Stand Up for Mental Health with David Granirer

David Granirer loves to hear you laugh. A counselor, stand-up comic, author, and founder of an innovative program called Stand Up For Mental Health™ (SMH), he teaches stand-up comedy techniques to people with mental health issues. As someone who was himself diagnosed with bipolar disorder, he has a deep and personal understanding of humor’s healing power.

David was featured in the VOICE Award-winning documentary Cracking Up, received a Life Unlimited Award from the Depression Bipolar Support Alliance, an Award of Excellence from the National Council of Behavioral Health, a Champion of Mental Health Award from the Canadian Alliance on Mental Illness and Mental Health (CAMIMH), a Meritorious Service Medal from the Governor General of Canada, and was recognized as one of the 150 Canadian Difference Makers in mental health.

A sought-after keynote speaker, David has worked with mental health organizations to perform and train SMH groups in over 50 cities in Canada, the U.S., and Australia. In the following interview, conducted on July 11, 2025, he shares wisdom gained from over 20 years of using humor to bring healing and connection to the mentally ill.

What inspired you to found Stand Up For Mental Health?

I got the idea for SMH from a course called Stand-Up Comedy Clinic that I teach at one of the local community colleges in Vancouver. I’ve taught this course for over 20 years now, and it has nothing to do with mental health. But I’d see people have life-changing experiences getting on stage and using comedy to tell a comedy club full of people exactly who they were.

One woman had a fear of flying and told me that the day after our showcase, she had to get on a plane, and she said, “My fear was gone. I felt like once I’d done stand-up, I could do anything.” And I thought, “Wouldn’t it be amazing to be able to give this experience to people who wanted to do comedy but who also wanted to change their lives.” And since I work in mental health and I also have a mental health condition, I thought that would be the perfect place to start.

How do the Stand Up For Mental Health workshops work? What’s the process?

The course takes place via a series of six or 12-week virtual classes. I’ll be in front of my laptop and working with a roomful of people in cities like Austin, Melbourne, or New York City, to name a few.

The first class consists of an overview of stand-up comedy, where we watch videos of my comics and look at what they’re doing and how they’re doing it. Then I show the new comics some joke-writing techniques and formulas.

We spend the next portion of the course working on material. The comics bring in jokes or ideas, and then we brainstorm them. We look at which jokes work, which don’t, and why they don’t, so we can turn them all into killer material.

Once the comics have an act of about five minutes, we work on timing, performance, and delivery. Then I fly in and we do a big public show, usually at a comedy club or theater, to help raise awareness and give people a completely different perspective on what it means to have a mental health issue.

How has the use of humor positively impacted your own mental health following your bipolar diagnosis?

It’s given me the confidence to be able to talk about my diagnosis in public, and just confidence in general. When you’ve made a room full of people laugh, you can do anything!

Can you share an example of a Stand Up For Mental Health participant who benefited from the program?

One that really stands out involves a comic named Robbie, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia. I first met Robbie when he was 21 and had just been discharged after spending 5 months in a psychiatric hospital. The good thing was that he was finally stable because prior to being hospitalized, he heard demons and thought he had to drink his own blood. But his soul had died; there was nothing for him to do. All he did was sit around and watch TV for 14 hours a day and smoke cigarettes, and that’s not recovery.

But his Mom brought him to one of our shows, and something in him came alive. Finally, there was something he really wanted to do! He had a reason to get up in the morning!

Well, he joined our program convinced that he’d fail, because due to his condition, he’d failed in almost all the other areas in his life. I mean, how do you pay attention in school when you hear demons talking to you all the time?

Surprise, surprise, he succeeded and kept right on succeeding. He actually became one of our stars and did hundreds of shows with us. We do a lot of shows for universities and colleges, and we’d always take him because he was the perfect age to speak to those folks. He stayed in the program for 6-7 years, and he’s now a rapper and has a couple of albums out, plus he gives presentations to police on mental health.

He says that doing Stand Up For Mental Health is what gave him the confidence and resilience to move on with his life.

What do you say to people who believe mental illness should never be a laughing matter?

Joking about mental health is one of the most life-affirming ways of dealing with what is an incredibly painful condition. I think we’d really have problems if we weren’t able to joke about it. There’s an incredible benefit to being irreverent towards the disorders that have caused us so much hardship. And we’re not making light of a serious issue; we’re telling our recovery stories through comedy, which is a completely different thing.

Our comedy puts a human face to the issue of mental health. Our audiences see people on stage who are funny, likeable, and intelligent.

I also hear people in the audience say stuff like, “I just saw that guy on stage with schizophrenia and he was hilarious.” And how often do you hear “schizophrenia” and “hilarious” in the same sentence?

What advice would you give to those who would like to try incorporating humor into their mental illness management or recovery plan?

They’re way ahead of us in the UK. In the UK, the National Health Service prescribes comedy as a way of ameliorating depression. They prescribe going to a comedy show, taking a comedy workshop, watching funny videos every day, etc. Often, a therapist will tell a client to meditate for 15 minutes a day. How about watching 15 minutes of comedy a day? It’s a great way to get a dopamine hit.

If you’re too depressed to use humor to cope, I think it’s still possible to watch comedy as the National Health Service recommends.