Click here to book David for a keynote or to bring Stand Up For Mental Health to your city

What’s so funny about mental health? …as far as Stand Up For Mental Health is concerned, everything!

In David’s Stand Up For Mental Health comedy course, people with mental health and addictions issues turn their problems into stand up comedy, then perform their mental health comedy acts at conferences, treatment centers, psych wards, for various mental health organizations, corporations, government agencies, on college and university campuses, and most importantly for the general public.

The Power of Stand Up Comedy!

“We use comedy to give people with mental health issues a powerful voice and help reduce the stigma and discrimination around mental illness,” says Granirer. “The idea is that laughing at our setbacks raises us above them. And comedy makes people go from despair to hope, and hope is crucial to anyone struggling with adversity.”

Granirer, who suffers from bipolar, got the idea for Stand Up For Mental Health from watching students in his Langara College Stand-Up Comedy Clinic course. “Though Stand-Up Comedy Clinic isn’t intended as mental health therapy, I’ve had students overcome long standing depressions and phobias, not to mention increasing their confidence and self-esteem. There’s something incredibly healing about telling a comedy audience exactly who you are and having them laugh and cheer.”

Stand Up For Mental Health trains groups throughout North America and Australia in partnership with dozens of different mental health organizations. Click here to partner with David and bring Stand Up For Mental Health to your community.

“There’s something amazing about having members your community take the stage at a mental health comedy event and rock the house,” says Granirer. It’s incredibly empowering and a great way of fighting public stigma. Most so-called normal people would never want to go anywhere near stand up comedy. Seeing people with mental health issues do it forces the audience to re-evaluate their perceptions of and prejudices against people who have a mental health condition.”

Stand Up For Mental Health Is Everywhere!!!

Mental Health organizations in Canada, the U.S., and Australia hire David to run Stand Up For Mental Health in their communities. He trains the comics via zoom and then flies in at the end of the course to perform a mental health comedy show with the group. He has given Stand-Up For Mental Health trainings and shows in partnership with mental health organizations across the US in states like Colorado, Alaska, Connecticut, Texas, Arkansas, California, Oregon, Massachusetts, Illinois, Virginia, Michigan, Arizona, Washington, Virginia, Kentucky, New York, in Australia, and in provinces across Canada.

Click here for information on how to run Stand Up For Mental Health in your city