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This episode is sponsored by NuCalm.

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And as many of you know, I only bring sponsors onto this show

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whose products I truly swear by.

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Now we are an overworked and underslept population,

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especially those of us that wear uniform for a living.

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And trying to reclaim some of the lost rest and recovery is imperative.

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Now, the application of this product is as simple as putting on headphones and a sleep mask.

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As you listen to music on each of the programs,

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there is neuroacoustic software beneath that is tapping into the actual frequencies of your brain,

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whether to upregulate your nervous system or downregulate.

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Now, for most of us that come off shift, we are A, exhausted,

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and B, do not want to bring what we've had to see and do back home to our loved ones.

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So one powerful application is using the program Powernap,

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a 20-minute session that will not only feel like you've had two hours of sleep,

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but also downregulate from a hypervigilant state back into the role of mother or father, husband or wife.

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Now, there are so many other applications and benefits from this software,

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so I urge you to go and listen to episode 806 with CEO Jim Poole.

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And you can find even more information on New Calm dot com.

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Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast.

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As always, my name is James Gearing, and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome on the show

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military and first responder clinical psychologist Dr. Jenna Casas.

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Now, in this conversation, we discuss a host of topics from dipping her toe in EMS

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and how that sent her away from the first responder professions,

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deciding to be part of the solution in our mental health, entrance level psychology tests,

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the mental health crisis, dispatch, the wildland community, law enforcement and so much more.

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Now, before we get to this incredible conversation, as I say every week, please just take a moment.

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Go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback and leave a rating.

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Every single five-star rating truly does elevate this podcast, therefore making it easier for others to find.

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And this is a free library of almost a thousand episodes now.

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So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories

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so I can get them to every single person on planet earth who needs to hear them.

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So with that being said, I introduce to you Dr. Jenna Casas. Enjoy.

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Well, Jenna, I want to start by saying thank you so much for taking the time to come on the Behind the Shield podcast.

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I know we met virtually one time on the collective when we were both guests at the same time,

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but I'm so glad to have you on to the podcast today.

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Thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to our conversation.

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So where on planet earth be finding you today?

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Yes, I am in my home office, Reno, Nevada.

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Brilliant. Well, I would have to start at the very beginning.

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So tell me where you were born and tell me a little about your family dynamic, what your parents did, how many siblings.

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Absolutely. So I was born not far from where I am.

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I'm born and raised in Reno, Nevada.

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I've had the luxury of being able to stay close to home my whole life.

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In my family, I have mom, dad, stepmom and two siblings.

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And then I was fortunate enough to be pretty close with my stepmother's grandparents.

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So raised with a pretty full family from about age six onward.

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I lived with dad, stepmom, two siblings and those grandparents.

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So life was pretty busy with so many people in the house.

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And what did they do as far as professions?

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My dad has been in construction his whole life.

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He started out at age 15, worked various positions and roles.

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Last several years, he's co-owned a company and I'm super proud of him.

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He's going to be retiring this year, so that's exciting for our family.

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And my stepmom was in dentistry.

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She was a dental hygienist and then also kept herself super busy raising three girls, which is a part to full time job in and of itself.

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I have so much admiration for dental hygienists, knowing that they spend eight hours a day inside people's mouths,

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some of which I'm sure are pristine, but others I can imagine are not.

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Yeah, absolutely. She's a saint.

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What about mental health in the construction industry?

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This is another profession that I hear struggles a lot with addiction and then suicide.

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Yeah, it's an interesting mix of people that can be drawn to construction.

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You know, that's not my area of expertise clinically, but just from personal experience of being around my dad,

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being around people that trained and mentored him, he was an apprentice and went through a journeyman apprenticeship early on in his life.

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And then, like I said, was able to move to these different positions up to the point that he was co-owning a company.

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He's seen a lot of different walks of life that enter into construction.

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So you have people that are reinventing themselves, people that might have criminal histories, people that are struggling with mental health.

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Addiction can run rampant. But then you also have people who it's a family trade.

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You know, they were interested in it because their dad, their grandfather was in it and that sort of passed down too.

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So I think you just have an interesting mix in there.

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What I do know from from walking job sites is it can be a tough industry.

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They can still settle arguments the good old fashioned way and it can be difficult to progress in that field as well.

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Have you had any conversations with him about forgiveness when it comes to the criminal background?

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The the wildland industry seems to do a really good job of, you know,

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overlooking some of the misdemeanors that people have, whether it's addiction, whether it's other crimes that aren't obviously horrendous.

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And I think the job creation and getting people back on their feet is such an important part of their recovery process.

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So what have you seen or have you had any discussions about that within construction?

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You know, that's an interesting question. I haven't directly talked to him about it, but I have witnessed him do some pretty neat things.

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I haven't asked him what he's comfortable with me sharing.

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So what I'll say broadly is just that he has supported some people that were involved in the criminal justice system to be able to maintain their jobs, which I think is really neat.

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And something that I've always found really neat about my dad is a human, just his personality trait.

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But I think it also stems from having worked so hard in construction is you really get to prove yourself in that field.

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So if you're willing to put in the time, you're willing to put in the effort, it doesn't really matter what you bring in as a person, as long as what you show up as at that job that day.

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So I think it doesn't matter if you have the mental health difficulties, you have that criminal record, you have whatever past you have.

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But when you're showing up, if you're putting in, you know, if it's an eight hour day, you're putting in eight hours and ten minutes. That matters.

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If you're working really hard, that's what they see. That's what they care about. So I think it's pretty forgiving in that sense.

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Absolutely. I always say in the fire service, the idea of prejudice is just so ridiculous, because when we put our gear on, the only two things you can see is the people that can do the job and the people that can't. That's it.

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Yeah, it's true. It matters if you're showing up. It matters if you're pulling your weight.

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It matters if you're critically thinking about problems and solving them using the resources you have. Everything else is just drama.

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100 percent. Well, what about sports and exercise? What were you doing during the school age?

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Yeah, I was an individual sports person. I guess in middle school, I did a little bit of track.

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That's kind of when you're just starting to get into what do I like? What am I good at kind of thing?

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My parents did put me and all my siblings in sports. So I tried soccer, I tried basketball, I tried swimming.

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I did the gamut of things when I was much younger. But by the time I actually got to pick and decide what I liked, it was all individual based stuff.

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And Reno Tahoe, we have so much to do in this area. It was a lot of hiking. It was a lot of swimming, snowboarding, rock climbing.

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And I still do all of that stuff today. So if you don't find me in my office, you find me somewhere in the mountains doing something outdoors.

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This is an interesting question. I'll explain why after what you just told me. I'm asking this now, but I ask pretty much everyone.

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As I progressed through this podcast early, the guests started, I mean, they're constantly educating me.

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I've just been this massive, perpetual student. But the impact of childhood experiences, adverse experiences on us in uniform became a very, very important conversation.

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When you look back now at your upbringing, were there elements of that that would be challenging to your own mental health?

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Oh, 100%. I don't think anybody gets out of childhood completely unscathed, without some adverse experience.

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There were a lot of formative moments for me that when I look back in hindsight, I say, oh, it makes sense that I became a helper,

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wanting to give back and make the world a bit of a better place than the way that I found it or do a bit better than maybe my parents were able to do

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or do a bit better for somebody younger where maybe they needed mentorship or supervision and that wasn't present for them.

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Interesting part of my story is I'm a first generation college student. So my mom graduated high school, my dad never completed high school.

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And I was able to kind of work my way up and get two master's degrees and a Ph.D. And here I am.

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So something that's really important to me is mentoring younger people and helping them if they don't have that pathway to higher education.

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So if students reach out to me and they're like, hey, how did you become a clinical psychologist?

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How did you end up working in police and public safety? I'm really interested in doing this,

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but I don't have anybody else in my life that can show me what it's like to go through the financial aid process.

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Or how did you write a letter of intent for a school or how do you even pick a school or how do you even know what you want to be when you grow up?

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I think that that sort of shaped me in that direction, just not having someone in my life that could say, here's exactly how you do it.

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Now, I always had support. They always said, we believe in you. We think you can do whatever you set your mind to.

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You're very dedicated in that way. So I had that angle.

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But I didn't have the person that could string me along and say, here's how it's done.

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So when you talked about the things that you love to do, they were not only individual sports, they were out in nature, daylight, fresh air, et cetera.

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When I look back at my upbringing, there was a lot of negative elements.

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And I've talked about them on the podcast, everything from being stuck in a house fire when I was four and almost dying to my parents' divorce and other things.

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And so I've always asked myself, why was I never pulled into that darkest of darkness so many people that be on the show were?

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And when I look back, as much of the traumas there was, I grew up on a farm.

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My dad was a veterinary surgeon, so he was healing animals.

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We had a big, big dining room table that was always full of family and then whoever was kind of cycling through.

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So when I look back now, there was a lot of very healthy coping mechanisms just by accident.

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I was one the address lottery, basically.

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But they, I think, created some resilience from some of those struggles when I was younger.

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When you look back now, I mean, you had your own things.

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Did you do you think that that was kind of cathartic from the mental point, even if you weren't aware of it at the time?

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For sure. I love what you just said about all the different positive supports and outlets that you had.

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My situation was very similar where, sure, there were moments of darkness, but there were also these pockets of relief.

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And my grandmother was on my mom's side.

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My biological mom's side was someone that I loved so dearly.

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She passed away a few years ago. And she is just when I think about her, it's nothing but summers in her backyard, building forts.

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It's her giving us at the time it was quarters for ice cream from the ice cream truck that would come through the neighborhood.

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It was her house was that safe haven.

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And then she was tough and fair, which I think was an important role model to have.

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You don't want somebody that's going to be your best friend when you're looking for guidance and supervision.

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And so she was that person for me, too. And then, like you said, the outdoors, I think being able to get away.

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And when you're in nature, there's something that happens where you feel like it's not all about you.

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You get this perspective like there's more going on.

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Life is bigger than me and my issues. And so it just puts things in perspective for me every time I'm out there.

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And I think even as a kid, I could feel that you look at the stars, you feel small.

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You look up at trees that have been there a hundred years before you were there.

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You know, they're going to be there a hundred years after you. It just puts things in perspective.

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I think that's why I was so infuriated during Covid, because I am not a highly educated man.

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I wouldn't regard myself as an intelligent man.

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But it just was common sense that when there is a virus that is attacking the wellness of a human body,

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that the emphasis should be on make that person as resilient as possible.

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And so to close the parks, the beaches, the trails, the gyms and tell people to stay at home,

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remove their autonomy by saying, well, we'll tell you when you can come out

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and then allow fast food and alcohol to be delivered to the house.

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To me, it just screamed the polar opposite of how we forge physical and mental wellness during that crisis.

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Covid was such a strange time.

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And I don't when I say this, I don't want this to sound cavalier in any way or disrespectful in any way.

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But the last thing I was worried about during Covid was Covid.

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Everything that in my mind as a clinical psychologist was the isolation is going to wreak havoc on our children.

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It's going to wreak havoc on our older adults.

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We're going to further isolate people.

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We're going to reduce people's ability to engage in that social emotional learning,

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where you can have empathy and perspective taking and sharing and team building.

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We're going to just set ourselves back decades just in that short period of time.

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And the jury is still out on whether or not my fears are as catastrophic as I thought they were going to be.

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But I can tell you that there were a lot of things personally for me that I experienced during Covid.

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So anecdotally, I can say was the case. Weddings, you know, a time of celebration you couldn't engage in.

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Deaths, you know, I lost my mom during Covid and that was something where we couldn't even have a funeral at that time.

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I think it's just very interesting the way that that was handled and how much it was not counted on the physical and the mental health side of things.

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More it was just let's stop this virus. Let's put all our focus there.

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It wasn't looking at all those unanticipated effects, which I think we're still going to find out what those are in the coming years too.

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Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the most heartbreaking things was not just high school kids that are literally all they've known.

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You know, probably as long as they're conscious, they've been in some sort of school.

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And so this entire lifespan of theirs is, you know, the pinnacle is this high school graduation and then off into the workforce.

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And instead, they didn't have a graduation or if they did, they had to drive through in their cars.

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And then they were like, oh, by the way, there's no jobs.

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And then a year and a half later, it's like, get back to work. What's wrong with you?

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And I feel so sorry for those two years. I mean, I didn't leap out of school and suddenly forge a career.

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I read it and I fumbled around for years. I was I was directionless as a child.

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But, you know, for these young people that are either trying to find it out or, you know,

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trying to get on that workforce and every opportunity they thought would be waiting for them was gone.

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And then to be shamed a year or two years later for not working, I think they were probably one of the hardest hit, to be honest.

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Oh, for sure. How demotivating, you know, to be to for us to have all of the structure in the world,

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all the things that we that we say have to be the way that they have to be.

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You know, you have to go in person to class for eight hours.

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And that's the way it's been because it's always been that way. And then during covid, we just completely shift everything.

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And then now to say, OK, now you have to go back to school for eight hours a day.

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And some some kids maybe did better when they were at home, you know, with more focus, with more resources,

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with more comfort, with with the opportunity to have lunch with family, whatever it was.

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And now going back into school or struggling and saying, does it have to be this way?

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They're questioning that or other kids where they went home and they didn't have a space, a safe space to be.

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Whether there was violence in the home, they didn't have the resources.

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Maybe they were on meal programs. They didn't have access to that.

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Whatever the issue was there, they struggled more during that period of time.

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And coming back is more difficult, maybe relieving, but more difficult.

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You flash forward. Same thing with the job market.

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You know, I know there were a lot of the in office policies that then switched to being more remote.

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And now there's that force of coming back.

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I think one thing I gained a lot of appreciation for over covid.

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And I think it maybe made people question this a bit more.

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And that might be what we're seeing with the youth is why are we doing things the way that we're doing them?

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And is there a better way, a more effective way?

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It's great if you want to encourage people to be critical thinkers and go outside the box.

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It's terrible if you want them to just fall in line.

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Well, I think firstly, when you look at education, a lot of it was designed so you fall in line so you could work in the factories.

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I mean, that's the kind of, you know, origin story of modern education.

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But I've had people on the show, like one of the guys, Pasi Sauberg, is the kind of speaker when it comes to the Finnish system.

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When you look at Finland, they're nearly always number one on the list.

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And it's less is more. They have more time to play.

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Their workday is shorter.

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They put more money into the schools that are struggling, not penalizing them.

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You know, it's just it's such an intelligent system.

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And I think the problem is it takes humility to change.

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And if there was one immense lesson out of covid that should have changed when we came out,

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is that we should be serving real food back in the schools.

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All the PE and sports programs should be bolstered because we have an obesity epidemic.

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So we want to make these people healthier so they don't succumb to the next virus, whatever it's called.

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You know, the local farmers should have been bolstered to make locally, you know,

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grow food and livestock and whatever they do, but organically.

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And none of that happened. You know, we had Mother Nature sending dolphin down the Nile and, you know, all these beautiful that the L.A.

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smog clearing up and then we just went back and oh, back to it now.

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So that's I think what's so so saddening is we had a captive audience and a beautiful opportunity to really ask some other countries, hey,

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how do you do this and improve our systems, whatever it is, farming schools?

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But instead, it was just, you know, it was just brushed under the carpet.

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Well, we don't want to talk about it now. Covid is over.

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And rather than go, hey, you know, this let's learn from this and let's make things better.

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I agree. I agree so much.

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I do think to play devil's advocate on one point that I saw specifically with mental health that shifted.

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And it's strange that it shifted this way was with telehealth.

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When I was going through my clinical training, they would talk about telehealth as if it was its own thing

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that you needed your set of competencies to be able to do.

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And it was sought after in your practicums.

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And there were opportunities where if you didn't have those experiences to know how to do telehealth

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and you wouldn't get certain internship placements or postdoctoral placements, it was like a holy grail of a thing.

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And I get why that's the case. There are a lot of considerations for telehealth.

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It is its own unique specialty. It should be serious and you should know what you're doing to offer it.

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But my caveat is during covid, all of that seriousness went out the window and it became a necessity

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where there was this push of we can't just shut down and close up shop.

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We have to be able to still deliver these services and provide access.

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The relaxing of the standards, though, was interesting.

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During my clinical training, I remember schools had to have Zoom for business because of HIPAA compliant procedures.

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There was certain trainings. You had to take these different continuing education classes.

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And a lot of that stuff was relaxed just to make sure that people had that continuity of care.

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Now, again, in an emergency situation, I wouldn't expect anything less.

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But the piece of it that's just interesting for me, looking at this as here's this profession,

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we're setting all these standards in places, all that was thrown out the window.

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And the benefit, though, again, for that devil's advocate piece is, well, now we have telehealth.

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So there were a lot of people who were never trained in this modality, that were never considering offering it,

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that had the opportunity to do it in an emergency situation,

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realized it probably worked out for them pretty well and their clients.

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And now we've increased access for mental health tenfold just by the sheer virtue of being able to say, hey,

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I don't know what we were creating all these standards for, but let's relax them a bit and open up access.

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Why are we safeguarding this?

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So one positive thing I saw come out of that was at least questioning, why are we harboring this so closely?

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And then can we increase access?

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And what would it take to actually offer telehealth to people and people doing research?

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Is it actually beneficial?

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So that's been kind of positive on the forefront for mental health.

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I had someone on, I mean, he was I think it was deep in Covid still, but he worked for a company and they talked about that.

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A lot of the red tape was cut that was binding telehealth before.

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And there are some companies now that are offering telehealth within the 911 dispatch system.

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So you call in and it's, you know, you rolled your ankle or you're a new parent and your child thrown up once and you think they're going to die of dehydration.

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And so, you know, these these less acute calls and or emotional, not obviously psychiatric emergencies, but something lesser than that.

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Now they have the opportunity to say, well, we will absolutely send an ambulance or you can do a consultation with an emergency physician when they go, oh, a doctor.

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Well, yeah, I'd love to do that.

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They have this conversation. They put their mind at ease.

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Maybe they get a prescription sent to them or in some of these these companies, they can even make urgent care appointments for the patient the following morning.

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And so I think telehealth is also a great, great tool to try and reduce some of these non-emergent calls.

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A lot of our especially our first responders and fire and EMS get sent to constantly.

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I agree. I think any time there can be a better triage system and you can incorporate more of a multidisciplinary perspective, the better off you're going to be.

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I think some of the issues and you and I touched on it a little bit in one of the other podcasts we were on together was just the amount of things that we're asking first responders to do that were not their original intent and their scope of their job description.

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And if you can have a tablet that's on site that they can say, that sounds like a problem for insert profession and then have them be called on that tablet and use telehealth.

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That's wonderful. It's one less thing that they have to become an expert in that was not the intention behind their job in the first place.

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Absolutely. Well, I heard you talking about telehealth on the Next Steps Forward podcast and you mentioned that you felt like it was more appropriate for some types of psychological care than others.

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I'd love to actually get you to expand on that. So because it is a tool and I get there's also a preference depending on the individual.

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But I mean, it's amazing how through this I've realized how deeply you can connect with a human being over a video screen even.

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So what would you say were some of the areas where telehealth works very well and what would be the cautionary types of presentations that maybe you lean into an in-person consultation instead?

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Yeah, absolutely. I think that telehealth. Well, let me back up and say this first when you're working with a client from a clinical perspective,

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you're looking at the person that you have in front of you and you're trying to decide what would be best for them given their their circumstances.

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So not only the presenting problems that they come in with, but also what are their resources, what are the logistics for them?

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When I was doing my internship at the Carson City Rural Clinic, it's a clinic that's located about 30 miles outside of the bigger city, Reno.

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We would serve the entire state of Nevada. So telehealth was an option that we provided for people just because of the distance.

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So if I'm located in Carson City and I have to see somebody five hours away in Elko, Nevada, logistically, I'm not driving to go see him for one for one hour a day.

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The clinic's not going to pay me to do that. So the decision for telehealth was made less about what's most appropriate for the client and more about what's available to the client.

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In private practice, though, the way that I would make those considerations for telehealth is our is the home a safe environment.

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So if they're going to be, let's just say, zooming me or video conferencing me using whatever platform is the home a space where I can be sure it's quiet, it's confidential and they feel safe.

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Some red flags of whether or not I would want to do telehealth would be if there's interpersonal violence in the home.

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If I'm working with a child that's a secondary victim or I'm working with a spouse that's the primary victim,

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doing therapy with them while they're actively in the home with somebody that could be perpetrating violence against them would not be a safe situation for them.

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So it's not necessarily the best case scenario, especially if the therapy that we're doing is talking about how to maybe leave the relationship or what to do to reduce the risk of violence.

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If you have somebody outside the door listening, that's not going to be therapeutic.

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They can't talk openly or freely about that.

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Some other considerations would be the logistics where maybe they have the option to come in person and that would be beneficial for them.

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But maybe they're a single parent and between working at their job and coming home and taking care of their children, they can't afford the child care or making that extra trip outside of those those hours of operation are going to work for them to be able to come in person.

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So now telehealth makes sense for that issue.

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So that would be a case in which telehealth is appropriate.

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They logistically can't get to my office.

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Child care demands cost of coming to the office in addition to the cost of the session.

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Maybe then you would pick telehealth as a mode of delivery.

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I've also worked with, as you know, my specialty working with first responders, I've worked with people who needed to call me when they're on call.

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Well, that works great if they're at home and they can turn their radio down, but not so great if they're at a fire station and they have nine other people that they live with right now that can hear them in the in the next room or they don't have a room that's private or safe.

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So ultimately, what I'm getting at with this is there it's more about making sure that the client circumstances are going to fit with telehealth.

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Most presenting problems, whether that's depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress,

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maybe parenting stress, occupational stress, whatever the issue is, there is a lot of research to support the telehealth fine for those things.

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That the mode is not the most important piece.

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It's more about whether or not the mode is going to create barriers that reduce their engagement, their motivation and their commitment to therapy.

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So if they feel unsafe, that's going to be reduced.

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If they are impoverished and they can't afford accurate resources, so maybe they're they're doing it on their phone and the call keeps dropping, that's going to reduce their motivation, commitment and engagement.

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If they really want to show up, but they have to work two jobs and so they're canceling all the time again, that's not a mode issue.

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That's a logistic issue.

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So mode is less important than making sure you see the person in front of you.

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And you're saying, is therapy even going to be beneficial for you right now, given what you're going through and what you have, is therapy the right call?

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Well, speaking of the mental health side, I know that wasn't initially the field that you were planning on going into.

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So what were you dreaming of becoming in school and then walk me through your journey through EMS to psychology?

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Yeah, I was an idealistic kid.

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You know, I growing up in Reno and like I said, spending my time in the mountains, I was really into snowboarding and I thought that that was just the thing I wanted to spend all my time doing.

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And so when you're up at these different ski resorts, you see ski patrol and I thought they were just the coolest.

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And when I was going to college, I looked at what are my options, what's going to be something that I'm not going to spend a million years in college for, which is now my joke that I spent a million years in college anyways.

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But I chose EMS because it was a route into ski patrol.

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And at the time, I thought maybe I could do fire, maybe I could do EMS on the side.

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I wasn't sure quite how that would work out, but I knew I wanted to live in the Lake Tahoe area and I wanted to be able to incorporate all those passions together.

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But when I took the EMT courses, I really realized it wasn't for me.

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I can hear stories about blood and gore, but I don't want to be in the presence of it myself.

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I just I wouldn't be effective. And I think it's good I learned that about myself early on in my training.

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I didn't keep going and get myself into a situation where I had spent more time and energy than I needed to.

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But when I was in those EMT classes realizing this isn't for me, I had a lot more questions about the people that do ultimately stay and do manage that.

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And that is the good fit for them.

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So took a aging death and dying class, which sounds about as exciting as the title in community college.

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And I was hooked. It just it just taught me a lot about the way that people can change after traumatic life events, including experiencing grief and loss.

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And the rest is history. I got my bachelor's degree in psychology.

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I spent a few years working in a family law practice, so dealing with people under high asset contentious divorces and watching child custody battles.

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And the attorney I worked for did some probate law.

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So I watched how people react when money's involved, when people die.

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And I just something kept calling me saying, you know, their psychology underlying all of this stuff.

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I think you should go back and get some more some more education and do something with that.

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Got a master's degree in criminal justice. I was always interested in that intersection of culture, psychology and law.

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Did that en route to getting the Ph.D. and in the Ph.D. program did quite a bit of work.

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It was all very trauma focused. So a lot of the research that I was conducting,

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the research that you would read was about military populations.

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And I was sort of seeing that there was a disconnect between people that are in that line of work.

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And then our domestic first responders. So I just kept that in the back of my mind throughout that whole process.

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And any opportunity I got, whether it was practicums, internship, postdoc or even getting my license,

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I just worked really hard to try to create opportunities where I could stay connected to first responders in some way.

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That looked different across different parts of my education.

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So in my in my bachelor's degree, I worked as an on call victim advocate.

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I tried that on for size. Maybe this is the way that I'll stay connected to those things.

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And the work was exciting and rewarding, but that wasn't my calling.

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And then I would do ride alongs and sit alongs with dispatch and law enforcement.

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And again, I was super interested in that. I thought it was really exciting.

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I thought that they were incredible multitaskers. I had an appreciation for what they did.

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But again, I didn't see that as being my fit. Like, I don't want to be in one of those two roles.

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I kept thinking maybe I can do something on the forefront where I'm collaborating with them to be able to make a difference.

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And then it wasn't until my internship year where I really had an opportunity and I saw the light at the end of the tunnel.

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Like, here's all these pieces coming together. This is what I want to do.

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But my internship, again, at the Carson City Rural Clinic, they had this unique partnership between a local law enforcement agency and that clinic.

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And that partnership was called the Mobile Outreach and Safety Team.

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And it's essentially they applied for a grant to get a behavioral health peace officer.

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So it's actually a law enforcement officer that holds that role.

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And then they ride along with a co-responder that's a social worker.

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So the social worker worked for my clinic and had an office down the hallway from me.

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And I got the opportunity to ask her, what is your work like? What do you do? How do you get to bridge this gap?

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This is kind of what I want to do. And long story short, helped them write some grants, got to really see the work that that team does.

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And I realized that where my work needs to lie is that law enforcement, fire, EMS, you guys are now the first responders to a lot of the mental health calls.

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So the Mobile Outreach and Safety Team was the solution to that, to be able to bypass that 911 call and having just an officer show up and have some sort of a jail response,

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but actually divert that and do a mental health response. So the social worker comes into play where they can assess the situation clinically and say,

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you know, I think we're getting this repeat call, let's say for somebody wandering because they have dementia.

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And if we could just connect them to some resources, maybe make sure that they have appropriate supervision, get them connected to a guardian at Lytton or make sure that they know about the senior center.

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Maybe this call for service will go down. And so it wasn't appropriate to have 911 keep coming out.

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They wanted that Mobile Outreach team to come out. And so I said, I think I want to focus my efforts here, that the scope and the breadth and the depth of what these professions are doing is so intense.

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That is creating more stress. Could I be somebody that comes into these organizations, assesses what's going on within those roles, supports the employees to be the most resilient they can and come up with solutions to make sure that they can continue to do the job they signed up for well.

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And if their scope increases, could I help with the training on that end, knowing that the scope creep is going to be in the direction of mental health anyways.

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So sort of a long journey. But where I am now, I could not imagine myself being anywhere else.

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And again, my joke is I wanted to finish school in a year and it took me about 10 to finish. But again, I'm happy I took the detour.

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Did you do any work responding in the schools for mental health calls?

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You know, one of my practicum.

374
00:35:42,900 --> 00:35:50,420
Yeah, one of my practicum my last year of school, we were doing a lot more partnerships with elementary and middle schools.

375
00:35:50,420 --> 00:36:00,260
And we basically worked with school counselors where they would identify students or families that were at risk, whether that was because of known issues.

376
00:36:00,260 --> 00:36:09,540
Maybe that was family violence, parental substance use, parental incarceration. Maybe it was school behavioral problems. Maybe it was academic problems for the child.

377
00:36:09,540 --> 00:36:19,740
Whatever that that reasoning was for drawing the attention of the school counselor, they then would reach out to parents and opt in if they wanted to have some individual services.

378
00:36:19,740 --> 00:36:32,420
And my last year of school, we were offering individual skills training for kids and then parent training on that side to help them be able to help their children emotionally regulate.

379
00:36:32,420 --> 00:36:43,660
My work there was really minimal. Again, it was my last year. I was mostly supervising the more incoming younger students, but we were going there and the need was incredible.

380
00:36:43,660 --> 00:36:53,100
We reached out to a bunch of schools in our district and all of them signed on for it. We didn't have enough people in my in my program to be able to serve the need.

381
00:36:53,100 --> 00:36:58,260
So we had to choose the schools that we're going to work with. But yes, to answer your question.

382
00:36:58,260 --> 00:37:05,060
The reason I asked, I had a literally one of the worst moments of my entire life. My son was in middle school.

383
00:37:05,060 --> 00:37:17,380
He was going through some mental issues as far as dealing with some trauma he's experiencing in his mother's home when there was a boyfriend involved who ironically was a law enforcement person.

384
00:37:17,380 --> 00:37:25,980
But so it was appropriate to the stress he was being exposed to. So we had him counseling within the school.

385
00:37:25,980 --> 00:37:33,380
And one day I'm driving home and he normally would call me after he got off the bus to say he was on the bus and then he's off the bus and he's safely home.

386
00:37:33,380 --> 00:37:42,020
I didn't get the call and I'm like, OK, well, this is weird. So I called him and he picks up the phone and said, Dad, the principal wants to talk to you.

387
00:37:42,020 --> 00:37:51,500
And so I said, hey, you know, what's going on? And he said, oh, you know, we're we're you know, he's I forget how she phrased it, but like there's an issue.

388
00:37:51,500 --> 00:37:57,340
And, you know, we're we're trying to work out what we're going to do. But he might be going to the center.

389
00:37:57,340 --> 00:38:04,620
Now, the centers is the place you do the 70, 72 year old. Excuse me. The 72 hour psychiatric hold.

390
00:38:04,620 --> 00:38:12,700
And being a paramedic and a firefighter, I know exactly the kind of people that need that appropriately need that people are going to harm themselves or someone else.

391
00:38:12,700 --> 00:38:21,180
So anyway, I don't get a call back again. And so, you know, when I finally get hold of someone, they say, oh, he's at the centers.

392
00:38:21,180 --> 00:38:29,260
So I go and my child is now imprisoned, you know, shoelegs taken and all these things come to find out what had happened.

393
00:38:29,260 --> 00:38:37,860
He'd been in the classroom and he started crying and he was basically having intrusive thoughts, no threats of harm to himself, no threats of harm to anyone else.

394
00:38:37,860 --> 00:38:46,380
And so I, you know, obviously, I'm just fricking heartbroken and get to see him for 10 minutes, you know, a day for three days.

395
00:38:46,380 --> 00:38:56,660
And I mean, it devastated, it destroyed his mental health for fucking years. But I dove into it and it's come to find out that they actually had very well written protocols.

396
00:38:56,660 --> 00:39:04,500
And it was all about de-escalation. It was all about sending the unit that you're talking about to come evaluate the child from the centers.

397
00:39:04,500 --> 00:39:08,980
And they would have been like, no, this this kid's OK. And also, where's the parent? Oh, we didn't tell him anything.

398
00:39:08,980 --> 00:39:12,260
Well, what the fuck do you mean didn't tell anything? The parent needs to be here.

399
00:39:12,260 --> 00:39:16,420
So they the SRO and the principal did everything wrong.

400
00:39:16,420 --> 00:39:22,460
And I found out there was an epidemic in the state of Florida after Parkland of these children being Baker acted like daily.

401
00:39:22,460 --> 00:39:27,660
And when my son was there, there's like a revolving door of his classmates coming through for 72 hours.

402
00:39:27,660 --> 00:39:33,060
So there ultimately was a law change. And if they did what they did now, they would be in prison.

403
00:39:33,060 --> 00:39:39,900
But there was no accountability. So you have these teachers and these these police officers making these horrendous decisions.

404
00:39:39,900 --> 00:39:47,540
And most parents have no idea. So I don't think and so I didn't know until I was, you know, the curtain was pulled back.

405
00:39:47,540 --> 00:39:55,780
How dangerous it is to ask untrained people to make those kind of mental health decisions, especially about a child.

406
00:39:55,780 --> 00:39:59,020
I am so sorry that that happened to you and your family.

407
00:39:59,020 --> 00:40:02,860
And I wish I could say that this is the first time I've heard something like that.

408
00:40:02,860 --> 00:40:11,980
And it is absolutely not. And I I could spend many hours talking about this topic.

409
00:40:11,980 --> 00:40:20,380
Something I am incredibly passionate about is making sure that people know what the hell they're doing, to put it professionally and scientifically.

410
00:40:20,380 --> 00:40:23,380
It's really tough to look at the field of mental health.

411
00:40:23,380 --> 00:40:27,380
And let me back up and say this. People can do harm with good intentions.

412
00:40:27,380 --> 00:40:35,060
And I'm a huge proponent of saying that, that not everybody that that wants to take an action to try to, put in quotes,

413
00:40:35,060 --> 00:40:42,620
protect other people can understand the unintended consequences of making some of those decisions.

414
00:40:42,620 --> 00:40:49,780
And I think when you look at the field of mental health, we have a variety of different professionals with a range of education, training,

415
00:40:49,780 --> 00:40:54,980
experience, ethical codes, professional standards that govern that it differs at every level.

416
00:40:54,980 --> 00:41:00,260
And then when you add other people into that sphere that interact with mental health and can make decisions,

417
00:41:00,260 --> 00:41:06,660
whether that's like you're saying, first responders that now are being placed in a school resource officer position,

418
00:41:06,660 --> 00:41:13,060
whether that's nurses or doctors, whether that's whoever else is involved in some way,

419
00:41:13,060 --> 00:41:21,900
they have their own set of education, training, experience, ethics, professional standards that shift the way that they think about these things.

420
00:41:21,900 --> 00:41:26,540
As a psychologist, given what I know, where I've been, what my training is like,

421
00:41:26,540 --> 00:41:33,820
I look at a person's autonomy as one of their single greatest rights, their decision to live or to die,

422
00:41:33,820 --> 00:41:40,060
their decision to go into a mental health facility voluntarily versus involuntarily.

423
00:41:40,060 --> 00:41:45,540
And then I look at what my role is to keep them safe and what plays into that.

424
00:41:45,540 --> 00:41:53,420
If I had a child in front of me, given the information that you're telling me, I would want to do a lot more assessing,

425
00:41:53,420 --> 00:41:59,540
a lot more conversation, a lot more triaging and talking to people like you, their parent,

426
00:41:59,540 --> 00:42:04,340
to try to make the best decision for that child given the circumstances.

427
00:42:04,340 --> 00:42:10,460
I think what we're also up against, though, is not just a who is the person making the decision and are they well trained or not.

428
00:42:10,460 --> 00:42:14,300
It's also what are the circumstances in which they're making the decision.

429
00:42:14,300 --> 00:42:21,980
I know in my area, at least with school resource officers, that officer can be the one person for 10 schools.

430
00:42:21,980 --> 00:42:29,860
How much can they possibly realistically know about each kid in the situation and is making the call

431
00:42:29,860 --> 00:42:33,140
or not making the call going to have more of an unintended consequence, right?

432
00:42:33,140 --> 00:42:40,300
If they make the call based on the little bit of information they know about the child and it's a false alarm, that's serious, right?

433
00:42:40,300 --> 00:42:46,260
If the kid is crying, there wasn't actually something that was a mental health condition, more harm done than good.

434
00:42:46,260 --> 00:42:53,900
But if they miss that call and the child goes and dies by suicide, that's going to go down in history.

435
00:42:53,900 --> 00:43:02,300
And so I think what we have is a very complex web of factors that are making these decisions really difficult.

436
00:43:02,300 --> 00:43:10,260
But I agree with you. People that are not well trained for crisis, people that are not well trained for suicide specifically,

437
00:43:10,260 --> 00:43:17,900
and they're not well trained in safety planning, don't have a lot of business being a part of it unless they're willing to get trained.

438
00:43:17,900 --> 00:43:19,780
The risks are too great.

439
00:43:19,780 --> 00:43:23,300
Absolutely. Well, in this case, it was very evident that they just wanted to go home.

440
00:43:23,300 --> 00:43:26,900
And if regular counselor had to leave early to do something with her own child.

441
00:43:26,900 --> 00:43:32,020
So it was literally a case of, well, if we just ship them off to the centers and we can wash our hands of it.

442
00:43:32,020 --> 00:43:37,260
What should have happened is they pick up the phone and call that unit and they come over and they'll be like, go to your dad.

443
00:43:37,260 --> 00:43:44,460
No wonder you're upset. Your mother and boyfriend are throwing things at each other and screaming and you're scared.

444
00:43:44,460 --> 00:43:47,420
I mean, it's a natural reaction. So yeah, it was disgusting.

445
00:43:47,420 --> 00:43:53,940
And I'm still disgusted that they're out there now wearing uniforms and teaching children, but you know, such is life.

446
00:43:53,940 --> 00:43:57,420
Well, I wanted to move into the first responder space.

447
00:43:57,420 --> 00:44:03,060
So you mentioned about a lot of the papers that you were seeing were from the veterans side.

448
00:44:03,060 --> 00:44:10,340
As you start looking for research in police fire, EMS, what was your first impression?

449
00:44:10,340 --> 00:44:17,660
Did you find a lot of research or, you know, was there not as much as you expected?

450
00:44:17,660 --> 00:44:29,740
It was a mix. So there was some research coming out of certain laboratories, but it was very focused and it was more focused on the occupational impacts on health.

451
00:44:29,740 --> 00:44:42,260
So let me back up for a moment and say this police and public safety psychology has been a board certifiable subspecialty since 2011.

452
00:44:42,260 --> 00:44:50,260
Just to give you an idea for how long our profession has really been looking at this and saying this is a unique niche.

453
00:44:50,260 --> 00:44:57,020
There needs to be research. There are specific domains and competencies that somebody needs to have in order to practice in that area.

454
00:44:57,020 --> 00:45:05,780
So since 2011 and onward, there has been quite an influx of research with police populations, fire, EMS, dispatch.

455
00:45:05,780 --> 00:45:08,380
That is not to say that research was not being conducted prior.

456
00:45:08,380 --> 00:45:18,060
There's been people working in the field since the 1960s with different agencies, but really it has sort of exploded since 2011 because it's now a subspecialty.

457
00:45:18,060 --> 00:45:25,740
And once an organization like the American Psychological Association or the American Board of Professional Psychology recognizes that,

458
00:45:25,740 --> 00:45:30,260
it just diverts resources and attention to that area.

459
00:45:30,260 --> 00:45:36,740
When I first started looking for the research, though, there was a lot looking at things like metabolic syndrome.

460
00:45:36,740 --> 00:45:39,620
There was a lot looking at things like shift work.

461
00:45:39,620 --> 00:45:49,180
And then there was components of it looking at, you know, psychological testing, mostly for the purpose of pre-employment or fitness for duty evaluations.

462
00:45:49,180 --> 00:45:56,460
Now what I'm seeing is a really interesting turn where people are looking into things like peer support programs and the impact of that,

463
00:45:56,460 --> 00:46:06,580
debriefings and whether or not those are effective, you know, stigma towards mental health and barriers towards people going in and seeking help,

464
00:46:06,580 --> 00:46:15,420
the culture and things like organizational stressors versus the occupational hazards of that violence, that the tragedy, the trauma.

465
00:46:15,420 --> 00:46:20,180
So I have seen an increase. I think where we're going is going to be an incredible space.

466
00:46:20,180 --> 00:46:23,540
What I still think is lacking, though, is specificity.

467
00:46:23,540 --> 00:46:32,340
So just to go back sort of through each of those threads, what often happens, and I'm even guilty of it in my titling of one of my articles,

468
00:46:32,340 --> 00:46:40,660
is just labeling things like first responder or law enforcement or fire without any real nuanced depth,

469
00:46:40,660 --> 00:46:43,580
that there's a lot of different people that encompass those positions.

470
00:46:43,580 --> 00:46:55,620
So when I say law enforcement in the United States, we have 18,000 departments and there's differences in federal, state, county, city, municipality, tribal university.

471
00:46:55,620 --> 00:47:03,540
They're not all the same. So to say we did research on law enforcement officers, that means nothing unless you're being nuanced about who incorporates that.

472
00:47:03,540 --> 00:47:09,060
We also could say we research law enforcement officers and all I did was survey administrative leadership.

473
00:47:09,060 --> 00:47:16,140
That tells you nothing about the people on the line. So where I hope future research goes, and I definitely think it will,

474
00:47:16,140 --> 00:47:26,540
is going to be looking more at the nuanced perspectives of these individual different subspecialties and then looking at more than just what are the occupational stressors?

475
00:47:26,540 --> 00:47:33,460
What are the health impacts? But let's actually dive in deep to what are we doing? Is what we're doing working?

476
00:47:33,460 --> 00:47:38,420
We're offering peer support. We're offering debriefings. Is that even effective?

477
00:47:38,420 --> 00:47:47,740
What I think I'd love to do is start at the beginning of a first responders career and then walk through and then we can unpack some of the stresses that then begin to show their face.

478
00:47:47,740 --> 00:47:55,100
But I had a very interesting gypsy career in the fire service. So I ended up working for four departments, East Coast and West Coast,

479
00:47:55,100 --> 00:48:01,820
one of the arguably best departments in America and certainly one of the worst, and that's not because of money.

480
00:48:01,820 --> 00:48:06,900
So I got a very interesting kind of 10,000 foot view of the profession.

481
00:48:06,900 --> 00:48:15,900
One of the first things that I thought was just bizarre when it comes to mental health, if you look at the front door, what we do is we check boxes.

482
00:48:15,900 --> 00:48:20,380
And I've done three polygraphs and I always say I live my way through three.

483
00:48:20,380 --> 00:48:28,980
And the reason I say that is I was honest on my very first app in the fire service and they threw it in my face and I was like, oh, OK, so you have to lie to get into the fire.

484
00:48:28,980 --> 00:48:35,340
Because, of course, we've done we tried some stuff when we were younger. That's why we became firefighters and cops.

485
00:48:35,340 --> 00:48:40,460
So to the polygraph, you dive into the polygraph and it's literally like a magic show.

486
00:48:40,460 --> 00:48:43,660
And if you succumb to it and you confess, then obviously you're out.

487
00:48:43,660 --> 00:48:48,460
But if you just hold fast, you know, I mean, let's be honest, is that you get through it.

488
00:48:48,460 --> 00:48:52,420
The other one is the I think is the MMPI. I got that right.

489
00:48:52,420 --> 00:48:55,820
Yeah. So and I've done that four times.

490
00:48:55,820 --> 00:48:59,700
And again, just crazy. You know, do you like do you like kittens?

491
00:48:59,700 --> 00:49:02,620
You like horses? Do you like, you know, smelling flowers?

492
00:49:02,620 --> 00:49:05,700
You touch children. Do you ride horses? And you're like, whoa, what was that?

493
00:49:05,700 --> 00:49:07,020
What's that one before?

494
00:49:07,020 --> 00:49:12,140
And so when I asked people in the psychology space, they say, I mean, it'll be interesting to get your take.

495
00:49:12,140 --> 00:49:21,180
But the MMPI was never meant to be a standalone test to determine if a man or woman would be a good firefighter or a good police officer.

496
00:49:21,180 --> 00:49:26,060
It's part of a forensic gamut of tests that would give you an overall profile.

497
00:49:26,060 --> 00:49:30,860
So I look at that and go, why then don't you just get rid of all that?

498
00:49:30,860 --> 00:49:32,620
You've already got the budget for both.

499
00:49:32,620 --> 00:49:35,580
And instead, you've done the background check.

500
00:49:35,580 --> 00:49:39,140
You've done the physical test. You've done the written test.

501
00:49:39,140 --> 00:49:45,500
Why don't you just give your new police officer, firefighter, dispatcher five sessions with a therapist

502
00:49:45,500 --> 00:49:51,380
so you can, as we touched on earlier, start addressing some of the things that maybe you brought into the profession.

503
00:49:51,380 --> 00:49:59,620
You've immediately got a relationship with a therapist and you've reduced that barrier to entry because, you know, in a progressive department, you've got one on staff.

504
00:49:59,620 --> 00:50:02,540
So you wouldn't have to find any extra money.

505
00:50:02,540 --> 00:50:11,420
Now, that's obviously James Gearing's experience of, you know, the things that I think in testing are completely redundant and where that money could go to be proactive.

506
00:50:11,420 --> 00:50:22,180
That aside, without loading the question, what is your perspective on first responder testing and is there a better way of doing it?

507
00:50:22,180 --> 00:50:34,340
Sure. So the first thing I'll say is that it's not standardized whether or not an organization decides to use pre-employment evaluations to determine the suitability of a candidate,

508
00:50:34,340 --> 00:50:45,900
which is a really clinical, jargony way of saying not every organization does anything to try to vet their employees from a psychological perspective to see whether or not that information can add any value.

509
00:50:45,900 --> 00:50:56,340
If they're going to succeed in the career, if they're going to be able to conform to chain of command, if they're going to be able to be a liability, essentially, for the community or for the organization.

510
00:50:56,340 --> 00:51:01,420
I think they should. That's my personal opinion, right?

511
00:51:01,420 --> 00:51:09,500
The professional side of things is that we do have some ways to go in terms of pre-employment evaluations, but it matters who the organization decides to contract.

512
00:51:09,500 --> 00:51:13,300
And what you often will see is money talks first.

513
00:51:13,300 --> 00:51:20,420
So organizations might not go with the most qualified individual that is following the best practices in the field.

514
00:51:20,420 --> 00:51:26,540
They might go with somebody who's willing to offer that service to them for the cheapest or get it done the quickest.

515
00:51:26,540 --> 00:51:32,380
And so results are going to vary based on things that have nothing to do with the battery of tests that are included.

516
00:51:32,380 --> 00:51:42,500
In my little bit of experience conducting pre-employment evaluations, I did it for a few months right after I finished up my clinical training and I was on postdoc.

517
00:51:42,500 --> 00:51:58,300
What I can tell you is that anybody that does assessment, any psychologist that does assessment shouldn't and ethically would not make a consideration about employees' suitability based on one data point.

518
00:51:58,300 --> 00:52:02,020
It's just not enough information. It means nothing out of context.

519
00:52:02,020 --> 00:52:08,420
If I were to do a pre-employment evaluation, some things that I would incorporate would be a writing test.

520
00:52:08,420 --> 00:52:13,060
You would have some sort of an intelligence test. You would have a personality test.

521
00:52:13,060 --> 00:52:15,740
You would go through a full psychosocial history.

522
00:52:15,740 --> 00:52:26,220
And the purpose of each of these things is to gather a broad view, to be able to look at the essential job functions and determine whether or not this person is capable of meeting them.

523
00:52:26,220 --> 00:52:33,260
So just to give a silly example, I would give a reading and a writing test to make sure that this person can read NRS,

524
00:52:33,260 --> 00:52:38,700
let's say for law enforcement, and they can interpret that, comprehend it and apply it.

525
00:52:38,700 --> 00:52:43,540
And then if they can write a police report, if somebody commits a crime, right, seems pretty basic, makes sense.

526
00:52:43,540 --> 00:52:46,100
It relates to the essential job functions.

527
00:52:46,100 --> 00:52:55,700
The MMPI, and I think now we're on the three, but there's a lot of data with police and fire and EMS candidates for the MMPI-2-RF.

528
00:52:55,700 --> 00:52:59,980
You would use that to be able to look at just main red flags.

529
00:52:59,980 --> 00:53:08,100
So is this person actively claiming that they're suicidal? Is this person, do they have a history of reckless or impulsive behaviors?

530
00:53:08,100 --> 00:53:14,180
Again, you're not looking at this as something to be able to say, no, don't hire them. But you're giving the agency a heads up.

531
00:53:14,180 --> 00:53:17,660
This person might have difficulty following chain of command.

532
00:53:17,660 --> 00:53:23,260
This person might have difficulty choosing adaptive coping skills under high stress situations.

533
00:53:23,260 --> 00:53:30,140
This person might have difficulty with judgment and decision making given, you know, whatever information you have.

534
00:53:30,140 --> 00:53:34,460
So you're looking at it as one data point in addition to other things.

535
00:53:34,460 --> 00:53:41,980
Ideally, in a perfect world, organizations would hire a qualified psychologist who uses best practices in the field,

536
00:53:41,980 --> 00:53:46,220
and then they would get that report. And that would be one of many things that they consider,

537
00:53:46,220 --> 00:53:50,540
whether or not polygraphs add anything, whether or not multiple background checks,

538
00:53:50,540 --> 00:53:56,460
whether or not the home visits and all the other stuff that people have to go through for that process add anything.

539
00:53:56,460 --> 00:54:00,100
That's really up to the organization and what they're trying to find out.

540
00:54:00,100 --> 00:54:05,820
But from a clinical perspective, I think the pre-employment evaluation can give some good data.

541
00:54:05,820 --> 00:54:10,540
To just sort of touch for a moment on what you said about the therapy sessions, I think it's a great idea.

542
00:54:10,540 --> 00:54:19,100
You know, here's a few sessions to dive into this person's background and have them have a better understanding of themselves and how the job is going to impact them.

543
00:54:19,100 --> 00:54:24,300
But that would be once the agency has decided we want to invest in this person.

544
00:54:24,300 --> 00:54:24,940
Absolutely.

545
00:54:24,940 --> 00:54:31,580
We want to sign on to them. And we think that this person deserves that so that they can have longevity in their career.

546
00:54:31,580 --> 00:54:37,700
So the way that I would envision that looking and I could see it happening with organizations that want to be progressive would be

547
00:54:37,700 --> 00:54:42,420
after you sign on and while you're going to the academy, this is a service that we give to you.

548
00:54:42,420 --> 00:54:46,100
Reflect on yourself, bring some self-awareness, learn a little bit more,

549
00:54:46,100 --> 00:54:52,820
have a realistic idea of how you show up and how that's going to be impacted by your experiences on the job.

550
00:54:52,820 --> 00:55:02,700
100 percent. All right. Well, then you get into the profession and I'm going to kind of switch to fire because this is the most dire of all the professions, in my opinion.

551
00:55:02,700 --> 00:55:09,580
I came into the job starry eyed, having literally just watched Ladder 49, you know, beating my chest and ready to go.

552
00:55:09,580 --> 00:55:13,940
And then you actually get into it. And actually, my first department, Hialeah, did have a Kelly.

553
00:55:13,940 --> 00:55:18,420
And then I went out west and it was a 56 hour work week, no Kelly day.

554
00:55:18,420 --> 00:55:21,620
And then, you know, you get through and you don't know anything else.

555
00:55:21,620 --> 00:55:24,420
No one's talking about seat deprivation 20 years ago.

556
00:55:24,420 --> 00:55:28,220
But now fast forward, I've come out the other end and I'm looking back.

557
00:55:28,220 --> 00:55:32,460
The fact that not only are we working for our firefighters 56 hours a week,

558
00:55:32,460 --> 00:55:37,340
but then you've got all these mandatories because of this horrendous recruitment crisis, which we'll get into.

559
00:55:37,340 --> 00:55:43,940
Now you've got people working 80, 90, I mean, you know, out west sometimes, you know, 120 plus hours in a week.

560
00:55:43,940 --> 00:55:46,660
And it's just to me, pure insanity.

561
00:55:46,660 --> 00:55:54,140
And again, I say this once in a while, I'm like, how am I an immigrant from England who never rose above the rank of firefighter?

562
00:55:54,140 --> 00:55:56,060
And all I did was start talking to great people.

563
00:55:56,060 --> 00:56:02,260
And I figured this out within I didn't even before I started the podcast, I listened to a podcast and Kurt Parsley talked about it.

564
00:56:02,260 --> 00:56:06,260
Why is no one talking about the insanity of the work week?

565
00:56:06,260 --> 00:56:12,660
So staying on mental health specifically, as you dove into the research when it came to shift work and sleep deprivation,

566
00:56:12,660 --> 00:56:22,260
what did you start seeing as far as the correlation between sleep deprivation and the challenges when it comes to the mental health side?

567
00:56:22,260 --> 00:56:30,820
I such a great realization on your part of being able to connect to that sleep is sort of one of the main pieces

568
00:56:30,820 --> 00:56:36,740
and that if you have crap sleep, then everything else that you do on top of that is not going to be very helpful.

569
00:56:36,740 --> 00:56:43,980
I think as a mental health professional diving into the research, looking at sleep, I grossly underestimated the importance of it.

570
00:56:43,980 --> 00:56:49,020
It was just one of many things when I'm going through my checklist, I'm like, all right, so they're not sleeping.

571
00:56:49,020 --> 00:56:51,100
Are they eating? Are they exercising? Are they right?

572
00:56:51,100 --> 00:56:53,820
You have so many other things you're looking at.

573
00:56:53,820 --> 00:57:00,700
Now, when I look at a client and I'm working with somebody, fire, EMS, police, whatever it is, health care, even.

574
00:57:00,700 --> 00:57:04,380
They're so overworked. There's so much mandatory overtime.

575
00:57:04,380 --> 00:57:09,380
There are so many things that being on call or if you're in a supervisory position,

576
00:57:09,380 --> 00:57:14,260
you have to go in and be there when maybe you weren't on shift to support something going on.

577
00:57:14,260 --> 00:57:16,340
Sleep is absolutely fundamental.

578
00:57:16,340 --> 00:57:24,740
And the research supports if you're not getting sleep, especially if you're sleep deprived, so that four hour cut off or less.

579
00:57:24,740 --> 00:57:28,140
The effects are potentially carcinogenic.

580
00:57:28,140 --> 00:57:31,100
We know how detrimental it is.

581
00:57:31,100 --> 00:57:34,420
And yet there isn't a lot of movement.

582
00:57:34,420 --> 00:57:42,820
I've even watched agencies in my area that were on 10 hour shifts, which are considered more of a 10 hour at a time,

583
00:57:42,820 --> 00:57:46,020
a little bit better for mental health, a little bit better for physical health.

584
00:57:46,020 --> 00:57:55,540
I've watched them move to 12 hours, which turns into 14 and 16 hours, you know, or I've watched the amount in between those shifts shrink and shrink and shrink.

585
00:57:55,540 --> 00:58:05,740
We can't expect people to do more with less, and we can't expect them to do things that are humanly, biologically impossible without expecting deterioration.

586
00:58:05,740 --> 00:58:10,020
And I think the level of deterioration that we're seeing is evident in the growing mental health crisis.

587
00:58:10,020 --> 00:58:19,380
I don't think it's an accident that as the workload is increasing and the demand for these services is increasing, that the mental health seems to be deteriorating.

588
00:58:19,380 --> 00:58:21,740
And again, this is an anecdotal account.

589
00:58:21,740 --> 00:58:30,060
I think there is some research to support that these rates are increasing, but it's also being conflated by the fact that people are now being allowed into these organizations to research this.

590
00:58:30,060 --> 00:58:33,700
So whether or not there's a true increase, we'll see.

591
00:58:33,700 --> 00:58:37,300
But I don't think it's an accident. I think sleep is absolutely fundamental.

592
00:58:37,300 --> 00:58:41,940
And if we don't address that, everything that we do on top of that.

593
00:58:41,940 --> 00:58:44,860
It's just going to be a band aids.

594
00:58:44,860 --> 00:58:51,980
100%. I had Sarah Jenke on who's known as one of the lead researchers on the fireside, especially.

595
00:58:51,980 --> 00:58:54,700
And we talked about five years ago and I can still it's funny.

596
00:58:54,700 --> 00:58:55,900
I don't know why I remember it, but I do.

597
00:58:55,900 --> 00:59:02,740
I can still remember posing some of the sleep questions and her answers being very kind of like brushy offy.

598
00:59:02,740 --> 00:59:10,860
And then we circle around a few weeks ago and she said, I wasn't thinking about sleep deprivation when we did the last one didn't even cross my mind.

599
00:59:10,860 --> 00:59:18,500
And I asked her when you dove in, tell me about the research she found. She was like, there's basically nothing in the fireside when it comes to shift work.

600
00:59:18,500 --> 00:59:25,500
And I said, this is the point people say to me when I talk about the 24 72, which I think should be the industry standard on the fireside.

601
00:59:25,500 --> 00:59:26,900
Well, can you show me the research?

602
00:59:26,900 --> 00:59:30,100
And my answer is like, no, because you haven't cared enough to do any.

603
00:59:30,100 --> 00:59:36,860
I can show you all kinds of research on which nozzle and which fog pattern and all these things.

604
00:59:36,860 --> 00:59:39,060
And even on the cancer side, which is good.

605
00:59:39,060 --> 00:59:42,500
But even in the cancer side, there's no studies on sleep deprivation and cancer.

606
00:59:42,500 --> 00:59:46,020
It's all about the gear and the PFAS and all that stuff.

607
00:59:46,020 --> 00:59:48,380
So this is, I think, what's so maddening.

608
00:59:48,380 --> 00:59:50,380
And again, you could you could devil's advocate.

609
00:59:50,380 --> 00:59:52,340
You don't need to even do research.

610
00:59:52,340 --> 00:59:54,660
A shorter work week is going to make you healthier.

611
00:59:54,660 --> 00:59:56,140
You don't need to go in the lab for that.

612
00:59:56,140 --> 01:00:01,180
But when people say I need to see the data, it's like, well, you didn't care enough to even do it.

613
01:00:01,180 --> 01:00:05,620
And so I don't know if you found that as far as that area and fireside specifically.

614
01:00:05,620 --> 01:00:12,180
But but this is the being the real uphill struggle for me is to get people to understand that the way we've,

615
01:00:12,180 --> 01:00:15,660
as you said, been asked to do more with less over and over and over again,

616
01:00:15,660 --> 01:00:22,100
we've got the hundred year old schedule with a twenty twenty four workload.

617
01:00:22,100 --> 01:00:25,380
Oh, yeah. And I think everything you said is accurate.

618
01:00:25,380 --> 01:00:32,940
And I also think that just coming from the academic side of things, things that we know from research

619
01:00:32,940 --> 01:00:37,820
take a long time to be disseminated and then practically applied in the work world.

620
01:00:37,820 --> 01:00:45,620
So the best example that I have of this and it's a law enforcement example are just the the weight of those duty belts

621
01:00:45,620 --> 01:00:49,100
and how that can create chronic pain, lower back pain.

622
01:00:49,100 --> 01:00:54,060
And so a lot of agencies were able to look at some of that data and then switch to the outer carriers

623
01:00:54,060 --> 01:00:57,940
where it distributes the weight more evenly across the body.

624
01:00:57,940 --> 01:01:02,060
But that research has been available for 15 or so years.

625
01:01:02,060 --> 01:01:06,300
So the question is, why now? Why now? Are agencies being able to read this?

626
01:01:06,300 --> 01:01:07,820
So there's a there's a gap.

627
01:01:07,820 --> 01:01:13,580
I think there's a gap between what's actually happening within the organizations affecting the employees,

628
01:01:13,580 --> 01:01:19,060
what researchers are looking at, whether or not they're conducting information or, I'm sorry,

629
01:01:19,060 --> 01:01:24,540
research about that and gathering information to be able to support whatever intervention they want to give

630
01:01:24,540 --> 01:01:29,020
to those organizations to solve that problem and then the actual implementation of it.

631
01:01:29,020 --> 01:01:34,140
And I get stuck and very frustrated in my work since I'm in between doing private practice

632
01:01:34,140 --> 01:01:36,460
and I do a lot of organizational consultation.

633
01:01:36,460 --> 01:01:43,020
I'm often stuck at that that hard place where I look at organizations and I say, here's what the research says.

634
01:01:43,020 --> 01:01:45,500
We have a solution like go do it.

635
01:01:45,500 --> 01:01:49,180
And then they'll give me a thousand reasons why it's going to be difficult.

636
01:01:49,180 --> 01:01:51,980
And I'm sensitive to those reasons.

637
01:01:51,980 --> 01:01:56,100
It's it's it's worth nothing if I say do this thing and they tell me I can't.

638
01:01:56,100 --> 01:01:57,540
And then I'm just upset about it. Right.

639
01:01:57,540 --> 01:01:59,620
I have to be sensitive to that part of it.

640
01:01:59,620 --> 01:02:01,620
But it's always stuck there.

641
01:02:01,620 --> 01:02:06,460
And so I think what you're feeling is that frustration of I've been in those boots.

642
01:02:06,460 --> 01:02:12,340
I know what it's like to work that shift and it sucks and it eats at you and it creates work, life and balance.

643
01:02:12,340 --> 01:02:14,220
And my health is worse off for it.

644
01:02:14,220 --> 01:02:15,980
So I know that intimately.

645
01:02:15,980 --> 01:02:20,740
Now I have experts, people coming onto my podcast, people that are doing the research,

646
01:02:20,740 --> 01:02:26,060
people that are coming out with that information that are validating that my experience is accurate

647
01:02:26,060 --> 01:02:30,460
and that the things that I'm feeling are actually happening and are problematic.

648
01:02:30,460 --> 01:02:33,340
So where is the rubber going to meet the road?

649
01:02:33,340 --> 01:02:39,300
Like at which point are we going to start connecting all of those dots and actually having organizations do the right thing?

650
01:02:39,300 --> 01:02:43,060
And I will tell you that there are some agencies that are progressive.

651
01:02:43,060 --> 01:02:44,820
It matters a lot who's in leadership.

652
01:02:44,820 --> 01:02:47,260
It matters a lot what the political situation is like.

653
01:02:47,260 --> 01:02:51,260
It matters a lot what resources are available to them.

654
01:02:51,260 --> 01:02:57,780
You have to be willing to have somebody in the organization that wants to be progressive as opposed to just fall back on tradition

655
01:02:57,780 --> 01:03:02,860
and is willing to maybe make some people unhappy in the beginning for the longer term benefit.

656
01:03:02,860 --> 01:03:04,820
And that's not always possible.

657
01:03:04,820 --> 01:03:10,580
I'm sensitive to that, but it is frustrating on the clinical end of things to see that gap.

658
01:03:10,580 --> 01:03:15,980
It's funny, people use the word tradition a lot in the fire service, referring to the leather helmets or whatever it is.

659
01:03:15,980 --> 01:03:17,780
And that's history.

660
01:03:17,780 --> 01:03:19,940
That's how we used to do things.

661
01:03:19,940 --> 01:03:28,620
Tradition is courage and selflessness and community and teamwork and all the tenants that are a firefighter or police officer.

662
01:03:28,620 --> 01:03:31,220
But the other stuff is not tradition.

663
01:03:31,220 --> 01:03:32,820
It's nothing to do with tradition.

664
01:03:32,820 --> 01:03:37,340
If we were really in tradition, then why do we switch from horses to vehicles?

665
01:03:37,340 --> 01:03:42,740
Why are we not just having Dalmatians and showing up with big bushy beards and no air packs?

666
01:03:42,740 --> 01:03:45,860
Because tradition isn't about the equipment we wear.

667
01:03:45,860 --> 01:03:51,980
In fact, the goal, if you listen to any elite performers, have the latest and greatest equipment to be the most efficient.

668
01:03:51,980 --> 01:03:57,420
So that kind of blurring of tradition and history really is infuriating.

669
01:03:57,420 --> 01:04:08,300
But when it comes to the resistance to me, and I've said this a lot recently because I think I'm shifting from trying to make a change to one foot in the anger space now,

670
01:04:08,300 --> 01:04:12,180
if I'm completely honest, because there's so much information out there now.

671
01:04:12,180 --> 01:04:16,700
And now I see people just turning their heads deliberately, even locally here.

672
01:04:16,700 --> 01:04:26,420
There's a department right next to me that was literally in a sponsored study with some of the greatest minds that work with NASA and DARPA.

673
01:04:26,420 --> 01:04:33,180
The number one of their takeaways was you need to change the shifts, you need to get more people, and they don't want to do anything about it.

674
01:04:33,180 --> 01:04:35,620
So I'm nauseated by that.

675
01:04:35,620 --> 01:04:42,860
So the first thing is that to me, if you are a good leader with your own good mental health, which I think is another entire conversation,

676
01:04:42,860 --> 01:04:47,860
what's the mental health of these people that seem uncaring about these issues?

677
01:04:47,860 --> 01:04:57,980
Then you would be searching the earth for solutions why your men and women are taking their own lives, dying from cancer, whatever the thing is, divorces everywhere.

678
01:04:57,980 --> 01:05:01,180
But I'd see the opposite. I see a kind of shrugging of shoulders.

679
01:05:01,180 --> 01:05:04,060
Well, I clock off at five, so it's not my problem.

680
01:05:04,060 --> 01:05:07,180
And again, and you said there are some very good progressive departments.

681
01:05:07,180 --> 01:05:11,100
The problem is the first responder agencies are so siloed. They don't talk to each other.

682
01:05:11,100 --> 01:05:16,300
You could have an amazing department, but up against an absolute dogshit one.

683
01:05:16,300 --> 01:05:18,140
But it's that false economy.

684
01:05:18,140 --> 01:05:23,540
And I've talked about this a lot, even had Tulsi Gabbard on recently, and we're talking nationally about that.

685
01:05:23,540 --> 01:05:33,420
People seem content wasting money downstream while they break their people rather than having the courage to tell their cities, counties, whatever, look.

686
01:05:33,420 --> 01:05:38,700
There's money down there. It's going to take a little extra cost when we first put this in place.

687
01:05:38,700 --> 01:05:54,180
But a progressive mental health set of tools, a fitness standard, changing the shifts to give them more rest and recovery is going to save us money hand over fist in five, ten years.

688
01:05:54,180 --> 01:05:57,100
You just have got to have the courage to put it in now.

689
01:05:57,100 --> 01:06:03,420
When you when you get these kind of oh, yeah, but is a lot of it financial because that's the myth.

690
01:06:03,420 --> 01:06:18,060
Even with that is it is a false economy and they would actually save these cities and counties millions and millions of dollars if they just courageous, courageously and proactively put these issues in place.

691
01:06:18,060 --> 01:06:22,700
I think you're right. I think it is financial primarily when we're talking about it,

692
01:06:22,700 --> 01:06:28,580
although I think that that's sort of the proxy for a lot of other things that are left unsaid.

693
01:06:28,580 --> 01:06:40,620
I my gut instinct is just that given the stigma towards mental health that has been rampant in the United States since institutions and then deinstitutionalization,

694
01:06:40,620 --> 01:06:50,860
my guess is that any time you put the word mental health and you want to put that front and center, people are thinking about what pot what potential backlash there's going to be about that.

695
01:06:50,860 --> 01:06:53,180
So it is a positive thing you want to focus on your employees.

696
01:06:53,180 --> 01:06:56,860
You want to make sure that you're preventing really serious things like suicides.

697
01:06:56,860 --> 01:07:05,780
And yet making that step in this uncharted direction and letting outsiders into a primarily insular culture is tough to do.

698
01:07:05,780 --> 01:07:11,180
So it still feels risky. I think finance is a really easy way to just shut the door.

699
01:07:11,180 --> 01:07:14,980
It's like that sounds awesome. And we're totally buy in except for we don't have the money for it right now.

700
01:07:14,980 --> 01:07:19,980
So maybe come back in a year from now. You're like, OK, you know, as the mental health professional,

701
01:07:19,980 --> 01:07:24,340
I'll keep this really great proposal in this folder over here and I'll call you back in a year.

702
01:07:24,340 --> 01:07:27,540
But what they're really saying is is other things.

703
01:07:27,540 --> 01:07:32,860
And I think it's the stigma and I think it's that cultural piece of, well, we know what we know.

704
01:07:32,860 --> 01:07:35,140
And is it really that bad? And they're wrestling with it.

705
01:07:35,140 --> 01:07:43,020
And, you know, is the fact that our workload has increased and we're doing more with less, is that actually what it is now or is this a phase?

706
01:07:43,020 --> 01:07:48,060
Is it going away? And can we just keep doing what we used to do? Because this is going to end at some point.

707
01:07:48,060 --> 01:07:51,500
I think there's a lot of that going on as well.

708
01:07:51,500 --> 01:07:59,060
What is your perspective on mental health in the city, city manager or the fire chief or whoever it is?

709
01:07:59,060 --> 01:08:05,380
Because when I listened to Joe Rogan a long time ago and he had a guy called said guru on and I forget what was said.

710
01:08:05,380 --> 01:08:10,700
But basically, Joe made a comment about what horrible people the heads of pharmaceutical companies are.

711
01:08:10,700 --> 01:08:14,580
And he said, but they're hurting, too. And there was a passing comment.

712
01:08:14,580 --> 01:08:18,220
That's all he said. And then they moved on. But I'd never thought of it that way.

713
01:08:18,220 --> 01:08:25,100
If you are able to sleep at night when you're the head of William Morris or Purdue Pharma or, you know,

714
01:08:25,100 --> 01:08:33,860
DuPont, knowing that your products are killing millions of Americans, you have to have mental health challenges.

715
01:08:33,860 --> 01:08:39,820
You're becoming almost like a sociopath. Now, I'm not saying that fire chiefs and city managers are like you said.

716
01:08:39,820 --> 01:08:42,220
Sometimes they think they're doing the right thing.

717
01:08:42,220 --> 01:08:49,820
But we always look at my level, usually firefighter, engineer, captain, lieutenant, battalion chief, maybe when it comes to the suicides.

718
01:08:49,820 --> 01:08:54,540
But that ladder has more rungs and some of those people find themselves even higher.

719
01:08:54,540 --> 01:09:04,220
And so when again, I look at how unfazed some people are when they lose multiple first responders, I ask myself, why are you unfazed?

720
01:09:04,220 --> 01:09:08,460
I didn't even know these people and I'm seething that we've lost yet another one.

721
01:09:08,460 --> 01:09:24,780
And yet you're just shrugging your shoulders. So have you kind of, you know, had any sort of kind of perspective of the mental health of some of these people that you're trying to move the needle with to positively affect their department?

722
01:09:24,780 --> 01:09:33,220
Sure. I've had the opportunity to work with quite a few different people at different administrative levels in various organizations.

723
01:09:33,220 --> 01:09:45,060
And what I can say is they're human first. So we all are made up of the same stuff and we all have the same capacity for emotions and reactions to whatever's going on around us.

724
01:09:45,060 --> 01:09:55,260
And unless they truly are psychopathic and lack that ability, which is pretty frequent and rare in the community, they're going to feel it.

725
01:09:55,260 --> 01:10:03,620
The issue is that when you're doing a job and you have competing demands, I think it's very easy to realize that you're not going to make everybody happy.

726
01:10:03,620 --> 01:10:09,260
And so oftentimes what happens is agency needs supersede the individual's needs.

727
01:10:09,260 --> 01:10:20,260
So what's best for the organization or what's best for the community or what's best for the political system, like, let's say, if it's an office where there's an elected official in that position,

728
01:10:20,260 --> 01:10:26,260
they have to maintain those interests while also thinking about the impact on their employee.

729
01:10:26,260 --> 01:10:34,740
And it's hard to make everybody happy and do the right thing where everybody's going to end up better for it when you make that decision.

730
01:10:34,740 --> 01:10:40,900
What I can say is I've been in departments where agency leaders are completely on board with the mental health challenges.

731
01:10:40,900 --> 01:10:49,940
They're open about the things that they've seen and done that they hope nobody else has to see or do and that they're glad that they they were the ones there to do it.

732
01:10:49,940 --> 01:10:58,500
So that people in the community didn't have to be the ones to experience that they talk about how they saw mental health treatment and it was helpful.

733
01:10:58,500 --> 01:11:09,540
So very much open. And then I've seen things all the way on the other spectrum where they say, if we acknowledge this coming from a fear space, right, if we acknowledge this is a thing, the work is hard.

734
01:11:09,540 --> 01:11:13,740
It has an impact. Then we have to do something about it. And I don't know what to do.

735
01:11:13,740 --> 01:11:20,420
And I'm paraphrasing their words. And but essentially everything in between it ranges there.

736
01:11:20,420 --> 01:11:25,020
So, yeah, the administration is aware of that. They have human reactions to what's going on.

737
01:11:25,020 --> 01:11:32,860
I don't think they're blind to it. I just think that with what you said earlier, with how much diversity we have, where agencies don't talk to each other,

738
01:11:32,860 --> 01:11:43,580
there's a lot of differences in budgets between these things, resources between these agencies, personnel, laws, regulations, policies, procedures.

739
01:11:43,580 --> 01:11:52,060
There isn't any standard. And so if someone is at the top of an organization and they're looking for guidance, where the hell do you go?

740
01:11:52,060 --> 01:11:57,700
Do you reach out to the neighboring jurisdiction and then just copy paste what they're doing? Maybe that works.

741
01:11:57,700 --> 01:12:03,100
Maybe it doesn't. Do you reach out to an agency that's a similar size in another state and copy paste?

742
01:12:03,100 --> 01:12:07,860
Do you reach out to a professional organization? Do you reach out to other experts?

743
01:12:07,860 --> 01:12:14,180
Do you have the time for that in between all the other stuff you're doing? I think it's a difficult position to be in.

744
01:12:14,180 --> 01:12:19,940
Are they doing enough? No. Do they need to do better? Yeah. Is it hard? Sure.

745
01:12:19,940 --> 01:12:24,940
Choose your heart, as they say. You know, it's hard watching one of your men or women buried, too.

746
01:12:24,940 --> 01:12:34,300
I'd rather put in the work ahead of time. Oh, yeah. Yeah. When you go to one funeral, it's too many.

747
01:12:34,300 --> 01:12:37,980
Absolutely. Well, this is the thing as well with this siloed profession.

748
01:12:37,980 --> 01:12:45,860
And again, it took my gypsy career to see this, because if you've only ever worked for one place, you're kind of oblivious to what the rest of the country looks like.

749
01:12:45,860 --> 01:12:55,540
But there are, as you said, some phenomenal chiefs and people in city management positions and the ranks beneath that have come up with amazing solutions.

750
01:12:55,540 --> 01:13:04,500
But if you're not talking to each other, then, you know, the say one stay over, someone has a suicide like, oh, we need to create a mental health department.

751
01:13:04,500 --> 01:13:07,420
And then they just start reinventing the wheel.

752
01:13:07,420 --> 01:13:17,580
So this is what I think is there's so much wasted money and so much wasted energy because everyone's trying to come up with solutions rather than going, you know, South Metro, tell me about your wellness program.

753
01:13:17,580 --> 01:13:26,460
You know, Coral Springs, talk to me about everything you did before Parkland and how that ended up working well in the responding side from from, you know, your response.

754
01:13:26,460 --> 01:13:29,660
There are so many great ideas I hear, you know, Oklahoma now.

755
01:13:29,660 --> 01:13:35,540
And I think it's Oklahoma, the New Jersey State Police.

756
01:13:35,540 --> 01:13:40,660
I'm here. Phenomenal things from. So go to those agencies that have got that thing.

757
01:13:40,660 --> 01:13:46,100
You know, if you want to go to the 24 72 Boynton Beach, Hugh Bruder, their chief, phenomenal.

758
01:13:46,100 --> 01:13:47,900
I did an amazing conversation with him.

759
01:13:47,900 --> 01:13:52,020
Listen to this free podcast and then apply it to your department.

760
01:13:52,020 --> 01:13:55,180
You know, so this is what's crazy is the information is out there.

761
01:13:55,180 --> 01:14:00,180
I think what's needed is a humility to ask other people and say, hey, you know what?

762
01:14:00,180 --> 01:14:03,660
We are struggling in this area. It seems like you do have the solution.

763
01:14:03,660 --> 01:14:08,220
Can you help me figure out how I can make it work in my department?

764
01:14:08,220 --> 01:14:16,060
Oh, my gosh, I love everything that you just said, because I have been in that space and feeling that for a while now that the information is there.

765
01:14:16,060 --> 01:14:17,540
But it's and they're busy.

766
01:14:17,540 --> 01:14:22,420
And so they need to be able to have somebody that can come in and just make those executive decisions for them.

767
01:14:22,420 --> 01:14:24,660
And you had somebody on your podcast recently.

768
01:14:24,660 --> 01:14:27,900
I'm going to probably butcher remembering their name.

769
01:14:27,900 --> 01:14:30,140
I think his name was Nick. He was an EMS.

770
01:14:30,140 --> 01:14:35,700
And he talked about how one of the organizations that he worked for hired an outside consultant.

771
01:14:35,700 --> 01:14:42,940
And they they basically relied on this consultant to conduct a needs assessment, look at the whole organization and decide what was needed,

772
01:14:42,940 --> 01:14:47,100
whether that was policy, procedure, programming, resources, whatever.

773
01:14:47,100 --> 01:14:54,220
This person came in as an objective, neutral person, evaluated things and gave them a report that said, here's what you do.

774
01:14:54,220 --> 01:15:02,140
It was a play by play. Now, the person that's in charge gets to say, cool, I do step one, then I do step two, then I do step three.

775
01:15:02,140 --> 01:15:05,780
And my organization will be healed of these problems.

776
01:15:05,780 --> 01:15:11,420
I find and this is that money conversation again, that the information is there.

777
01:15:11,420 --> 01:15:15,100
They don't have the time to do it. And so they decide that they just can't.

778
01:15:15,100 --> 01:15:22,300
If they could dedicate that money to somebody who could do the work for them, like a consultant, then it's the best of both worlds.

779
01:15:22,300 --> 01:15:25,940
And really, it's a drop in the bucket as a preventative measure.

780
01:15:25,940 --> 01:15:32,500
If you have someone neutrally assess your organization and say, here's what you need, and then they put the steps in place,

781
01:15:32,500 --> 01:15:35,460
your organization is going to have the solutions that it needs.

782
01:15:35,460 --> 01:15:41,300
Most people are unwilling to put down that initial money to pay a consultant to do that work.

783
01:15:41,300 --> 01:15:49,020
Instead, they come up with, like you were saying, this fire chief's good ideas for mental health or this, you know,

784
01:15:49,020 --> 01:15:54,820
police department's good ideas for a rural agency. And they reinvent the wheel. There's no need for that.

785
01:15:54,820 --> 01:16:02,900
We know that there are some pretty good interventions with support to work, things like peer support programming and how to implement them,

786
01:16:02,900 --> 01:16:09,460
embedded mental health clinicians for employees, retirees and family members,

787
01:16:09,460 --> 01:16:13,540
academy trainings to embed mental health programming.

788
01:16:13,540 --> 01:16:25,900
We have so much programming, even sponsored through grants where you can call, like the U.S. Department, the COPS office.

789
01:16:25,900 --> 01:16:35,020
They have, I'm butchering all the information, I apologize, but the COPS office has phone numbers that you can call for technical assistance.

790
01:16:35,020 --> 01:16:39,540
They have PDFs available of the programming that you can download.

791
01:16:39,540 --> 01:16:45,220
They, you know, there's so much out there that you can do. It's just, I think it needs to be somebody's job.

792
01:16:45,220 --> 01:16:48,260
They need to basically delegate it and say, this is what needs to happen.

793
01:16:48,260 --> 01:16:54,380
And most agencies, they turn you down when you offer that. It's like, I can help you. I can do this. Not now.

794
01:16:54,380 --> 01:16:56,060
It's not a good time. We don't have the money for it.

795
01:16:56,060 --> 01:17:04,300
So if agencies here, if anybody is an agency leader and they're listening to this podcast, there are people out there that can do this work for you.

796
01:17:04,300 --> 01:17:09,420
You just have to be willing to hire them to do it and then accept the results of what their reports say.

797
01:17:09,420 --> 01:17:12,780
Take them up on those recommendations if they want change.

798
01:17:12,780 --> 01:17:16,220
I see the same on the strength and conditioning side.

799
01:17:16,220 --> 01:17:21,740
You know, I've been a kind of absolute weekend warrior coach on the side of my entire career.

800
01:17:21,740 --> 01:17:26,780
So I can coach, but I am by no means an expert in the strength and conditioning world.

801
01:17:26,780 --> 01:17:34,700
And I've had friends that, you know, one of my friends is, was SEAL Team Six, one of the most revered strength and conditioning people in the tactical space.

802
01:17:34,700 --> 01:17:39,500
He's put on classes and, you know, almost no interest whatsoever.

803
01:17:39,500 --> 01:17:44,860
I've got another friend who's in the human performance from the Marine recon space. Same thing.

804
01:17:44,860 --> 01:17:47,900
So you've got all these people that are trying to get in.

805
01:17:47,900 --> 01:17:59,100
And what I've seen in our profession is instead we'll send someone to a two-day IAFF fitness course and then they'll come back as the strength and conditioning gurus.

806
01:17:59,100 --> 01:18:02,220
Well, you know, no one can really learn anything in two days.

807
01:18:02,220 --> 01:18:06,540
You know, if you're a journeyman in that craft, you know, you want to go to the right person.

808
01:18:06,540 --> 01:18:11,020
You're going to build a fire station. You're not going to go to a blog that just learned how to use a trowel two weeks ago.

809
01:18:11,020 --> 01:18:13,180
You know, you're going to go to a construction company.

810
01:18:13,180 --> 01:18:21,260
So this is what I see as well is that, yes, within the fire service, there are some people who are phenomenal coaches or, you know, psychologists.

811
01:18:21,260 --> 01:18:24,300
And they are the anomalies that can do both single-handedly.

812
01:18:24,300 --> 01:18:30,620
But more often than not, we again, need to have the humility to go to the right one.

813
01:18:30,620 --> 01:18:35,900
I mean, my last place, they hired a local fitness group that would come and I sat and watched it.

814
01:18:35,900 --> 01:18:37,500
And I'm like, this is ridiculous.

815
01:18:37,500 --> 01:18:43,740
One of the classes, she taught them how to make a bowl of oatmeal and then they walk around the fire station twice.

816
01:18:43,740 --> 01:18:46,780
I'm like, this is your tactical athlete high performance class.

817
01:18:46,780 --> 01:18:50,700
You know, it was ridiculous and they were paying them tens of thousands a year for this.

818
01:18:50,700 --> 01:18:52,140
So you've got to make sure you get the right one.

819
01:18:52,140 --> 01:19:00,300
But yeah, having the humility to say, look, you are a strength and conditioning coach or organization or, you know, psychology or whatever it is.

820
01:19:00,300 --> 01:19:11,180
Just, you know, how much would it be for you to come and train us and show us the movements and leave for programming for like four different types of humans so we can find what works for us?

821
01:19:11,180 --> 01:19:15,100
And so the firefighters can be firefighters because we've already got enough hats.

822
01:19:15,100 --> 01:19:20,780
And I was a, you know, a peer, you know, a strength and conditioning coach within my last place.

823
01:19:20,780 --> 01:19:24,380
But again, that was yet another thing that I had to do amongst all the things.

824
01:19:24,380 --> 01:19:34,620
So I think having the humility to go outside and find the experts in that field is an extremely important part of this conversation.

825
01:19:34,620 --> 01:19:42,860
Yeah, everything that you're saying as I'm reflecting on it, some thoughts that are popping up for me are just that if if agencies are looking at their own people and saying,

826
01:19:42,860 --> 01:19:44,860
well, invest the money for you to go do the thing.

827
01:19:44,860 --> 01:19:47,340
And then when you come back, you're the expert.

828
01:19:47,340 --> 01:19:51,100
What does that communicate about the value of the thing in the first place?

829
01:19:51,100 --> 01:19:51,340
Right.

830
01:19:51,340 --> 01:19:57,500
That you could go to a two day class and now you're the expert and then hopefully you remembered some stuff and you're going to give it back to people.

831
01:19:57,500 --> 01:20:11,660
So then if somebody that is an expert that has went and got education and training and experience and has made this their life's mission, wants to walk into that agency and offer their services, they're going to look around and say, well, we don't need it.

832
01:20:11,660 --> 01:20:13,180
Why would we spend the money on that?

833
01:20:13,180 --> 01:20:19,260
Because we spent five hundred bucks for Joe to go to Indiana and learn it for two days.

834
01:20:19,260 --> 01:20:21,660
And now he's doing it for free.

835
01:20:21,660 --> 01:20:21,980
Right.

836
01:20:21,980 --> 01:20:25,500
And so I think that there's this interesting culture and I see it at every level.

837
01:20:25,500 --> 01:20:28,380
I see it in academies where there were there.

838
01:20:28,380 --> 01:20:32,700
People are teaching the coursework that maybe they're not the subject matter expert in.

839
01:20:32,700 --> 01:20:35,420
And in some ways it makes sense, but in other ways it doesn't.

840
01:20:35,420 --> 01:20:42,060
I see it in the peer support level where let's have peer support and let's hire our own people, not even hire.

841
01:20:42,060 --> 01:20:55,100
Let's have them volunteer to be on peer support teams to offer this help, knowing that we're going to increase the risk for vicarious trauma as opposed to hiring an embedded mental health clinician and having fewer people on the peer support team.

842
01:20:55,100 --> 01:20:55,420
Right.

843
01:20:55,420 --> 01:20:56,620
Because then it would be free.

844
01:20:57,740 --> 01:21:07,260
Let's not offer to send people to these trainings or offer to send the fewest amount and then have them come back and maybe in a briefing talk about it.

845
01:21:07,260 --> 01:21:14,940
Let's hire the cheapest option of somebody who says that they're a wellness expert, whatever that means, or a resilience coach, whatever that means.

846
01:21:14,940 --> 01:21:20,460
And then have no information about what their education training or experiences.

847
01:21:20,460 --> 01:21:23,500
So there I think there's a lot of room for improvement.

848
01:21:23,500 --> 01:21:24,620
This is the encouraging part.

849
01:21:24,620 --> 01:21:26,380
We have nowhere to go but up.

850
01:21:27,020 --> 01:21:34,220
But I think that organizations need to look at the decisions that they're making and asking what am I actually getting from this and are the decisions that I'm making.

851
01:21:34,220 --> 01:21:39,740
Is it cultivating improvement in any way or are we actually setting ourselves backwards?

852
01:21:39,740 --> 01:21:46,140
And I think relying on your employees when they're already doing more with less to fulfill another job role is not the answer.

853
01:21:47,180 --> 01:21:48,140
Absolutely.

854
01:21:48,140 --> 01:21:55,500
Well, while we're on the topic, another kind of elephant in the room when it comes to first responder mental health is organizational stress or betrayal.

855
01:21:55,500 --> 01:21:58,700
And I can say, like I said, I worked for one of the best, one of the worst.

856
01:21:58,700 --> 01:22:02,220
The last place I worked, it wasn't the calls.

857
01:22:02,220 --> 01:22:03,500
It was the environment.

858
01:22:03,500 --> 01:22:07,820
In my interview, like, oh, tell us what you can offer to the department and blah, blah, blah.

859
01:22:07,820 --> 01:22:11,020
And then you try and do those things and you're told to just shut up and sit down.

860
01:22:11,020 --> 01:22:12,620
We don't need fitness standards here.

861
01:22:12,620 --> 01:22:13,660
We don't need to change the work.

862
01:22:13,660 --> 01:22:15,580
We whatever the thing was.

863
01:22:15,580 --> 01:22:17,740
And again, it was always everything I did.

864
01:22:17,740 --> 01:22:20,460
I offered to teach and go to station to station.

865
01:22:20,460 --> 01:22:24,220
I mean, it was like zero investment at all.

866
01:22:24,220 --> 01:22:28,300
Just pay me to actually go do the training and I'll go visit everyone.

867
01:22:28,300 --> 01:22:29,900
And I did multiple times.

868
01:22:29,900 --> 01:22:39,500
So I, when I look at that on top of the fact that one of the guys I got hired with, he died of an overdose about eight months into being hired there.

869
01:22:39,500 --> 01:22:41,900
And we went to the funeral.

870
01:22:41,900 --> 01:22:42,940
Very long story, very short.

871
01:22:42,940 --> 01:22:44,300
I told it on here many times before.

872
01:22:44,300 --> 01:22:53,340
But when we came back, my lieutenant that was at the funeral detail, got a phone call and he said, you need to apologize to all the stations because they had to run calls.

873
01:22:53,340 --> 01:22:54,540
We were at the funeral.

874
01:22:54,540 --> 01:22:56,300
No, you took too long.

875
01:22:56,300 --> 01:22:57,820
That was the culture.

876
01:22:57,820 --> 01:23:03,740
And so you imagine a fired up, passionate first responder being immersed in that.

877
01:23:03,740 --> 01:23:06,940
It was so toxic, so detrimental.

878
01:23:06,940 --> 01:23:11,580
And I ultimately was rehabbing a knee injury, which I was back to full duty.

879
01:23:11,580 --> 01:23:21,580
And I chose to step away and focus on the podcast because the thought of going back, either it would kill me or I'd end up getting fired, punching someone in the face.

880
01:23:21,580 --> 01:23:23,900
So either way, it wasn't going to end well.

881
01:23:23,900 --> 01:23:28,060
So I firsthand totally understand that organization.

882
01:23:28,060 --> 01:23:30,060
I mean, I would say that was betrayal by that point.

883
01:23:30,060 --> 01:23:31,100
It wasn't even stress.

884
01:23:31,100 --> 01:23:41,100
But you hear so many of these fired up, passionate, incredible first responders that on the outside looking in, people think, oh, their department must be amazing and they must support them.

885
01:23:41,100 --> 01:23:47,100
And then you hear behind closed doors that they're miserable because they're trying to make a difference in their department.

886
01:23:47,100 --> 01:23:48,380
And it's the same thing.

887
01:23:48,380 --> 01:23:50,620
You're making us look bad, sit down, shut up.

888
01:23:50,620 --> 01:24:03,100
And then obviously in the law enforcement side, now you've got these horrendous calls like that one police officer just shot that woman when she reported someone intruding around her house.

889
01:24:03,100 --> 01:24:04,540
And that was awful.

890
01:24:04,540 --> 01:24:15,020
But you have these calls where the police officer didn't do anything wrong and their agency hung them out to dry or they get hurt or injured on the job and then they get hung out to dry.

891
01:24:15,020 --> 01:24:16,060
So talk to me.

892
01:24:16,060 --> 01:24:17,740
That was a huge monologue prior to this question.

893
01:24:17,740 --> 01:24:18,380
I apologize.

894
01:24:18,380 --> 01:24:29,580
But talk to me about the impact of organizational stress on betrayal on the first responders, because I don't hear it mentioned even closely enough.

895
01:24:29,580 --> 01:24:33,340
Yeah, there's so much there's so many directions that we could go with it.

896
01:24:33,340 --> 01:24:44,780
And I really like your examples just to sort of set the stage that it's complicated when when people generally sign up for a job as a first responder and you ask them, why are you interested in that career?

897
01:24:44,780 --> 01:24:45,980
They'll tell you, I want to serve.

898
01:24:45,980 --> 01:24:46,780
I want to give back.

899
01:24:46,780 --> 01:24:47,580
I want to protect.

900
01:24:47,580 --> 01:24:49,100
I want to I want to help in some way.

901
01:24:49,100 --> 01:24:50,460
There's some sort of this.

902
01:24:50,460 --> 01:24:51,420
It's bigger than me.

903
01:24:51,420 --> 01:24:53,500
I want to do something for my community.

904
01:24:54,060 --> 01:25:02,300
And then what they're sold in return for taking that is, OK, you're going to be a part of this group of people that have all decided they want to be a part of this cause.

905
01:25:02,860 --> 01:25:03,740
We're a family.

906
01:25:04,620 --> 01:25:09,020
Even the word family has certain connotations for people like maybe it's going to be close.

907
01:25:09,020 --> 01:25:10,700
Maybe we'll always have each other's back.

908
01:25:11,260 --> 01:25:14,380
You know, there's this idea that it's going to be supportive.

909
01:25:14,380 --> 01:25:22,620
And then when you're on the job and your experience and the realities of the thing, you expect to see trauma when you sign up for a job in fire.

910
01:25:22,620 --> 01:25:28,140
You know that you might respond to a situation where people are trapped inside.

911
01:25:28,780 --> 01:25:29,980
That's going to be horrifying.

912
01:25:30,540 --> 01:25:38,220
When you sign up for EMS, you know that you're going to respond to people that have been involved in a car accident and might be bloodied, banged up or it might be fatal.

913
01:25:38,700 --> 01:25:39,980
And same in law enforcement.

914
01:25:39,980 --> 01:25:42,540
It's not people's best day when they're calling 911.

915
01:25:42,540 --> 01:25:45,180
So you're aware that there's going to be trauma.

916
01:25:45,180 --> 01:25:46,700
Most people are prepared for that.

917
01:25:46,700 --> 01:25:49,820
Maybe they get in, they see things, they go, I didn't know it was going to be that bad.

918
01:25:50,140 --> 01:25:53,740
But they're generally aware my job is going to incorporate this kind of stuff.

919
01:25:54,220 --> 01:25:57,100
I think the organizational stress is more insidious.

920
01:25:57,580 --> 01:26:03,660
They have expectations of what it's going to be like when they're in that organization and how things are going to operate.

921
01:26:03,660 --> 01:26:05,660
And that gets slowly undermined.

922
01:26:05,660 --> 01:26:07,660
And it feels like death by a thousand cuts.

923
01:26:07,660 --> 01:26:18,380
It's that one comment by a coworker that you thought you were close with because you went to the academy together and now you're up for promotion and they try to undermine you that little bit.

924
01:26:18,860 --> 01:26:29,020
It's that passing comment by the supervisor about, you know, we don't know why you're taking that extra break and they're making it mean something that maybe you hadn't created meaning about.

925
01:26:29,580 --> 01:26:33,020
It's that policy about a topic that's really sensitive at work.

926
01:26:33,020 --> 01:26:41,900
It's the, you know, we really care about you statements out loud and then we're not going to give you the resources you need to do your job in private.

927
01:26:41,900 --> 01:26:53,980
It's, you know, we could give a thousand examples of this, but the organizational stress is where most people when they come in to see me in therapy, that's where we spend our time talking about.

928
01:26:53,980 --> 01:26:57,980
Because the organizational stress are typically the things that they have no control over.

929
01:26:57,980 --> 01:27:03,420
So when you think about what leads to stress in general, it's a demand being placed on you.

930
01:27:03,420 --> 01:27:06,220
And then it's your ability to look at the thing and say, can I manage it or not?

931
01:27:06,940 --> 01:27:15,260
Most people, when they look at a thing that's placing a demand on them and they can't manage it, they're going to go, well, what am I going to do about this?

932
01:27:15,260 --> 01:27:15,660
Right.

933
01:27:15,660 --> 01:27:21,420
How can I make myself feel better if the thing that's causing you stress is your literal job and there's nothing you can do about it?

934
01:27:22,060 --> 01:27:24,380
The only direction you have is to feel helpless.

935
01:27:24,380 --> 01:27:27,580
Hopeless. There's nowhere else to go.

936
01:27:27,580 --> 01:27:34,300
You can try to create change, but if you're blocked at every step of the way, that just leads to more helpless and hopelessness.

937
01:27:34,300 --> 01:27:34,540
Right.

938
01:27:34,540 --> 01:27:36,540
And no matter what I do, I can't change this thing.

939
01:27:37,100 --> 01:27:40,060
So I think organizational stress is huge.

940
01:27:40,060 --> 01:27:43,020
I think it absolutely has mental health impacts.

941
01:27:43,020 --> 01:27:48,860
We, you see that when people go on vacation, right, burnout will tend to get a little bit better.

942
01:27:48,860 --> 01:27:52,540
But the minute that they're placed back in that situation, they're going to be able to do it.

943
01:27:52,540 --> 01:27:56,460
But the minute that they're placed back in that situation, it's like they're drinking the poison again.

944
01:27:56,460 --> 01:27:58,220
It becomes toxic.

945
01:27:58,220 --> 01:27:59,900
That's that piece of it.

946
01:27:59,900 --> 01:28:06,860
And as a psychologist, it's the most difficult to intervene within because you're not intervening at the level of the person.

947
01:28:06,860 --> 01:28:09,420
You have to intervene at the level of the organization.

948
01:28:09,420 --> 01:28:19,980
You have to look at what you can do to change things like policy or procedure, leadership, supervision, work policies around, you know, treatment seeking,

949
01:28:19,980 --> 01:28:21,580
processes around promotions.

950
01:28:21,580 --> 01:28:23,820
Are they fair and based on performance or not?

951
01:28:23,820 --> 01:28:27,900
You know, relationships with colleagues.

952
01:28:27,900 --> 01:28:30,540
There's so much, but none of it has to do with the person.

953
01:28:30,540 --> 01:28:37,260
And so I think as a psychologist, when you're having somebody explain this to you, really, it needs to be a much more upstream approach.

954
01:28:37,260 --> 01:28:38,460
But absolutely.

955
01:28:38,460 --> 01:28:41,580
It's a conversation in almost every single one of my therapy sessions.

956
01:28:41,580 --> 01:28:49,100
And it's front and center in the research as being more damaging because of its difficulty to intervene.

957
01:28:49,100 --> 01:28:50,380
In that piece of it.

958
01:28:50,380 --> 01:29:02,060
Yeah, I mean, what you're talking about, the family, when you are writing that blank check saying that, you know, potentially you could die trying to save someone that you don't even know, you know, that's a tribal thing.

959
01:29:02,060 --> 01:29:07,020
You know, you're part of this incredible family that will die for each other.

960
01:29:07,020 --> 01:29:08,300
I mean, truly.

961
01:29:08,300 --> 01:29:12,940
And then, you know, you get into it and all of a sudden the rules are changed.

962
01:29:12,940 --> 01:29:18,380
You know, and if you think about it from an ancient human perspective, imagine you were in a family.

963
01:29:18,380 --> 01:29:22,940
Imagine you were an Inca or an Inuit or an Australian Aboriginal.

964
01:29:22,940 --> 01:29:25,180
And, you know, life had been this certain way.

965
01:29:25,180 --> 01:29:28,220
And then all of a sudden, they're like, oh, yeah, but we don't have to do that.

966
01:29:28,220 --> 01:29:28,860
You have to do that.

967
01:29:28,860 --> 01:29:29,820
We don't anymore.

968
01:29:29,820 --> 01:29:34,300
You know, it's totally destroying your identity in a way, your belief system.

969
01:29:34,300 --> 01:29:41,740
And I think that's what's so detrimental is that you've sworn to be ethical and fair and kind and compassionate.

970
01:29:41,740 --> 01:29:48,860
And all of a sudden, the way you're treated isn't, you know, and I think that really jars a lot of people.

971
01:29:48,860 --> 01:29:49,500
Yeah.

972
01:29:49,500 --> 01:29:59,580
And I also think that a component of this that most people don't think about is just what their expectations going in are and whether or not those are realistic.

973
01:29:59,580 --> 01:30:05,100
You know, ultimately, when you're signing up for a job, you are signing up for a job.

974
01:30:05,100 --> 01:30:12,140
You aren't joining like a secondary, non unconditional loving family.

975
01:30:12,140 --> 01:30:19,980
I think something that oftentimes clients will say at the end of therapy is some something like the job doesn't love you.

976
01:30:19,980 --> 01:30:22,300
And it stings a little bit to hear that.

977
01:30:22,300 --> 01:30:25,100
But it's the reality that this is a job.

978
01:30:25,100 --> 01:30:27,660
You're exchanging time for money.

979
01:30:27,660 --> 01:30:32,860
Now, there can be a lot more about the fact that the work is fulfilling and there's purpose and there's meaning.

980
01:30:32,860 --> 01:30:37,820
And you get to build rewarding friendships and really support your community and do better.

981
01:30:37,820 --> 01:30:41,020
And all of that are what you get out of the job.

982
01:30:41,020 --> 01:30:44,220
But it doesn't reduce the fact that at the end of the day, it is a job.

983
01:30:44,220 --> 01:30:53,980
And I think when people lend themselves in circumstances where their expectations were this is going to do more for me, these people are going to fill that role for me.

984
01:30:53,980 --> 01:30:55,020
And they don't.

985
01:30:55,020 --> 01:30:56,700
It does lead to betrayal.

986
01:30:56,700 --> 01:30:58,540
It's like that moral injury.

987
01:30:58,540 --> 01:31:03,580
And then they end up having a lot more downstream consequences because of it.

988
01:31:03,580 --> 01:31:10,540
So if you believe that now your support system, what you perceive as your support system, your leadership doesn't support you.

989
01:31:10,540 --> 01:31:17,020
What kind of decisions are you going to make when you're out of the station, when you're out of the offsite?

990
01:31:17,020 --> 01:31:20,300
You know, are you going to be a bit more risky?

991
01:31:20,300 --> 01:31:26,620
You know, are you going to make that tough call or are you going to step back a little bit and try to make the safe call?

992
01:31:26,620 --> 01:31:38,380
You know, if you if you're worried that everything is going to be recorded and analyzed and scrutinized and that no one's going to have your back, are you going to be as willing to do the things that need to be done in that moment?

993
01:31:38,380 --> 01:31:39,980
That quick second decision making.

994
01:31:39,980 --> 01:31:45,100
And I'm not suggesting that anybody maliciously is having this conversation in their mind.

995
01:31:45,100 --> 01:31:54,380
But it's that nagging part in the back of their brain, that unconscious piece of I've watched the last few people get really thrown to the wolves.

996
01:31:54,380 --> 01:31:57,180
Do I want to be part of that camp?

997
01:31:57,180 --> 01:32:02,540
So I think that that can create that toxic cycle that you often see in organizations.

998
01:32:02,540 --> 01:32:12,860
And the way to combat that and come back from it is really just being clear on what's my role, what's my job, what is the role of my supervisors in this thing?

999
01:32:12,860 --> 01:32:14,860
Do I know my job inside and out?

1000
01:32:14,860 --> 01:32:20,060
Am I taking care of myself well enough that I know I can do the job to the best of my ability?

1001
01:32:20,060 --> 01:32:30,300
When your work schedule is such that you're sleep deprived and you're making poor, you have poor judgment and decision making because of that, we know it's impacted.

1002
01:32:30,300 --> 01:32:33,580
You're not getting enough time with family because you're on overtime.

1003
01:32:33,580 --> 01:32:35,660
And then you get involved in a situation.

1004
01:32:35,660 --> 01:32:36,780
Maybe there's a use of force.

1005
01:32:36,780 --> 01:32:38,220
Maybe you made a bad call.

1006
01:32:38,220 --> 01:32:41,260
And now the organization can't support you in that.

1007
01:32:41,260 --> 01:32:42,860
It's betrayal on all levels.

1008
01:32:42,860 --> 01:32:47,700
Right. Betrayal because they didn't support me, but also betrayal because they used and abused me.

1009
01:32:47,700 --> 01:32:49,540
I didn't take care of myself.

1010
01:32:49,540 --> 01:32:51,940
I couldn't take care of myself.

1011
01:32:51,940 --> 01:32:53,940
Where's your safety net?

1012
01:32:53,940 --> 01:32:55,700
So it's pretty insidious.

1013
01:32:55,700 --> 01:32:56,180
Yeah.

1014
01:32:56,180 --> 01:33:03,420
Well, especially if you look at the on-ramp, fire, for example, you're going in with your partner and you're relying implicitly on them.

1015
01:33:03,420 --> 01:33:07,500
There's no room for discussion or evaluation by that point.

1016
01:33:07,500 --> 01:33:13,700
I just got to hope that when I turn around, he or she is still on the hose line or is on the roof of me or whatever it is.

1017
01:33:13,700 --> 01:33:22,180
So I think when, you know, same, I'm sure with the military, you know, the buddy system, when there's that level of trust on the battlefield or the fire ground,

1018
01:33:22,180 --> 01:33:25,780
that's why I think you have that expectation everywhere else.

1019
01:33:25,780 --> 01:33:34,100
But through this disconnection, I think more often than not between the people running the calls and the people in the offices, that then goes against.

1020
01:33:34,100 --> 01:33:41,780
Because, I mean, you know, you can set unrealistic expectations about who you are and your identity.

1021
01:33:41,780 --> 01:33:47,420
But ultimately, when lives are at stake, you do have to have this implicit trust.

1022
01:33:47,420 --> 01:33:50,460
And that is why I think you're so far from this betrayal.

1023
01:33:50,460 --> 01:33:54,380
And that's why it smacks so hard.

1024
01:33:54,380 --> 01:33:59,700
And I also think, given what you're saying, that it's really easy to fall back on that.

1025
01:33:59,700 --> 01:34:05,900
Trust your training, trust your partner, trust the organization when the scope of what you do is this small.

1026
01:34:05,900 --> 01:34:11,660
But when you expand that and now it's going into areas that you really aren't getting the appropriate training for,

1027
01:34:11,660 --> 01:34:16,940
you don't have the appropriate resources for, that makes it incredibly more difficult on both of those ends.

1028
01:34:16,940 --> 01:34:21,380
The leadership side of things to be able to support somebody going out that they really know,

1029
01:34:21,380 --> 01:34:27,460
wow, you only did two hours of mental health training or you attended a 40 hour CIT course.

1030
01:34:27,460 --> 01:34:30,580
It's like that's nothing, you know.

1031
01:34:30,580 --> 01:34:40,540
And then on the employee end of things, they go into those circumstances saying, I know how to do my job, the specific things that I was trained for really, really well.

1032
01:34:40,540 --> 01:34:45,500
You put me into this new area that I don't feel as prepared for.

1033
01:34:45,500 --> 01:34:48,180
What can we expect?

1034
01:34:48,180 --> 01:34:56,180
Absolutely. Well, I want to get to speaking of what we expect, what the myths are around counseling and what it should like.

1035
01:34:56,180 --> 01:35:06,180
But before we do, in these almost thousand conversations now, you know, the Venn diagram intersects on some pretty, pretty powerful takeaways.

1036
01:35:06,180 --> 01:35:18,660
And the one thing that it seems to be the case is the gold standard for when it comes to the actual tools for mental health seems to be to actually hire a counselor for that department.

1037
01:35:18,660 --> 01:35:23,820
Now, I understand some departments are smaller than others, so it might involve a network of smaller departments.

1038
01:35:23,820 --> 01:35:34,620
But when, you know, if you were queen for a day, what would the mental health side of peace and fire look like so that we could eliminate these glaring barriers to entry,

1039
01:35:34,620 --> 01:35:40,860
whether it's EAP finances out of insurance networks that I hear over and over again,

1040
01:35:40,860 --> 01:35:48,460
a stopping first responders, either wanting to go to a counseling and or simply being able to go to counseling.

1041
01:35:48,460 --> 01:35:54,060
I think that's such a great question. I think about this often, but when I think about it, I also have magical power.

1042
01:35:54,060 --> 01:35:56,460
So it helps a little bit in solving the problem.

1043
01:35:56,460 --> 01:36:01,660
Go ahead, because there's a shitload of money out there. It's just not being used properly.

1044
01:36:01,660 --> 01:36:04,100
Yeah, they're just not giving it to me.

1045
01:36:04,100 --> 01:36:09,980
I would create sort of like a veterans administration, only make it for the domestic first responders.

1046
01:36:09,980 --> 01:36:14,340
And maybe there'd be some sort of a program where agencies could opt in.

1047
01:36:14,340 --> 01:36:18,460
So if they're part of that membership, then all of their employees could utilize it.

1048
01:36:18,460 --> 01:36:23,700
And then it would you could basically build the entire system off the same way that the Veterans Administration is ran.

1049
01:36:23,700 --> 01:36:28,460
And I know that that system has its own has its own issues, but the structure the same.

1050
01:36:28,460 --> 01:36:32,300
So you would be able to have mental health services, physical health services.

1051
01:36:32,300 --> 01:36:40,740
You could link that to more holistic care if you wanted nutritionists or dieticians, strength and conditioning coaches, just whatever elements are there.

1052
01:36:40,740 --> 01:36:45,420
It also would have the ability to have educational seminars ran there.

1053
01:36:45,420 --> 01:36:52,660
So you could invite experts and do continuing education courses, whatever training needs to be conducted, family wellness seminars.

1054
01:36:52,660 --> 01:36:57,940
And I anticipate you'd probably have space for debriefings.

1055
01:36:57,940 --> 01:37:07,300
So if you wanted to host agency wide things that impact the community at a larger level, you would have safe spaces created specifically for that.

1056
01:37:07,300 --> 01:37:13,340
One of the main problems that I see when I work with organizations and everything's very disjointed is there's a big gap,

1057
01:37:13,340 --> 01:37:18,220
specifically in Nevada, where I work between urban agencies and rural agencies.

1058
01:37:18,220 --> 01:37:21,660
They just don't have the same level of resources.

1059
01:37:21,660 --> 01:37:26,260
And when you work in rural agencies, which I often do, that's that's my passion project,

1060
01:37:26,260 --> 01:37:31,620
is you have to be creative and flexible. I might have to run services out of a library.

1061
01:37:31,620 --> 01:37:38,940
I might have to run services out of a volunteer fire station, whatever is available to you, you use.

1062
01:37:38,940 --> 01:37:41,380
And that's just not the same circumstance in urban areas.

1063
01:37:41,380 --> 01:37:49,900
So how you would solve that, where the service would be centrally located and accessible for people across a state, let's say.

1064
01:37:49,900 --> 01:37:51,500
I don't have the answer for that yet.

1065
01:37:51,500 --> 01:38:02,260
But with magic powers, you would just use all your resources and create these big organizations in each of those areas centrally located so everybody could access them.

1066
01:38:02,260 --> 01:38:06,740
I'm sure when people first heard that, they were the knee jerk is all the VA is terrible.

1067
01:38:06,740 --> 01:38:12,980
And I think this is the same even with the NHS, which I adore the principle, the philosophy back home in England.

1068
01:38:12,980 --> 01:38:19,500
But when you have a system that's designed to take care of everyone,

1069
01:38:19,500 --> 01:38:26,980
and then obviously, if you're if you're managing it well, then you proactively make people as healthy as possible so they don't use the resources very much.

1070
01:38:26,980 --> 01:38:34,700
But if you look at the NHS right now, it's been picked apart for years and years and years by budget cuts and they haven't got the resources that they should have.

1071
01:38:34,700 --> 01:38:38,220
So you're looking at and going, oh, this is a broken system. It wasn't.

1072
01:38:38,220 --> 01:38:40,700
It was beautiful until it was pulled apart.

1073
01:38:40,700 --> 01:38:48,460
And so when you look at that and go, you know, we could create a version of that, because I mean, you know, imagine if everyone just had health care and we had lots and lots of

1074
01:38:48,460 --> 01:38:53,860
mental health counselors and obviously there was a branch for first responders, then we don't have to have this conversation anymore.

1075
01:38:53,860 --> 01:38:57,380
Everyone's got health care. This was interesting when I talked to the British firefighters.

1076
01:38:57,380 --> 01:38:59,980
Well, we just go to the doctor. That's it.

1077
01:38:59,980 --> 01:39:04,500
You know, there's no worries about, you know, which which network are you in and what are the co-pays?

1078
01:39:04,500 --> 01:39:06,740
You just go to the doctor.

1079
01:39:06,740 --> 01:39:13,740
That being said, there's a charity called the Firefighters Charity that takes care of the firefighters, which is phenomenal, which gives them that arm.

1080
01:39:13,740 --> 01:39:17,380
And I think they have NHS support, I think.

1081
01:39:17,380 --> 01:39:25,620
But I know it's mainly donation based. But the point being, when when there's a good idea and people point out, but here's why it doesn't work.

1082
01:39:25,620 --> 01:39:33,940
It's that we're beautiful. Just like you said, what an amazing opportunity we have right now to invent it from the ground up and make a super VA.

1083
01:39:33,940 --> 01:39:38,140
Learn from all the mistakes. You know, I've heard so many they threw pills at me story.

1084
01:39:38,140 --> 01:39:45,980
So that would be a good start when it comes to the mental health side and create a better version for whether it's just a first responder, VA type thing,

1085
01:39:45,980 --> 01:39:51,620
whether it's a national health rather than point, oh, I heard once someone died in the waiting room in London.

1086
01:39:51,620 --> 01:39:56,700
Yeah. So you're negating the millions of people that got health care and no one asked them for their social security number.

1087
01:39:56,700 --> 01:40:01,380
You know, that's the difference. So looking at some of these systems and saying it's OK.

1088
01:40:01,380 --> 01:40:06,940
How can we make it better is the conversation we need to have rather than go, oh, that doesn't work.

1089
01:40:06,940 --> 01:40:09,940
That's just stupid. Absolutely.

1090
01:40:09,940 --> 01:40:15,260
And I think to your point, we can't expect perfection. Systems are going to fail.

1091
01:40:15,260 --> 01:40:19,420
There's going to be that one off case that's not going to fit the bill.

1092
01:40:19,420 --> 01:40:28,140
But I think if you can look at the areas that seem to be habitual problems and then you can solve that there, then you have a better system.

1093
01:40:28,140 --> 01:40:33,700
And ultimately, the Veterans Administration, I think it's it's undergoing some of the same challenges that you're pointing with,

1094
01:40:33,700 --> 01:40:42,020
you know, budget cuts or whether that's not hiring qualified staff or that's just having too many people that need help.

1095
01:40:42,020 --> 01:40:46,860
But I don't think that's a reason to throw it out and say, let's reinvent the wheel here.

1096
01:40:46,860 --> 01:40:48,980
The bones of that system are incredible.

1097
01:40:48,980 --> 01:40:55,180
And the opportunity to have a multidisciplinary team where somebody could have a one stop shop is great.

1098
01:40:55,180 --> 01:41:01,900
I also think it gives people the opportunity just by virtue of having that status, whatever organization they're working with.

1099
01:41:01,900 --> 01:41:08,260
If there was that membership buy in, it bypasses the EAP, which departments have to individually buy into.

1100
01:41:08,260 --> 01:41:12,180
And then they look at their network of providers, whereas you get this is what you get.

1101
01:41:12,180 --> 01:41:16,060
You could see anybody within that network. The network could be huge with telehealth.

1102
01:41:16,060 --> 01:41:19,380
You could see somebody at a different clinic if that's who you really wanted.

1103
01:41:19,380 --> 01:41:21,740
It gives people more autonomy of choice.

1104
01:41:21,740 --> 01:41:26,340
I think it could be a really functioning, great opportunity.

1105
01:41:26,340 --> 01:41:28,660
It would cost quite a bit of money.

1106
01:41:28,660 --> 01:41:30,820
Absolutely. But again, I mean, here's a perfect example.

1107
01:41:30,820 --> 01:41:35,380
Where's the money? Well, we have 70 percent of our population obese or overweight.

1108
01:41:35,380 --> 01:41:38,380
We consume 75 percent of the world's opioids.

1109
01:41:38,380 --> 01:41:43,740
We have four percent of the world's population, but we have 20 percent of the world's incarcerated population.

1110
01:41:43,740 --> 01:41:53,380
So there are clearly some proactive things that we can do that will take all the money that's bleeding on all those areas, make our people healthier, lower recidivism.

1111
01:41:53,380 --> 01:41:57,540
And then you'd have a huge amount of money to do more proactive things like this.

1112
01:41:57,540 --> 01:42:02,540
So when people are talking about cutting budgets or whatever, it's like, where are you wasting money?

1113
01:42:02,540 --> 01:42:06,260
Where is the ill health costing this nation trillions of dollars?

1114
01:42:06,260 --> 01:42:10,820
How can we reverse that and then siphon that money into the more proactive areas?

1115
01:42:10,820 --> 01:42:14,460
It's not about more money. It's just about using it properly.

1116
01:42:14,460 --> 01:42:16,260
Absolutely. I couldn't agree more.

1117
01:42:16,260 --> 01:42:23,420
And I mean, you really think about what all the individual organizations are spending on different mental health components.

1118
01:42:23,420 --> 01:42:31,700
If that was to be pooled and used for this more regionalized service, which we already do that with other functions anyways,

1119
01:42:31,700 --> 01:42:38,780
I think it would be better off for it, a better use of the money, more centrally located, more accessible to other people and more equitable

1120
01:42:38,780 --> 01:42:43,780
where you could close that gap between rural and urban and state by state.

1121
01:42:43,780 --> 01:42:51,820
Absolutely. Well, we talked briefly before I hit record about some of the kind of myths and misunderstandings when it comes to counseling.

1122
01:42:51,820 --> 01:42:55,900
So I'm going to give you the mic and you run with it.

1123
01:42:55,900 --> 01:43:02,060
Yeah. So one thing that happens to me a few weeks ago, I was camping with some family and just having casual conversations.

1124
01:43:02,060 --> 01:43:06,940
And as it does, work creeps in and people want to know what you do and what it's like.

1125
01:43:06,940 --> 01:43:09,860
And people are always interested about therapy.

1126
01:43:09,860 --> 01:43:19,540
I realize that what seems to be pretty commonplace for me, pretty basic level knowledge for me because I do it every day is not the case for most people.

1127
01:43:19,540 --> 01:43:24,660
And I just wanted to take a second to share a quick story about a conversation I had with a family member,

1128
01:43:24,660 --> 01:43:31,700
a question they asked me and then how that led me to think that maybe more people could benefit from knowing a little bit more about therapy.

1129
01:43:31,700 --> 01:43:37,540
So set the stage. I'm looking out at the beautiful water of Lake Almanore, a bunch of family sitting around.

1130
01:43:37,540 --> 01:43:50,260
And one of my family members says, you know, I'm just curious, Jenna, what do you do if somebody comes to you and they are experiencing depression and grief because they lost somebody?

1131
01:43:50,260 --> 01:43:55,540
And my mind is whirling. Like, do they want the actual answer to this, like the clinical answer to this?

1132
01:43:55,540 --> 01:43:58,380
Do they want the nice answer to this simple one?

1133
01:43:58,380 --> 01:44:03,220
And ultimately, I just said, I need more information. What do you what do you mean? What do I do with them?

1134
01:44:03,220 --> 01:44:08,780
Like, what do I physically say to them? How do I treat them? What do I conceptualize about it?

1135
01:44:08,780 --> 01:44:18,580
And they were like, I'm just curious what you do because you're so young and I'm not sure what life experience you would have that they could relate to on that.

1136
01:44:18,580 --> 01:44:23,620
And the light bulb went off for me. And I was like, oh, they're not asking me what therapy is like.

1137
01:44:23,620 --> 01:44:27,940
They're asking me what what I as a therapist, like what they could expect of me.

1138
01:44:27,940 --> 01:44:33,220
If somebody wanted to come see me and was treated by me, how can they trust that I can help them?

1139
01:44:33,220 --> 01:44:40,940
So my purpose of bringing this up is just that I think for most people, when they're making the decision to go to therapy, they have expectations.

1140
01:44:40,940 --> 01:44:47,740
They have expectations about what a therapist is, a counselor, a psychologist, whatever word for mental health professional you want to use.

1141
01:44:47,740 --> 01:44:54,340
They have expectations about what the process of therapy looks like, and they have expectations about what those results are going to be.

1142
01:44:54,340 --> 01:45:01,980
And whether or not those expectations are based on facts or assumptions and judgments is a totally different circumstance.

1143
01:45:01,980 --> 01:45:09,620
So just to share a little bit about what mental health professionals, who they are, what they do and what therapy could look like, I think could be helpful.

1144
01:45:09,620 --> 01:45:16,460
So broadly, mental health professional, it's a word that encompasses a lot of different people in that sphere.

1145
01:45:16,460 --> 01:45:23,300
You can have psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, marriage and family counselors, licensed professional counselors.

1146
01:45:23,300 --> 01:45:27,500
And there are even more names for this when you go state by state.

1147
01:45:27,500 --> 01:45:35,500
But in general, these are all people who, based on their training, education and experience, can provide therapy to some degree.

1148
01:45:35,500 --> 01:45:39,740
When you go to therapy, it's often a decision that's made based on readiness.

1149
01:45:39,740 --> 01:45:46,420
Like I've looked at myself, I've looked at what's going on for me, and I've decided that something's not right.

1150
01:45:46,420 --> 01:45:52,220
And I think I want somebody else to look at the situation and give me a neutral, objective perspective.

1151
01:45:52,220 --> 01:45:57,860
When you go in, you can expect for that person to ask you a lot of questions, have a conversation just like James and I are having,

1152
01:45:57,860 --> 01:46:02,340
and try to get to the bottom of what ultimately caused some of those things.

1153
01:46:02,340 --> 01:46:06,980
In some circumstances, it's simple. It's like you experience a motor vehicle accident.

1154
01:46:06,980 --> 01:46:11,860
Now you're afraid to go drive on the freeway. Those two things seem like they're connected.

1155
01:46:11,860 --> 01:46:14,660
Let's talk about that. Let's focus our therapy there.

1156
01:46:14,660 --> 01:46:17,860
For other circumstances, it's more difficult and nuanced.

1157
01:46:17,860 --> 01:46:21,380
Maybe you had a difficult experience in childhood.

1158
01:46:21,380 --> 01:46:25,140
Maybe you haven't had difficult experiences in intimate partner relationships.

1159
01:46:25,140 --> 01:46:29,460
And now you're coming in saying, I don't know whether or not I want to get married.

1160
01:46:29,460 --> 01:46:33,460
And I don't know how all of these experiences play into this, if they even do.

1161
01:46:33,460 --> 01:46:36,500
And so the therapy is focused around that piece.

1162
01:46:36,500 --> 01:46:42,100
And maybe it goes into other areas. But ultimately, it starts with assessment and a conversation.

1163
01:46:42,100 --> 01:46:50,740
Whether or not your therapist has actually on their own been through a similar experience has very little to do with whether or not they can help you.

1164
01:46:50,740 --> 01:46:56,260
Because it's not about them looking at where they've been and then telling you the right way to go about it.

1165
01:46:56,260 --> 01:47:01,740
Right. In quotes. Therapy is about being a vessel and a guide on that journey.

1166
01:47:01,740 --> 01:47:14,700
So what I do in therapy, and I can't speak for all other therapists, but what my theoretical orientation does is I ask the client a lot of questions to get to what they think about their problems.

1167
01:47:14,700 --> 01:47:22,580
I look at them as the expert in their own experience and I want to figure out for them what solutions can you come up with?

1168
01:47:22,580 --> 01:47:27,820
Because you know best what your life looks like. You know how you arrived at these problems.

1169
01:47:27,820 --> 01:47:32,740
And then how can we look at your context to try to figure out what we can do with that?

1170
01:47:32,740 --> 01:47:37,380
So tell me all the barriers. Give me all the reasons why you think that this thing is unsolvable.

1171
01:47:37,380 --> 01:47:40,820
And then let's go forward with a path forward.

1172
01:47:40,820 --> 01:47:46,260
So the long winded way of answering my family members question was I'm going to look at the person in front of me.

1173
01:47:46,260 --> 01:47:56,820
I'm going to figure out what they call this thing that they're experiencing, what they've already tried, what they're willing to try, and then how successful they think they can be given what they have.

1174
01:47:56,820 --> 01:48:02,700
And then I'm going to support them along the way. Whether or not I've been through something like that doesn't really matter.

1175
01:48:02,700 --> 01:48:08,100
How old I am doesn't really matter other than if that's important to the client.

1176
01:48:08,100 --> 01:48:11,700
So the last thing I'll say about therapy is fit is important.

1177
01:48:11,700 --> 01:48:24,180
If you get into a session with somebody and you try it on for size and you say, I just don't think they get me or I just don't think that they are relating to me in whatever reason or I just don't trust the things that they're saying.

1178
01:48:24,180 --> 01:48:26,820
I just don't feel it. That's OK. That can happen.

1179
01:48:26,820 --> 01:48:36,060
And it's not a call to give up on the thing entirely, because, like I said earlier, there's a lot of different people employed in the mental health professional sphere.

1180
01:48:36,060 --> 01:48:38,900
Find somebody that does fit your experiences.

1181
01:48:38,900 --> 01:48:49,580
And when you look at psychologists in particular, most of us are education, training and experience is trained to be a generalist, meaning we know a little bit about everything.

1182
01:48:49,580 --> 01:48:55,460
But a lot of psychologists go on to become specialists, meaning that they learn a lot about a very specific area.

1183
01:48:55,460 --> 01:49:01,180
And that is where they rest all of their their passion and their motivation and their effort.

1184
01:49:01,180 --> 01:49:10,860
And so for me, if people are saying, oh, I don't know who I want to talk to, but I really identify strongly as a first responder and I've seen a lot of trauma and I've dealt with a lot of organizational stuff.

1185
01:49:10,860 --> 01:49:19,140
I'd say you might want to see somebody who specializes in police and public safety, because not only am somebody like me going to get your experience,

1186
01:49:19,140 --> 01:49:21,820
but I've dedicated my life to learning what that is.

1187
01:49:21,820 --> 01:49:25,140
So, again, I've never served one of those roles.

1188
01:49:25,140 --> 01:49:28,140
I can't say here's what it felt like to put on my boots for the first day.

1189
01:49:28,140 --> 01:49:29,780
I'll never be able to do that.

1190
01:49:29,780 --> 01:49:36,340
But I have done all of that prerequisite stuff to be able to explore and understand somebody's perspective.

1191
01:49:36,340 --> 01:49:46,940
So hopefully that's a little bit helpful for people to understand who mental health professionals are, what therapy can look like and clear up some myths about, you know, we might not have gone through the same thing,

1192
01:49:46,940 --> 01:49:54,260
but that's less important than the fact that we know how to get you to the solutions that you need and that they probably rest within you.

1193
01:49:54,260 --> 01:49:58,060
I've heard so many EAP horror stories on this show.

1194
01:49:58,060 --> 01:50:06,100
And what breaks my heart is how many EAP horror stories I'll never hear, because that ended up being the final nail in the coffin for that individual.

1195
01:50:06,100 --> 01:50:15,540
For people listening, obviously understanding that a doctorate in psychology is a high level when it comes to therapy and then that particular practitioner.

1196
01:50:15,540 --> 01:50:17,860
What are some of the things that people should look for?

1197
01:50:17,860 --> 01:50:28,340
Because I've noticed a lot of counselors, therapists will list first responders amongst 20 other things that they supposedly specialize in.

1198
01:50:28,340 --> 01:50:37,660
And, you know, the next thing you've got a first responder sitting in front of a counselor who's in tears or is telling them to get out because they can't help them or just prescribing a meds and sending them on their way.

1199
01:50:37,660 --> 01:50:52,140
How can people listening find a culturally competent, you know, educated therapist, psychologist, psychiatrist amongst the kind of white noise of all the other ones?

1200
01:50:52,140 --> 01:50:57,580
Thank you for saying that and highlighting what is a big frustration for me.

1201
01:50:57,580 --> 01:51:03,980
Some of the questions that people can ask providers are specific to what you already know about your job.

1202
01:51:03,980 --> 01:51:10,900
So if you want to know whether or not they're going to understand you, you can ask them if they've had experience with things that would incorporate that job.

1203
01:51:10,900 --> 01:51:13,580
Have they been on a ride along or a sit along?

1204
01:51:13,580 --> 01:51:20,140
Have they attended some type of a ceremony, whether it's a promotional ceremony or a funeral?

1205
01:51:20,140 --> 01:51:21,900
Do they have family that are involved in it?

1206
01:51:21,900 --> 01:51:28,780
Because what you're trying to get at with those questions are, have you seen the realities of the work so that I don't have to explain it to you?

1207
01:51:28,780 --> 01:51:32,380
You can also ask them questions about their clinical practice.

1208
01:51:32,380 --> 01:51:34,620
So how long have they been in practice?

1209
01:51:34,620 --> 01:51:37,580
How long have they been working with first responder populations?

1210
01:51:37,580 --> 01:51:45,340
Again, just to get a gauge of is this something that they just do on the side and think it's interesting or is this something that's a big part of their practice?

1211
01:51:45,340 --> 01:51:49,220
And then you can ask questions about their license and their education.

1212
01:51:49,220 --> 01:51:51,380
What is your license? Are you licensed?

1213
01:51:51,380 --> 01:51:55,460
Then you know if there's professional standards or ethical standards they have to follow.

1214
01:51:55,460 --> 01:51:56,940
What is their education been like?

1215
01:51:56,940 --> 01:52:09,140
Have they taken coursework to understand occupational stressors, trauma, you know, any specialty coursework around police or public safety, whatever that is.

1216
01:52:09,140 --> 01:52:15,820
Some really good keywords for the audience is if you there's a new national training standard that's being set.

1217
01:52:15,820 --> 01:52:18,580
If you want to look for providers, they have a directory.

1218
01:52:18,580 --> 01:52:24,700
It's the National Emergency Responder and Public Safety Certification.

1219
01:52:24,700 --> 01:52:31,660
I can send I have information posted on my Instagram if people are interested in that, but you also can just Google it.

1220
01:52:31,660 --> 01:52:40,460
It's a certification in that piece and that it guarantees 56 hours of continuing education working with police or public safety populations.

1221
01:52:40,460 --> 01:52:44,820
So that just is an extra added layer of certification.

1222
01:52:44,820 --> 01:52:54,220
But you can also look for people that have done master's degrees, PhDs or CITES where their education is focused on first responder psychology.

1223
01:52:54,220 --> 01:52:57,100
So those are just some basic things.

1224
01:52:57,100 --> 01:52:59,340
There's also directories that are specific for this.

1225
01:52:59,340 --> 01:53:06,220
So the Fraternal Order of Police, they have a wellness vetting guide.

1226
01:53:06,220 --> 01:53:10,580
They also have a directory where you can look and find culturally competent provider.

1227
01:53:10,580 --> 01:53:16,460
Code Green Campaign is a website online that hosts a directory.

1228
01:53:16,460 --> 01:53:18,420
There's lots of different directory sites.

1229
01:53:18,420 --> 01:53:23,020
If you Google first responder mental health directories, things are going to pop up for you.

1230
01:53:23,020 --> 01:53:28,860
But ultimately, what somebody advertises and what they actually do in practice, you need to fact check that.

1231
01:53:28,860 --> 01:53:30,820
So my recommendation is ask questions.

1232
01:53:30,820 --> 01:53:32,700
Don't be afraid to ask questions.

1233
01:53:32,700 --> 01:53:36,580
And if a provider doesn't answer those questions for you, that is information.

1234
01:53:36,580 --> 01:53:39,140
They might not be the right option for you.

1235
01:53:39,140 --> 01:53:42,860
A provider should not have any issue answering that question.

1236
01:53:42,860 --> 01:53:50,260
They should want to prove that they are the right person for you to be able to see and have no problem answering that.

1237
01:53:50,260 --> 01:53:51,100
Brilliant.

1238
01:53:51,100 --> 01:53:54,100
I got one more area and then we'll close up.

1239
01:53:54,100 --> 01:54:02,780
One of the, I mean, there's many forgotten populations, I would argue, everywhere from, I heard you talking about the other podcast, medical examiners, certainly corrections, dispatch.

1240
01:54:02,780 --> 01:54:08,220
I mean, there's all these other groups that are absolutely a part of our chain that need to be discussed.

1241
01:54:08,220 --> 01:54:12,820
But as far as career span, we talked about the VA.

1242
01:54:12,820 --> 01:54:18,900
If you served and you had any sort of disability at all, you're going to have VA taking care of you the rest of your life.

1243
01:54:18,900 --> 01:54:26,460
If you're a first responder, giving 10, 20, 30 years of your life, the moment that Baydoor closes behind you that last day, you're on your own.

1244
01:54:26,460 --> 01:54:28,540
No, you know, zero support.

1245
01:54:28,540 --> 01:54:40,340
So I can't help but feel like these these super under underestimates of suicide and overdose in the first responder profession that are under reported already.

1246
01:54:40,340 --> 01:54:42,900
I mean, we see them or so and so died suddenly.

1247
01:54:42,900 --> 01:54:45,420
OK, I know what that means, but you're not going to actually come out and say it.

1248
01:54:45,420 --> 01:54:47,460
And I get it. I understand the stigma from families.

1249
01:54:47,460 --> 01:54:52,860
But we're unable to even really collate the numbers who are working in the uniform.

1250
01:54:52,860 --> 01:54:58,900
But I would imagine that was a tip of the iceberg from all the physical and mental health manifestations when we retire,

1251
01:54:58,900 --> 01:55:06,020
because not only you at an age now where cancer and heart disease and all those things rear their ugly heads, but now you're away from your tribe.

1252
01:55:06,020 --> 01:55:09,780
You might be returning to an empty apartment because your marriage broke down.

1253
01:55:09,780 --> 01:55:21,100
So you've got so much data or so many people that we're probably losing that are completely uncounted when it comes to the first responder health statistics.

1254
01:55:21,100 --> 01:55:24,660
So talk to me about that group of people.

1255
01:55:24,660 --> 01:55:28,500
And what are you seeing as far as the mental health side?

1256
01:55:28,500 --> 01:55:37,660
And how can we continue to help our career veterans after they've taken the uniform off?

1257
01:55:37,660 --> 01:55:42,460
I think you nailed it when you made the comparison between the Veterans Administration.

1258
01:55:42,460 --> 01:55:44,980
You know, the word veteran is in that right.

1259
01:55:44,980 --> 01:55:52,180
So the active duty piece of it is over and then we're going to continue to provide services for you.

1260
01:55:52,180 --> 01:55:56,780
There isn't that continuation for domestic first responders, and there really should be.

1261
01:55:56,780 --> 01:56:01,860
And it's a symptom of the larger problem, which is that we don't even have the services for them where they're in the career.

1262
01:56:01,860 --> 01:56:07,540
And so how could we possibly then have the appropriate services for when they retire?

1263
01:56:07,540 --> 01:56:09,900
But it does need to be a part of the equation.

1264
01:56:09,900 --> 01:56:16,340
There's a colleague of mine, and she would be my suggestion if you haven't already talked to her to have on the podcast, would be Dr.

1265
01:56:16,340 --> 01:56:17,620
Medina Baumgart.

1266
01:56:17,620 --> 01:56:24,980
She wrote a book, I think early last year, sometime last year, called Surviving Retirement.

1267
01:56:24,980 --> 01:56:32,740
And it's from her perspective as a clinical psychologist, but also her husband's perspective being in law enforcement for 20 something years.

1268
01:56:32,740 --> 01:56:41,300
They talk about that transition and they talk about what to expect and they talk about that being the forgotten piece that most people aren't considering.

1269
01:56:41,300 --> 01:56:48,580
The mental health and the physical health side, it's that culmination of we just beat you up for however many years.

1270
01:56:48,580 --> 01:56:51,460
And so now try to go live a happy, healthy life.

1271
01:56:51,460 --> 01:56:56,140
Hopefully, the way that people did their career was such that they were buffering the effects.

1272
01:56:56,140 --> 01:57:00,220
And so when they get to retirement, they don't have metabolic syndrome.

1273
01:57:00,220 --> 01:57:06,300
They are still in an intact family, marriage, partnership, whatever it is their family life looks like.

1274
01:57:06,300 --> 01:57:11,340
They saved appropriately and have financial relief, not financial burden.

1275
01:57:11,340 --> 01:57:17,540
All of the things that you would hope somebody could do to have a quality life in the job so that retirement looks satisfactory.

1276
01:57:17,540 --> 01:57:22,100
But what we know is that a lot of people don't arrive to that finish line in that kind of condition.

1277
01:57:22,100 --> 01:57:28,700
And so the support around what they need at that phase in that transition is a lot of different resources.

1278
01:57:28,700 --> 01:57:34,500
Sometimes it's financial resources, sometimes it's couples resources, sometimes it's identity work.

1279
01:57:34,500 --> 01:57:45,780
Like I just worked and spent my whole life identifying as this person and now I left that career and who am I kind of work and lots of other pieces to it.

1280
01:57:45,780 --> 01:57:50,100
This transition, like any other transition, can be huge.

1281
01:57:50,100 --> 01:57:52,980
If prepared for, it can be less.

1282
01:57:52,980 --> 01:57:59,580
I think that the services that I would like to see offered in retirement would be a transitional service.

1283
01:57:59,580 --> 01:58:08,460
So maybe the agency does a warm handoff where whatever services were being afforded to the employees at that phase are extended in that retirement period.

1284
01:58:08,460 --> 01:58:11,060
And then there's a warm handoff to whatever's left.

1285
01:58:11,060 --> 01:58:22,420
So if I'm queen for the day and I have this great system set up, then there would be an extension where that person could, for the rest of their life, seek those services at that type of facility.

1286
01:58:22,420 --> 01:58:29,140
Beautiful. Well, speaking of facility, I'm sure people listening would love to visit you if they're in your state.

1287
01:58:29,140 --> 01:58:34,740
But also I know you are able to reach out to many, many other states through the virtual side too.

1288
01:58:34,740 --> 01:58:43,420
So talk to me about your facility and then how can people reach out to you and see if you're able to work with them, even if they're not in your state?

1289
01:58:43,420 --> 01:58:50,100
Yeah, absolutely. So I have a small private practice in northern Nevada, but I not only license in Nevada,

1290
01:58:50,100 --> 01:58:56,660
I'm licensed through an inter-jurisdictional compact called SIPACT, and I can provide services to those states.

1291
01:58:56,660 --> 01:59:02,660
So if people are interested in what those states are, I won't regurgitate the list mostly because I don't have it memorized.

1292
01:59:02,660 --> 01:59:10,140
In alphabetical order, you can visit sipact.com and you can see if one of those states is something that I offer.

1293
01:59:10,140 --> 01:59:17,780
You can also visit my website, www.theridgenv, like Nevada, dot com.

1294
01:59:17,780 --> 01:59:24,900
You can read about me, my practice, the types of things that I do and see whether or not you'd be interested in working with me.

1295
01:59:24,900 --> 01:59:28,500
And I have a contact button on that website. So a few quick questions.

1296
01:59:28,500 --> 01:59:31,980
You can send me a message and we can see if I'm a good fit.

1297
01:59:31,980 --> 01:59:37,540
I'm shaking my head and laughing. The reason I was looking at my phone just for a second, Brooke Bartlett is a good friend of mine.

1298
01:59:37,540 --> 01:59:40,540
And I've been writing this book and I've been getting to burn out.

1299
01:59:40,540 --> 01:59:47,300
I'm not going to be completely honest. And so I called Brooke and said, hey, I'd love to actually do some counseling.

1300
01:59:47,300 --> 01:59:51,420
And there's nothing specific, but it's just that again, death by a thousand cuts.

1301
01:59:51,420 --> 01:59:55,740
And she said, well, I can't do it because we're friends now, but I'll send you someone who can.

1302
01:59:55,740 --> 02:00:00,300
And it was you. So now I can't do that either because we just had a conversation.

1303
02:00:00,300 --> 02:00:03,540
So, yes. Yeah. So yeah, this is the problem.

1304
02:00:03,540 --> 02:00:08,900
I got to stop interviewing people so I can find someone for myself.

1305
02:00:08,900 --> 02:00:14,940
Yeah, you're doing too good of a job. You're finding all the all the highly specialized. I am. I am indeed brilliant.

1306
02:00:14,940 --> 02:00:19,540
All right. Well, then what about social media? You anywhere there for people to reach out?

1307
02:00:19,540 --> 02:00:23,860
Yes, I have a professional Instagram. You can find me at doc dot Jenna.

1308
02:00:23,860 --> 02:00:30,140
So D.O.C. dot J.E.N.A. And I provide psycho education there.

1309
02:00:30,140 --> 02:00:33,780
So it's a lot of posts about just common topics, myths, things like that.

1310
02:00:33,780 --> 02:00:36,540
Sometimes I post pictures of cool things that I'm doing.

1311
02:00:36,540 --> 02:00:39,500
So if you want to follow up with me, that's a great avenue.

1312
02:00:39,500 --> 02:00:42,220
Beautiful. Well, Jen, I want to say thank you so much.

1313
02:00:42,220 --> 02:00:46,900
I mean, it's been such an amazing conversation. I genuinely could have asked, you know, a hundred more questions,

1314
02:00:46,900 --> 02:00:49,660
but I got to take a little boy to go watch Deadpool in a minute.

1315
02:00:49,660 --> 02:00:54,740
So I got to wrap it up. But I want to thank you so, so much for being so generous with your time

1316
02:00:54,740 --> 02:00:57,540
and coming on the Behind the Shield podcast today.

1317
02:00:57,540 --> 02:01:12,980
Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.