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[Music]
[Music] welcome back to fortitude JW Olson here
um today’s episode is a powerful one the subject today is teen suicide
the man in front of me is by a guy by the name of Brad hunstable he’s from Granbury Texas local guy
Brad it’s into West Point then served five years in the Army got his MBA from the Ohio state after after service
which we can gloss over that for us around Texas Parts went on to work for Hillwood for a few for a few years or
for a bit and he found it and he’s the CEO of a live streaming website called Upstream which he later sold to IBM in
2016. currently works for linear Labs which he founded in 2014 it’s a Next Generation
Electric Motor Company correct more or less but the purpose of Brad being here today
is is the subject the teen suicide Brad’s experienced uh
every every parent’s nightmare and I’m going to struggle to get through this Brad but I appreciate you being
here and what you’re about to tell us but you’ve lived you lived every parent’s nightmare you’re here today because you’re
carrying the torch for what we call uh Hayden’s corner uh the very important goal which we’ll get into here just now
but again thank you for being here and when you’re ready would you please share your story about Hayden you know
um thank you for having me JW um
yeah the story of Hayden is um the one that that had had tragedy but
also beautiful because uh he’s my son right in the middle of two kids
um I have an older daughter who now is 19 and at the time of Hayden’s pass and
she was I believe 16 and I’ve got a younger daughter as well um his little sister she’s she was eight
at the time she’s now she’s now 11. and you know
normal kid brought him up in Alito Texas where I’m from uh played football for Alito like a
lot of kids do um played soccer and love sports loved his friends
um you know real real social you know you know just a normal normal kid good really good kid
um and in the story behind what happened was in December 2019
he played a video game called fortnite I don’t know if your kids ever played that yes sir very popular at the time it
seemed like every kid in the country is playing that video game and he wanted to get a new computer monitor
um for Christmas that year and so we got him a commute computer Santa got him a computer monitor right it’s one of those
real nice big ones like kind of curved Dell monitors right and um to play
fortnite on and in February of 2020 he was playing it and you know like I used
to do like you know probably anybody who plays some of these games he got mad at the video game
um and he threw his controller down on the on the on the desk and it bounced up and hit his monitor and it broke it put
a big was an LCD screen put a big crack in it right and he came down and told me
um and you know when he was upset and I told him you know hey man I don’t
I don’t care about the monitor but I care how you react you can’t get mad at these video games like this man it’s
just you know it’s just a video game you know so you know unfortunately you know it’s a really expensive
present so you’re going to learn a lesson you’re not going to get another one it’s basically the message I told
him and then as you recall in 2020 the world changed right the covet happened and
then the lockdown happened then they closed schools down you know
um and just a really weird time for everybody right all the fear and
media you know hoopla around it all what’s going on right
and so um he asked us he came down to me and said hey I got nothing to do nothing
going on I have no connection with my friends you know I’m not talking to anybody because I’ve talked to my friends through fortnite you know with
their little headphone that’s how they hung out he goes I’m so bored can I get another monitor and you know we talked
it over and told him that you know okay but you’re gonna work around the house so we made him you know do some chores and you know work his butt off and he
did and we bottom ended up buying them a new monitor you know not not nearly as nice like a small little Cheapo like one
on Amazon and April 17 2020 about three or four
weeks later um my water well in my house broke and I
hadn’t seen my dad and he came over and helped me fix it and Hayden me and him fixed the beautiful sunny day I think it
might have been like a Friday um we fixed the water well for three or four hours was was was normal right and
um remember I kissed him on the head I still remember to this day and he went
upstairs and I had to take a phone call um and it was just a 30 minute phone call and
during that time I came out of my room or the office and my eight-year-old
daughter came down the stairs and said Hayden and hung herself and um I ran up the stairs as fast as I
could and total shock of course try to save him it was unsuccessful obviously but those
of you obviously a nightmare situation and he took his life and I remember we the
first few days were just so confusing like where did this come from I was just with you my dad was
just with you um we were all just with you you were happy and normal and like it was just we
had no clue what this came out of nowhere I went through a cell phone and all that and everything was fine he wasn’t
depressed he didn’t have anxiety as far as we knew or any of that stuff and it was just a complete shock
um and as my little one my eight-year-old at the time I started talking a little bit more actually told
a neighbor during the chaos of it all um turns out he broke his monitor again
and he in that you know rash of emotion and the
anger and fear getting in trouble or whatever it may have been made a very it made an impulsive
decision to to do that um so it was it was the worst day of my
life without a doubt um I mean the the EMTs and paramedic stuff they tried their butts
off they worked their butts off they tried we ended up going to Cooks and they tried and
um it just it was just didn’t didn’t happen how quickly Brad did the paramedics is there is any reason that
they were delayed that wouldn’t have mattered No in fact
um when I found him and again it was just this window but I took him down and
applied CPR and did all that stuff and I happened to happen uh AED in the house
electronic automatic electronic defibrillator and I told my little daughter to go downstairs and go get it
for me and I tried to use it and it didn’t work and I was on the phone 9-1-1 and they were telling what to do but it
felt like there was a cop that showed up pretty quickly um and uh we were I was in his room I
remember when the cop came around the corner um the look on his face was just on me
was bad I mean I looked at the cop and the look of his face I’ll never forget his face I feel I actually feel bad for
the guy um and he tried and helped and he had another defibrillator we tried to his and it wasn’t working
um and the EMTs were there pretty quick I felt like um so it was I feel like there wasn’t an
issue with the response or anything like that so give forgive me for interrupting and asking but how did Hayden do it I
mean is there is there is it something I can ask yeah yeah he he uh he he hung
himself um in the closet it was a very simple means I don’t want to get two Graphics but he took a belt just one belt and
just was laying in it just like this all right that was it um uh he’d stack some toys up
um and so you know since then of course for years and it’s
been three years now but a million questions of why and how didn’t even know that that thing that was possible and um
and you know what I’ve what I’ve learned about suicide um you know I didn’t know anything prior
to Hayden’s death in fact I thought people who took their lives were on drugs or they were crazy that was my
perception and that as I’ve learned is a very very inaccurate perception of suicide
um suicide is always complicated there’s always multiple things that are
going on but in youth in particular it’s a second leading cause of death for kids which is
crazy that that’s the case in the United States of America and in youth in
particular um about 55 percent of the time it’s impulsive
which means they made the decision you know very rapidly um and as opposed to like a lingering
depression or something yeah okay yeah exactly right yeah so some and some kids have lingering depression and take their
life and there’s signs that are obvious um in in about 55 percent of the about
50 of the cases there’s no previous medical diagnosis of any kind of mental
health issue and so um so they didn’t have any obvious depression or you know anxiety or OCD or
whatever it may be right um and the reason behind that the science behind it is
in kids partially you don’t have a lot of ways to go you can’t go drink a beer
or something like that right so your choice is to go calm yourself throw are more limited um but from a from a physiological
standpoint the prefrontal cortex in the brain of a kid is not fully developed until you’re like
30 30 and you’re you’re like you know mid-20s sure like 25 or something like
that um and so youth kids tend to make
decisions very rapidly or impulsively they use the amygdala part of the brain which that
fight or flight response and what happens when you make a decision with your amygdala is you even
with even if you have a fully developed prefrontal cortex it will shut down and you almost kind of black out
um you don’t literally black out but you’re cognitively kind of black out right
um and so there’s there’s some real data behind the impulsivity and what it looks
like a lot of times is as a kid you know maybe you got bullied and you made a decision very
rapidly maybe got a fight with their parent common one I hear um girlfriend broke up with me boyfriend
broke up with me very common when he broke something very common or maybe you’re you’re gay or bi or something
like that and you’re struggling with that and make you make it very rapid impulsive decision
and whether it’s a kid or an adult the other thing I’ve learned is about suicide no one wants to die
no one wants to die they want to escape pain even if it’s temporary pain because
a girlfriend broke up me or whatever and that’s a very key distinction to my
earlier comment about being crazy people people on drugs it’s just not it’s not accurate and it’s
a common misperception you mentioned the stats of number two uh
reason for death of teenagers I think 11 through 17 is that accurate correct um
I mean those stats are staggering um this is part of this this and this and
thank you for the story this is now it’s it’s it’s a terrible part of your life but somehow you have
got out of bed begun begun living again
and now you and you fly this this torch and we called it we talked about it Hayden’s Corner in the intro
out of those out of out of this tragedy you’re trying to do this that you’re doing this thing not trying you are
doing this thing to help others because the answer you told me what I know from
you is it’s not a complicated uh thing to do but people aren’t doing
it and they need to be doing it can we talk about Hayden’s Corner real quick
yeah um I think I’m probably no different than
most parents who was a child um or have some kind of tragedy you know you wanna
you know there’s a calling to try to make it better right we’re trying to make a difference you know and if we all we always said
from the beginning you know if Hayden’s story saves one kid then you know in his life his life mattered
right um and so about about two two days after I buried him we
buried him and we couldn’t even have a funeral there’s a little Cove it was a drive-by funeral
um so it’s just a really awful deal the whole thing and about two days after we buried him
um I walked outside it was like a we were Mooring at my dad’s house and I’m I opened up my cell phone and I recorded a
video on Facebook my Facebook account and I just hit record and I said uh
at the beginning of the video just kind of came out I said Kobe killed my son but not in the way you think and I
talked about the lockdown I talked about Hayden a little bit and I wanted to I did it I recorded the video mostly to just kind of quiet squash some rumors
that were happening in Alito just so everybody knew the real story and um and I put the phone down and it
started vibrating remember and within an hour it was vibrating like
so much and every one of those little vibrations was a message it went viral
um and within an hour like a million people had seen it and overall that video ended up like 150 million people
I’ve seen it now wow and so when that happened um
I said okay we need to I want to be a part of the solution and talk about this because there’s a tendency with you know
suicide in particular to make it a very private thing like it’s there’s a lot of Shame and it’s a family matter we don’t
want to talk about it you know a lot of times if you read an article about how someone died and they don’t really tell you how
probably suicide because there’s a natural instinct to do that yes indeed because of the stigma and so
um after that video went viral we formed um what’s called Hayden’s Corner
um it’s a 501c3 fund where we raised them what we ended up raising money to support
um mental health and suicide awareness and all these things we feel like we’ve done a lot of good we
made a short film not too long after we got it out right before Christmas at 2020.
called Almost 13. it’s almost about the word 13. it’s on YouTube and
2B and a bunch of other you know online places and really the goal of that film
initially the initial project we did was really three things was one to honor
Hayden tell his story right two I wanted to warn parents or just
make parents aware that hey this can happen you know a pulse of suicide and your kid when your kid is really you
need to sit down and talk to them about this and why you have to talk to them so
that was a really important part of the film and then lastly the most important part was how to safely have that
conversation with your kid maybe as young as eight know the experts say nine ten be about
suicide I mean how do you do that in a safe manner so that you’re you know you
know talking about it because at the end of the day they’re going to find out about what suicide is and you’re not going to put it in their brain anything
like that um the data doesn’t support that at all and they’re going to find out about it
so what I tell parents is your kid’s going to find out about suicide so do you want them to find out about it
on Tick Tock or from a kid or from Hollywood or in a very safe and controlled manner
from you as the parent that makes sense the message the overarching message is simple
and I don’t want to steal your words but talk to your kid whether you think he’s great or he’s not
just have the conversation yeah we say conversations matter that’s it
conversations matter that’s a incredible tagline for the for the uh for the for the for the non-profit and
yeah I can tell you a story we um when we started doing this and I started seeing conversations matter we were
working on the movie and had the video go viral I had a guy reach out to me from California and I didn’t know him on
Facebook and he wrote me and he said amen um Brad I want to just sing my
condolences but also tell you because of Hayden’s story I sat down and talked to my daughter
about suicide and I found out she was suicidal and I had no idea she was 16. she was actually cutting herself she had
scars and stuff on her on her wrist and he had no idea he said so I want to say thank you you know now that now that I
know we’re going to get her help you know and I said man that’s great dude it’s awesome you know conversations matter right
will end up writing me about two months later and said hey Brad my
my daughter tried to kill herself she’s in the ICU she’s got full organ failure she’s been
at coma for four days they don’t think she’s gonna make it and I remember my son would just you
know dropped obviously like oh my gosh and so
you know I prayed and prayed to Hayden to go up there and Tuck somebody and you
know my prayers and miracles of modern medicine all the above you know whatever
it was um she uh this girl miraculously makes it with no organ long-term organ damage
she got a long road ahead of her when she survived and I remember he called me about a
month after that and he said Brad um she want to talk to you and tell you thank you for saving my daughter’s life
and I remember at the time thinking all right I told him I said look man that’s really kind of you but I mean I didn’t save your daughter’s life but you know
I’m so happy she’s okay and you said well no Brett I didn’t tell you something because what I didn’t tell
you is my daughter came down the stairs at the last minute and said Daddy I did
something wrong she went into a coma and went to a seizures immediately
he said if I’d not been having those conversations with her proactively I would have found her probably dead in
her room and so you know we just don’t know how she had taken pills right she’d take him
in like 60 Tylenol pills oh wow um you just don’t know how thin that line
is and even in Hayden’s case you know I we didn’t have the mistake the biggest mistake we made with Hayden
we didn’t I didn’t know to have that conversation I didn’t sit him down and say hey man no don’t you break my truck and break my
truck as a 16 year old or break them on or or someone hurts you I need to know about it right nothing is
worth taking your life over and that’s the conversation you kind of have and I didn’t I didn’t never we
never did that well I know because I’ve been doing some research on you and this
whole thing and there have been people that respond and and Chirp through social media but people are having that
conversation more and more now not in no small part to you which is an extraordinary thing because I don’t know
anybody out there watching this that wouldn’t would disagree with that have the conversation it’s it’s an
amazing thing it sounds almost silly to say it but to your point people you didn’t know you were people weren’t
doing this so uh I mean I can’t even tell you how impactful that little statement have the conversation really
is and people that that will see this I think you’ll you’ve already made a
tremendous impact in the world with your video and I’ve seen it it’s incredible
um can I ask about your daughters and your wife I know you
I know you’re never going to be okay but I think people like myself and others
would would wonder how how do you find strength and how do you how do you find it a way to
to get up and go again is is there is there something you could pinpoint or is it just I have to go find a way to make
good out of a Bad Thing something along those lines
well um one of the things I’ve learned about grief
and I wish I didn’t have to learn it but you know I learned it is um one everybody agrees differently so
everyone agrees at different speeds in different ways um so that that was a real eye-opening
part of this journey it’s it’s hard enough to heal yourself let alone try to help
others of your family heal also since it’s been that was really tough and it’s been tough
um I’ve also learned that um
at least for me this for me you know being able to you know try to do something positive out of something so
awful as it has been healing for me talking about it like this is part of my
healing and trying to do good it’s part of part of my healing and
my wife’s different she doesn’t like sitting here on TV and doing her you know podcasts and stuff to do that’s not
her that’s not her path for healing um which is fine but for me it has been a key part
um and my daughters and they’re they’re they’re all doing well uh we’re in year three
um it that you you don’t it never goes away I believe this with all my heart it will never go away you just learn how to
carry it right um and I still cry man I still and by the way my in this this is my journey
has not been like some nice clean linear progression of improvement understood um
it’s it is it’s a it is a mishmash of to get to those
points and I have my issues and have my days just like anything anyone um I still cry most days
um you know and usually for me it’s in the morning when I’m like running to the gym or something like that
um and so um you know grief and healing is a it’s messy uh it’s complicated and some
unfortunately and I know a lot of parents have lost kids hundreds of them now um
a lot of times people get stuck it’s very easy to do right and because it’s
just the pain are you a spiritual person or are you spiritual before this have you
become more sense can you speak to that a little bit yeah um
you know I I grew up Catholic and um did that whole thing for you know
through high school and then you know kind of was in and out of church you know I I would classify myself as having
belief but wasn’t super intentional about about that
and since Hayden died um definitely much more so you know what I tell people
is when you lose a kid you know I kind of have to believe right that’s the only chance I got to
see him again I mean and so on the Practical level you know I’m going to choose to believe for hope
and when I die or when we die if there’s nothing you know at that point I guess it didn’t matter but I but I that hope
is really an important part of healing I believe um and so
amongst other weird stuff that has happened I um
I I I yeah I definitely um would like to characterize myself as as
someone who has leaned in very very much more intentional than when I was before without I mean and it’s changing
for the good um you mentioned this briefly and I want to at least I want to touch her one more
time because I think it’s very powerful but you mentioned covid and the the skyrocketing of of teen suicide and no
it’s number two you spoke to me off when we first met but
one more time why why is this problem becoming so great
um is I know it’s a lot of factors but why are kids progressively finding this
Avenue for to solve problems
you know there’s a lot of theories about that um and I have my own I guess and I’m no
expert but I’m talking to experts and and coming to my own conclusions
I think a big part of it frankly is um Society has changed a lot in the last
10 15 years right from more and more broken families or single single parent
families religion decreasing and then you know if
you want to look at like what happened in 2007 2008 you know the iPhone came out and social media and these very
um intense video games that are immersive um I know I believe it’s played playing
a big factor and part of the science of the why I believe that and what a and
I’m not the only one that other experts have will tell you is a lot of these particularly this cell phone and these
games can cause spikes and the chemical dopamine in the brain like these kind of repeated spikes and dopamine is the
chemical in the brain that that’s tied to motivation a lot of people think it’s like your pleasure chemical it’s not
technically that it’s more like a motivation chemical your motivation to do whatever something right and when you
have these constant spikes and dopamine it lowers what is called your Baseline
dopamine so you’re like called think of it like your average dopamine and your body goes down because it’s these spikes
kind of drains it it’s really hard to raise it and so what when you’re dopamine goes
down you’re at your Baseline dopamine goes down what that looks like particularly in youth is or even in
adults depression anxiety ADHD that’s what it looks like but do you really
have those I mean is there some something fundamentally wrong with you no you’re it’s a lifestyle choice
because you’re on these games and part of my fear of why in the last couple years
they’ve seen such a spike in the ER visits and the self-reporting of depression by youth I think it’s
partially because you think about what we did with Kobe when we locked everybody down you’ve got kids out of the routine they
weren’t getting exercise right and there a lot of them were on video games and sitting on their phone the whole time
so what did you do you just created made them essentially more addicted to the device which lowered their Baseline
dopamine and when you’re Baseline dopamine goes down they start having issues and it kind of just compounds
right then they don’t do as well in school and the stress of covert and all that and and so you know the other side of that
is fortunately I think for many a pain yeah
was was there a a thing or a person that
that struck you early on in this in this journey that made a difference or is it was this just
a long steady road to where we are now is anything you can pinpoint more than the others that led you here
did something pop into your brain do you think you had a you know you’re seeing visions and thinking things of about
heaven and all these things did something what was there an inspirational moment in this journey
huh no I think it’s it’s kind of I probably
click characterize it more gradual the the um it’s kind of two steps forward one step
back kind of thing um I I feel I do feel very fortunate shortly after Hayden died that a couple
guys reached out to me who had lost their kid the same way um that was really important because in
this first few days and weeks I mean you got it’s hard to describe how
much of the fog and how
reality in the world just became something that’s this can happen like it’s
it’s still weird to even think about like am I even gonna be okay am I going to live can I even do this you know
um and having those people reach out to me pretty early on like within a couple weeks they heard the story was a big deal because I was able to
just like wait okay you’re you’re three okay so you how did you you’re three so you
made it you survived you know you’re still on Earth and um and you’re normal still-ish you know
how did you so that was that was a big deal um gave me some hope that okay so maybe
I can get to that point right um and the battle it’s just you know you get to the next
little I mean the early days is just get to the next minute and then within a
week or two it’s like get to the next day and then it’s like you know one foot in front of the other kind of thing but it’s and now for me now I’m at year
three I’m gonna want to get to the ten or five or whatever all right so you kind of get a little further out yes
indeed one day at a time um I admire your strength man I’ve known you only for a little while but I know
about you and I know your story and I I do admire your strengths um you’re gonna have some good feedback
from this I I believe and again the message overarching message have the
conversation conversation matters uh thank you very much for being here uh
if we can help you in any regards going forward we’re happy to do it we’ll share the website on the end of the show uh is
there anything else people should know about how to find your be part of Hayden’s corner yeah I know the go to the website and
watch our our film almost 13. it’s free to the world it’s uh it’s a short film
it’s only 17 minutes they won the 2021 Global documentary of the year it’s
really powerful and um and if they would if you would watch it and if you felt called or compelled
if you’d share someone that might help you know that’d be that’d be amazing we can we can do
that for sure well again I appreciate you being here man and thank you very much this we want to help you have some
more good come from this and there is something good to come out of this but appreciate you Brad appreciate it I guess thank you thanks
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