YOU MIGHT NOT expect a member of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention communications team to have much to smile about. But Brett Wean, director of writing and entertainment outreach at AFSP, greets me with a grin over Zoom, eagerly sharing that he has no other meetings for the afternoon and could talk about his work “forever.”

That work involves partnering with comedians, authors, directors, screenwriters, musicians, and more creators who want to portray suicide thoughtfully, respectfully, and honestly in media.

It’s also personal for Wean. He grew up as the only child of divorced parents and lived with his mom, who attempted suicide numerous times. “I was her main support system for most of my life,” he says. As an adult, he came to learn she had borderline personality disorder, bipolar disorder, and depression, and she died by suicide about 15 years ago.

He majored in film in college, studied improv, and worked in book publishing before joining the AFSP communications team, where he was able to combine his love of storytelling and lived experience with suicide loss. In January, he’ll start his tenth year with the organization, which he still sees as just the beginning.

Wean opens up about why this work is so important, even if most audiences don’t even notice it, some of the plot lines he’s changed for the better, and how he does it without ruining the creative vibes.

MEN’S HEALTH: How do you connect with entertainment partners to advise them on safe storytelling about suicide?

BRETT WEAN: It’s mainly word of mouth. With every project I work on, I’m focused on solving the problem, but it’s also like an audition for future projects. Because they’ll now know that I’m a resource to reach out to if they’re ever working on a different show or movie. But also, people in entertainment talk to each other. And they might tell their friends, “The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention was a really great partner to work with, and they’ve got this creative guy who knows about screenplays and structure.”

As the years have gone by, more and more projects have found their way to us, and now, through those connections, we have some official partnerships with entertainment companies, and we’re available as a confidential, safe space to workshop and review things as they come to us.

In my ideal world, I want to develop relationships with every single different entertainment company and every different publisher.

MH: What does your work with these partners actually look like? Are you in meetings and brainstorming sessions with creators?

BW: I don’t always get to meet them directly. Sometimes, I’ll just get passed along a script or some footage and write notes. But the process goes better when I can actually talk one-on-one with someone. Because then it isn’t so much about getting right into the notes. It’s about trust-building in a really sincere and authentic way. There are plenty of clinical experts who can say, “Don’t do this, don’t do that,” but I know how I would feel as a screenwriter in that position. I try to offer suggestions without being presumptuous or rewriting something.

MH: What’s the danger of storylines in popular media that don’t handle suicide well?

BW: Nothing you put on screen or in a comic book or in a podcast is going to make a random person suddenly want to take their own life. But for people in the audience who are already at risk and are in a vulnerable state and struggling, research does show that certain things can lead to suicide contagion and can be very dangerous.

I still vividly remember how even a line in a TV show, let alone a whole storyline about mental health or suicide, would indicate how my mom and I should both feel about what it is we were both going through together in navigating her illness. I really believe that stories can help move society forward in all sorts of ways.

MH: How do you coach your partners to depict suicide safely?

BW: We have a bunch of guidelines: Don’t graphically show a suicidal act visually on screen or in dialogue. Don’t put too much of an emphasis on the lethal means used.

Sometimes it’s about questions like: Does it need to be a close up? Could it be a wide shot instead? We recommend muted sound effects, possibly just showing the reaction shot to what’s happening rather than the gruesome visual act. If the storyline is thematically about suicide, the good stuff isn’t about the attempt or the death. The good stuff, the deeper stuff, is emotional.

It also isn’t just about harm reduction. It’s also about encouraging help-seeking. There’s an opportunity in dialogue to teach people who don’t know what to do if they have a friend who might be thinking about suicide. Many people say they want to say something, they want to help, but they don’t want to put the idea in their head by asking them. That’s actually a misconception.

All the research shows that you should always ask directly. It’s not going to push them to action. It’s going to lead them to help, in many cases. And so TV shows can show, in a really authentic way, how you can have those safe, sometimes life-saving conversations, and model that for people.

MH: Do you have any standout examples of your work that really resonated with you?

BW: The rock band Papa Roach reached out because they had a ballad called “Leave a Light On” about being there for people who are struggling and wanted to donate some money to AFSP. But I ended up working with them on a major theatrical moment on stage during their arena tour, where lead singer Jacoby Shaddix talked about our work and AFSP’s recent national PSA campaign Talk Away the Dark. Each night on tour, they turned out the lights in the stadium and the audience all held up their phone lights. The moment resonated so much that they renamed the song “Leave a Light On (Talk Away the Dark),” after our campaign, and released it as a single, which hit #1 on the mainstream rock charts.

We also provided guidance on the mini-series The Girl From Plainville, which was on Hulu, and it was about the Michelle Carter case. We met with the writers’ room, the producers, the directors, the whole team, before they’d written a single line and told them about what research tells us about safe storytelling in terms of suicide and things to keep in mind as they’re writing. And then we reviewed scripts, and we reviewed second versions of scripts.

One of my fondest memories was one of the producers talking to me in his car on his way to one of the locations to shoot a particular scene. I was using all my film major knowledge and creative background to talk about the vibe of the scene, and he knew exactly what to talk to the director about to create the safest version of how that particular scene could be.

I also worked on an episode of the Grey’s Anatomy spinoff Station 19 for ABC, which involved a first responder asking another first responder directly if he’s thinking about suicide. After working with the writers on the script, they called me from the set because one of the actors wanted to change some of the dialogue—and they were pretty sure from my guidance that there were subtle nuances involved that would send the wrong message and be harmful. I got to use my improv training in real time on the phone, literally improvising other possible bits of dialogue in the moment for them. The episode turned out great, and demonstrated how anyone can have a similar conversation that can lead someone to help.

MH: You’ve also worked with the writers’ room and on set for comedian Chris Gethard—what’s that been like?

BW: Chris—or Geth, as he likes to be called—well, he’s just awesome. In my early days at AFSP, he was doing The Chris Gethard Show and they were doing a specific episode about mental health. I ended up going in the night when they were taping it live. I showed up a couple hours earlier, and he had me meet with the whole writers’ room, because a lot of that show was improvised, and they were just soaking it up. I thought he might bring me in for 5 or 10 minutes, and I think I talked to them for an hour right before they went on.

Then, I worked on his off-Broadway show Career Suicide. People often ask me if comedy is OK in terms of suicide, and it absolutely is. There are hard moments in life, and there are also funny moments in life, and to say everything has to be one or the other is not realistic. Depictions of suicide don’t have to be cheesy, corny, or too earnest, like an after-school special. I want it to be authentic. And I definitely don’t want to be like a network sensor or a standards and practices team.

Chris talks about his own experiences with suicidal ideation in a very raw and authentic way. He gets into, not just therapy, but medication, side effects, and his fear about losing his creative edge as an artist if he takes medication for a mental health situation. And he ultimately says it allowed him to become a better creative artist because the mental health stuff was getting in the way, and it allowed him to be unencumbered by all that.

MH: What do you want audiences to know about why your work is so important?

BW: Because suicide prevention is something we can all be involved in. This is a fight we can win. A lot of the time, people just don’t know what to say. Pop culture offers the opportunity to see how you can have life-saving conversations with someone who’s struggling. But I also work on materials like our Real Convo Guides as part of our Talk Away the Dark campaign that help anyone learn how to have those conversations when they come up and feel confident about it.

Suppressing feelings is dangerous, and men in particular are four times more likely to die by suicide than women. We still have a long way to go, but a lot of men, and particularly younger men, are realizing that attending to your mental health really is a strong thing to do. It’s like if you’re a Formula 500 driver and your brain is the engine of your car, you need to take care of it. And sometimes you need to bring in a highly trained mechanic, which, in this metaphor, is bringing in a therapist.

I think being strong means you’re not going to be afraid to deal with the feelings that you have. You’re going to let your friends know that you’re a safe person to talk to about feelings and mental health.

MH: Will that put you out of a job?

BW: There’s still a long way to go. I expected to see more TV shows or movies getting it wrong, but more people are realizing that’s dangerous.

I realized at some point all stories are about mental health. If you have human characters in your story, what’s going on in the story is the emotions, how we react to things, and how we deal with each other—it’s all about mental health, even if it’s not about someone having a mental health crisis.

I can see myself working here for the next 20 years and being able to look back and think of right now, even a bunch of years into it, as being the early days.