Hi all,
Something that I've learned over the years is that you have to "sell" your research or point of view. I've learned the hard way that the best way to sell something is to make it personal. Let your buyer see your passion and they will connect to it. That is what Pardis Sabedi did by using anecdotes. By inserting these personal anecdotes, you could see and feel her passion on the subject and that is something that people can connect too. It helps the audience feel the need to help which is what is being "sold" with her TED talk. She's calling for help.
The question that I am hoping to address is "What cultural factors are causing higher rates of depression in Native Americans?" Here's why I chose this subject. My Anecdote, if you will. While living in South Dakota, I worked in a behavioral and chemical dependency treatment center for adolescents and the number of Native American youth was very high compared to any other nationality that we had the entire 6 years that I worked there. Being of native ancestry, myself, this was a very disturbing realization for me. This is something that has been ongoing for generations, this is not a recent development. Native Americans have a lot of external stressors. We all learned some about some of that in school, but not all of it. They also have a lot of internal stressors, as well. I would hope that if a cause could be pinpointed, maybe a course of action could be effectively enacted. Something needs to be done, no one should ever have to live like that.