Shawn Francis Has Something to Say
(And a lot of people are listening) by Ralph Hardy
Any pole vaulter who has spent more than five minutes on YouTube looking for pole vault videos has likely come across the Team-Hoot vlogs posted by Shawn Francis. Frequently shot in what appears to be his basement, yet cleverly edited and slightly sardonic in tone, Francis actually makes pole vaulting seem, well, cool. But to his thousands of viewers, the Minnesota state high school pole vault champion, North Dakota State University record holder, and former professional vaulter is more than a talking head who adds some sophomoric humor to their own quixotic pole vaulting exploits. For many he’s a voice of compassion, empathy and encouragement as they grapple with depression and other mental illnesses, and the stigma attached to them. Shawn gets it. And that’s because he has landed in the same pit. For some, depression feels like being stuck under the deepest ocean; for others, an enveloping fog. The novelist William Styron called it a “storm of murk” that left him in indescribable pain. A noted psychologist calls it a “beast that sits on your shoulder.”
The storm found Shawn when he was in second grade. At the time, childhood depression was poorly
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understood--and it still is, particularly by the general public. Some children seem to outgrow depression; Shawn didn’t. He missed nearly a year of middle school, a year that included the wrong medication regimen and even hospitalization. When he got out, he made a list of famous people who suffered from depression, a who’s who of artists and intellectuals. Among them, he idolized Robin Williams. Yet depression took its toll. Shawn lost friends and was often ridiculed. He was told that depression was “just a choice,” whereas, in fact, there was a strong genetic component to it. Shawn wrestled with it through high school and into college. Anti-depressants helped, although he once, ill-advisedly went off his meds due to collegiate drug testing. “That was a mistake,” he says, grinning now. But depression is a wily foe; it returns when you aren’t looking. The stress of graduate school even led to an outpatient hospitalization. Robin William’s death by suicide was another blow, as it was for millions. Whether the blame lies with the cell phone, social media, economic dis-
parities, or something else, social scientists agree on one thing: youth suicide was already at a record high before the pandemic — with increases among teens every year
