Disclaimer: During this performance there will be mention of suicide, self-harm and a discussion of depression.

“What I want to accomplish by coming to Skyline is to get some of these young people who are struggling to reach out to somebody for help,” Brian Copeland said, when asked his main educational goal that he wishes to achieve here at Skyline College.

“The Waiting Period: Laughter in the Darkness” is a one man show in which Copeland speaks on his personal experience with depression through a personal angle of his close encounter when planning to take his own life by purchasing a new gun. The performance is intended to destigmatize depression and to help students in the audience to identify their depression and the way he identified getting help with his disease.

Skyline Career Counselor Lavinia Zanassi, and Psych Services Counselor Beverly Muse are in charge of this event in order to help make a change about the understanding of depression and other mental illnesses. They also felt this would aid students to know that they are not alone in mental illness.

“The statistics from the CDC, Center for Disease Control, state that 1-4 people are going to struggle with same sort of treatable mental illness,” Muse said. “A lot of it is depression and anxiety. The American Health College Association shows that 86 percent of college students have felt overwhelmed, 81 percent said they felt exhausted, 30 percent said they felt too depressed to function and nationwide 6.6 percent college students seriously considered suicide.”

The show is held at different theaters in the Bay Area and at other colleges and high schools.

“What makes this different, in terms of the audience itself, is because the issue is one that strikes college kids,” Copeland said. “Especially with young men between the ages 18-20 who have real issues and many of them don’t understand that they are dealing with depression.”

“And if they do understand it, there’s also the stigma that they do not want to talk about it or acknowledge it to the counselors or teachers, their peers, their parents, or anybody else,”Copeland added.

This gives the audience a chance to be proactive by getting help and treatment through his message of hope and overcoming mental health issues.