these people want to help. There's a whole world to this that I know nothing about, and I'm about to potentially start on quite the journey.

So it was October 29th, 2018, our first launch of Buddy Check weekend. I spoke to my kids' teams and a whole bunch of coaches spoke, and we had an inaugural game with a junior team. After that weekend, a couple of big things happened. A mother called me in tears about the impact that a coach's talk had on her son. That is Carson Strom.

Carson's Story

Carson StromMy name is Carson Strom. I'm a student at the University of Victoria, in the psychology program. I've played hockey for about 15 years now. I'm very thankful for Buddy Check. I found it probably four years ago now. We would do these nights once a year. I really appreciated seeing how Stu approached us and told us that there's more than just living in fear of your mental health and not being able to talk about it at all.

Carson StromMy journey has been pretty up and down. I started seeing a counsellor when I was 13. It really helped me back then calm down and not have to worry about what everyone else was thinking about me. As a 13-year-old, you don't really notice emotional things. I would just lose my temper faster than others. I was such a perfectionist — everything had to be perfect. As a high schooler it was so hard to regulate emotions. I would feel either super happy, or feeling like I couldn't get out of bed because there were so many things happening that day, and I just didn't want to be a part of any of them. I would feel very low energy, fatigued all the time, just sad and not really having a will to get up and do anything. It's very gut-wrenching when you don't feel like you can control your day. Talking to someone helped.

Carson StromI hadn't really seen anyone drive this conversation from an athlete's perspective yet. I think that's what made me want to act on that. I reached out to Stu and told him my experience with anxiety and depression. Honestly, I thought he might have gotten these texts all the time, that it was normal for people to reach out to him — but he was blown away by me reaching out. For me, that was a massive impact. He asked me to be an ambassador for Buddy Check.

Stu GershmanHe's a great kid. Big supporter of Buddy Check, huge advocate for mental health and a public speaker about it, and gifted in that way.

Carson StromI think I've given probably around 20, 25 talks. I've had multiple people my age and even older reach out and say that this story has changed their life. Being a 17-year-old kid, I didn't really expect to hear that from an adult. It really opened my eyes to how important this is. And then it kind of hit me when players from other teams in the league would just say, wow, this is incredible what you're doing. They would wear the Buddy Check bracelets every day and send me photos. It just puts a smile on my face, knowing that I had a small part in what we change about mental health.

The Message Spreads

Stu GershmanAnother mother was significantly impacted, as was her son. She was in the dressing room listening to it, and her son looked up at her and said, is he talking about me? Lindsay, being a writer and brilliant, is part of Buddy Check now — an absolute gift in our family's life. She wrote about it and sent us an article, wanting to publish it, about the impact this had on her. On these two big things that happened, the feedback was there. We knew we were on the right track.

I learned in life that you start small. I'm not going to bite off too much — plus I've got a day job and have to raise my kids. So this is something that's going to build.

I got this random email from Robyn Vandersteen out of Manitoba explaining how important this program was, a little bit about her mental health journey, and how she wants to help out.

Robyn VandersteenI jumped on board right away. I wanted this program. I wanted my kids' teams to deliver it. It's so simple and so impactful, so meaningful. One of the reasons the Buddy Check for Jesse program resonated with me is that in my generation, we didn't have the dialogue to ask for help. I watched my brother lose a friend to suicide and his walk through that, and I lost a friend at 16, also to suicide — a close friend. It was shocking. It was devastating. There one day, gone the next. And then it was all the "what could I have done? Why? I could have said something. I didn't say anything." Those still cycle through my head today.

Robyn VandersteenHaving kids in sports, the Buddy Check for Jesse program was like a glowing light bulb. This is an opportunity for me to play a part. If I can prevent my kids from having to lose a friend, I will do everything that I could. And this program does exactly that. It teaches the language in a very age-appropriate manner. At the time I was introduced to it, I was suffering through my own mental health issues. I worked a law-enforcement first-responder job for ten-plus years and had just recently been diagnosed with PTSD myself. The program tied all that in — my history, my personal experiences, what I was going through — and it gave me a gateway into "I can do something for my kids."

Robyn VandersteenSo I brought it to Manitoba the very first year, just for my kids' hockey teams. I have three kids who play hockey. And then a few other teams got on board. This is the third year that Hockey Manitoba has been on board with distribution of packs to every minor hockey team, ages U11 up to U18, including Double-A and some Triple-A programs in the Winnipeg and surrounding areas. I had no concept that six years later we were going to be province-wide.

Stu GershmanRobyn became our lead ambassador in Manitoba. This is just an example of these amazing humans who entered my life helping me out with this stuff. Because of all of this, eventually I realized that we should become a nonprofit.

A Multi-Sport Mission

Stu GershmanCovid came along. We got approached by a number of people asking if we would consider expanding to other sports. The message is not exclusive to hockey anymore. The message should be out every day, in my mind. So we decided to change to a multi-sport format, and here we are — slowly building an organic, grassroots charity, with our sole focus and mission being to impact the youth, to catalyze the transformation of how we talk about mental well-being with youth, using the power of sport. And that's where we're headed. If this is the vehicle that has an impact in this one small, unique way, then that's incredibly rewarding, and honouring Jesse's legacy beyond my wildest dreams.

Hockey Day in Canada

Ron MacLeanOkay, it's Ron MacLean, and generally the two finest hockey players on my team, and we're going to tape up for Jesse. Your thoughts on the Buddy Check for Jesse? I think it's amazing. Someone out there is always struggling, and sometimes it could be you, and you never know.

Stu GershmanHaving Ron MacLean and Kevin Bieksa — prominent personalities — tape their sticks green and mention Buddy Check on the air live. "This is a Buddy Check for Jesse, the program that started here in Victoria. We lost Jesse at the age of 22, in 2014, to mental health that resulted in suicide. His father, Dr. Stu Gershman, created the program. The green tape is reflective of how you can learn more about it."

Did it feel good to see that? Oh my gosh, of course it did. This was like they're talking about Jesse on Hockey Night in Canada. I cried. Of course I did. I don't mind crying — tears are an emotion, and it feels good to cry. My phone is blowing up with people. That's wonderful for exposure. But how does that allow us to move forward with our mission? The biggest challenge for me and for Buddy Check has been to keep it growing slowly and methodically — not burn myself out, and not burn any of my staff out.

The biggest thing Buddy Check for Jesse has done for me personally is being able to spend time with Jesse. Learning about myself through this process. And the most amazing human beings have entered my life that I never knew existed, and lasting friendships as well.

Why It Matters

Dr. Bruce PinelI've known Stu for a very long time, and I work as a clinical counsellor. I also have a PhD in sport psychology. About 35% of elite athletes deal with mental health issues — and that's those who choose to share and report it. The numbers are quite a bit higher than that. When we talk about a mental health issue, it doesn't have to mean something so dramatic or severe. It could actually be subtle changes in what they experience every day. This is far more common than you realize, and it may seem isolating — it may seem that you're the only one going through it, or that no one else will understand. But there's a reasonable chance that some of the people you know very well are somewhere along that continuum.

Dr. Bruce PinelYou can't always see it, because there's not a cast or crutches or a sling on. But they still may be presenting that something's not right. If you've known them for a while, you know something's going on — they're not behaving the way they normally do, or they just seem different. The same way you would jump up and say, hey, do you need some help with that, let me get the door for you — we don't hesitate with the physical ones. But with the mental ones, we don't know what to do. And there really shouldn't be that much difference.

There's a long history of "suck it up." We are told to just push through and persevere, when it wasn't really necessary. That's been in our sport culture for a very long time. That's why I really appreciate the Buddy Check for Jesse. You don't need to be a mental health expert or a practitioner or a professional to help someone. You just have to show you care, and if you know something's wrong or something's different, or that they're struggling with something — that's all you gotta do.

We recognize that coaches are not mental health professionals. Youth leaders are not mental health professionals, yet they can have a profound impact on the youth they're around. They're being looked up to. I like to say: your athletes don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.

The concept of buddy checking is so simple. It's just checking in on your friends, checking in on your teammates, and noticing small changes — and having the confidence, if you notice a small change, just to go and say, hey, how's it going? It's only one of many ways to approach mental health in youth. We all have to work together. Let's get it in the dressing rooms, let's get it in that unique environment, and let's teach coaches to pass on to their kids about buddy checking. It's been pretty cool to see how fast that conversation has grown. And that makes me pretty hopeful.

Grief, and Jesse

Stu GershmanPeople always ask me, does this help you get over Jesse? Does this help you through the process? You never get over anything, and grief is a nonstop journey for me. I don't mind the grief. I welcome the waves of grief. Part of me feels — who knows how long we're supposed to be here? He was here for as long as he was. We were blessed to have him a part of our life. He had a huge heart. He has a huge heart. Now, for some strange reason, he's still a part of our life, because we talk about him every day. We have Buddy Check for Jesse, and he's on my mind as if he was here. He's just not physically here. And I go through ups and downs thinking about him.

Grief is completely different for everybody. It's completely unique, and it's so important to feel it. It's so important to let the waves come over you and feel it. There's nothing wrong with it. There's nothing wrong with laughing hard. There's nothing wrong with crying hard. Just keep talking, and feel it. Just feel it.

[Home video.] It's a happy day for Jesse. Yes. Jesse loves data. Hey, Jesse. What are you doing? Whoa! Nice. Where are you going? You living life and feeling it? Sign me up.