July 29, 2025 • 57 mins
In this episode, we talk with Catherine Van Tassel of GBS Benefits—a unique blend of employee benefits broker and licensed therapist—about how employers can thoughtfully integrate behavioral health into their benefits packages. Catherine shares how she helps companies choose the right mental health programs tailored to their specific workforce, recognizing that needs vary widely across industries.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:12):
All right, hello Health Heads.
Welcome and thank you for checking in to this dose of the healthcare uprising.
I'm your producer in the back, Jeremy Carr, here with your host in the front row, HeatherPierce.
So let's tell them what's on the agenda for today.
Today we have with us Katherine Van Tassel, who is currently the Director of BehavioralHealth Consulting at GBS Benefits, which is out of Salt Lake City, and who I had the
(00:38):
pleasure of working with for several years.
She's been with them just over three years.
But her background expands into...
Let's see, she is a licensed clinical social worker.
She is an American College of Lifestyle Medicine diplomat and an NASM certified personaltrainer.
So she has been around the uh clinical world quite a bit.
(01:02):
um Behavioral health is kind of her thing, mental health, all of that kind of stuff.
And with GBS, what she does is uh works with their clients.
who um are interested in bringing on mental health and behavioral health type programs andproducts for their employees and consults on them.
cool.
Yeah, she consults on that.
yeah.
All right.
(01:23):
I don't think we've done a mental health one in a little while.
So it'd be good to get back into that space here.
And never from this perspective.
Okay, cool.
Well, let's get into it.
Without further ado, here's our conversation with Catherine Van Tassel from GBS.
(01:44):
Hi, and welcome to the Healthcare Uprising podcast.
Today we have with us Katherine Van Tassel, the Director of Behavioral Health Consultingwith GBS.
Welcome to the show, Katherine.
Thanks for having me.
Great.
So Catherine is our uh resident expert on behavioral health, mental health um in the uhbenefits space.
(02:05):
So GBS is essentially a brokerage.
uh And Catherine and I got connected through a previous employer of mine, Levitt Group,who GBS is a part of.
So thanks, Haley, for connecting me and me and Catherine and having you on the show.
uh And so today we're going to just quickly kind of high level cover
(02:27):
some of the things around mental health benefits, behavioral health programs, et cetera,that employers offer.
um And that's really where Katherine's expertise sits.
So with that, what can you tell us as it comes to employers, since that's really whereyou're focused?
Why do we need them?
How has it changed?
What's improved?
(02:48):
Really, what are some of the best ones you've seen on the market?
So just kind of high level to really get.
um
to get a good idea of kind of the purpose of them and what they aim to achieve and how dothey benefit people.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think a good way to look at it is all the opportunities that an employer may have intheir workplace to address mental health.
(03:11):
And really nice because when you look at that way, there are low cost, lower loadstrategies that you can take, and then also integrating with a mental health solution,
like a paid program, a third party vendor.
And high level there, I always say
one of the best things that you can do just initially is starting with the top down,meaning that C-suite, HR, leadership, anyone that's in a people leader position is trained
(03:42):
in some sort of mental health, like leadership training.
So think mental health first aid and also suicide prevention.
We really have to think about suicide as well in the workplace, because there are manyfactors in the workplace that
can lead to suicidal ideation.
And um of course, it's not something we want to have happen.
(04:05):
So we can do trainings for leadership, people leaders, whatever our policies look like.
Internally, what is our access to mental health?
So whether that's through the medical plan or then these mental health solutions thatyou're asking about specifically.
So there are many on the market.
And actually during
(04:25):
Right around the end of the pandemic, maybe last quarter or last third to the end, I hadbeen talking to somebody in that space and they said about a thousand mental health
solutions will come onto the market each year for employers.
And I thought, how overwhelming is that for an employer?
(04:47):
Like, where do you even start if there are that many different options out there?
It's really difficult.
So
That's really great when somebody works with their broker or somebody that's in that spaceto help delineate, like, what is a good option for me?
Like, what is our industry?
We know construction struggles with opioid use disorder, substance use disorder, mentalhealth, suicide.
(05:14):
When you think about entertainment industry or hospitality, very high rates of substanceuse disorder.
That would be, oh okay, we wanna get a solution that has a good, carve out would be maybea word to use, but has a good internal solution wrapped up to do assessments for substance
(05:37):
use disorder and then appropriate resources.
So just thinking about a couple of options out there to give concrete examples.
We have solutions like Spring Health and...
Headspace actually teamed up with Ginger, which was a program that came out at MIT.
Ginger?
(05:58):
Yeah.
Oh.
Yeah, see?
There's a thousand.
There's so many and I thought I'd yeah
Yeah.
And like CureLink, um Uliance, I could go on and on and on.
But essentially, if you want the Cliff Notes version, or just kind of like the cheat sheetof what you want to be looking for, think about how quickly do people access care?
(06:24):
What is the way people access care?
So can they do it through an app?
Can they do it on a desktop?
Can they speak to somebody?
Do that online?
Are they able to filter through different um therapists?
Because somebody might wanna see a male and not a female.
Somebody maybe want to see somebody with their ethnic background.
(06:46):
Maybe they need to see them in the morning, in the evening.
Essentially we know people with mental health conditions get better as long as we reducethe barriers into getting help and then we don't have long wait times.
So, okay.
How do people access care?
Who are the people that are gonna be treating them?
Do we have good access and quick access to care?
(07:09):
m Is there some functional ability for people to choose a therapist and if it's not a goodfit, get a new therapist?
And then subspecialty.
What does this industry look like?
What are the special needs that we have?
And then does that platform support them?
Yeah, every industry, like all industries are not made the same, right?
(07:29):
So I feel like this comes up to Jeremy.
This is probably like ringing some bells.
Like we've talked about this and even mentioned like construction and hospitality.
We've done a series on ketamine therapy with a company called Enthia.
Actually, Haley also connected me with them in doing ketamine therapy.
Highly prevalent industries like construction.
They're getting in with like labor unions.
(07:50):
So like and not all mental health apps and programs are
the same, right?
So they kind of can have niche uh focus areas, I would imagine.
I mean, I don't know all the ins and outs, but.
That's just a thousand a year.
how do you keep up with that?
Like how do you know?
Like what works for who?
And like that's, it almost seems like too much abundance going on there.
(08:15):
Yeah, yeah, I mean that's my full-time job.
You're like, keep on coming without those products.
You'll keep me employed.
That's a never ending work.
That's good job security.
Your job's never going to go away if they keep coming out with a thousand new things foryou to check out every year.
Yeah.
The that I have to say about them is not all of them are good.
(08:36):
And I think all of them have good intention, I believe that.
But I think some of them try to be a little bit too niche.
And the problem with being too niche is that if you bring in this product, then it's onlygoing to speak to a fraction of your workplace.
So
I like solutions that have clinical and subclinical skills.
(09:00):
So this may be another little tip when you're looking at a mental health solution is,okay, we talked about therapy, high level what you're looking for, but do they also have
support for everybody in the workplace?
Thinking, meditations, uh maybe movement opportunities.
(09:21):
So like you can go and do a 30 minute.
m chair yoga, or even cardio, know, again, speaking to everybody there.
Do they have self-guided DBT or CBT exercises, sleep stories, thinking about all thesedifferent things that you can help um also in the way that we live our life.
(09:42):
How are we eating?
How are we moving?
How are we stressing our community?
Having support there, and many of the good ones do.
Do you think, and so there's a lot of stuff out there and maybe this is thinking more interms of like use of these types of programs from your perspective, has there been a
(10:03):
growing increase in the utilization of them by the employees?
Like the employers make the decision, find you the right programs and whatnot, theyimplement them into place, make you know they offer them to their people.
Are you seeing a higher utilization?
we
Do people just not know what to do sometimes?
I feel like a lot of people are confused about what their benefits are, about like, how doI use it?
(10:27):
Is this actually for me?
Or there's like apprehension or fear.
Do you see that a lot?
You know, that's such a great question because there's so many factors within that.
I mean, just one is how is the employer speaking to their employees about it and likeconstantly reminding them.
(10:48):
And this is something I always talk to employers about is you have to remember how thebrain operates.
So essentially when we become stressed, overwhelmed, burned out, or have an untreatedmental health condition, two parts of our brain down-regulate.
We go into that stressed flight or flight or freeze response.
(11:10):
And our frontal lobe where we make good executive thinking, that's not working as well.
And also in the back of our brain, our hippocampus, that's where we retain memory.
That also kind of goes to sleep while we're in this stressed uh state.
So the employer may have said,
a million times, hey, we have this EAP or we have spring or headspace or you name it.
(11:36):
But at that moment, it's just like, it's gone.
Like there's nobody there in that part of the brain to bring that back.
So the more times you talk about it, this is when I talk about having mental healthchampions, having a mental health slack or teams channel, having constant reminders is
really helpful.
The other part in coming back to when I was saying,
(11:59):
talking about training leadership or having these mental health champions that have takenmental health first aid and can recognize common signs of mental health or stress or
burnout, they can almost be this proxy frontal lobe.
Hey, you seem really, really stressed.
Have you called ex solution?
Because everything's really overwhelming.
(12:20):
I mean, just think about if you've been under slept and overworked and have too manythings to do.
It's like one small thing that would normally be no big deal.
would just be completely overwhelming or just like, cannot do one more thing.
So that person can be like, hey, let's just call and make an appointment for you to get inand talk to somebody.
(12:40):
So thinking about having these types of initiatives, groups, plans, special interestgroups within the workplace, this all can help drive utilization because we know with like
a basic EAP, maybe think about a free EAP through disability.
we are getting like one to 4%.
(13:00):
But if you have a more robust, then we see like 10, 14, maybe 20.
And then again, we see that's industry specific as well.
Hmm.
That's I've I've used DAP before, but there's been, you know,
EAP.
Oh.
What is EAP?
(13:23):
do you want it?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Just uh to spell it out for those of us.
Assistance Program.
employee assistance program.
Yeah, like every benefit it changes right like I've had it typical I feel like six freesessions um And at least in the past that was like in person, but now I'm sure it again I
(13:45):
haven't used the AP in a long time.
I probably could have used it quite honestly now I'm thinking shoot somebody should reallyencourage me to get some therapy and also I should probably encourage my people You know
that are on my team and I love that actually is that's such a great leadership tiphonestly um
for me as a manager of people to because I do have a full time job.
(14:08):
uh Yeah, the podcast isn't, you know, is my moneymaker, uh but it is my joy maker.
That's my therapy.
I hang out with Jeremy and talk to really cool people.
It is, but like that's such a great idea, though.
(14:28):
for me to think about, like, I should be more aware as a people manager what our benefitsare.
So if I see somebody on my team, like stressing out, because I can tell you, my boss hasdefinitely seen me, like, you know, hitting a wall.
And if somebody had said, you know, you should maybe think about, you know, doing this orlike we have the Calm app, like, maybe go take a minute and, you know, sometimes you need
(14:56):
that push from the person
that you report to because then it's validating, right?
Like they're saying it's okay.
And meditation in the workplace, you did mention that and now you mentioned it again, I'llbring it up too.
Meditation in the workplace can be a wonderful thing and really bring down those stresslevels and enhance the cooperation amongst coworkers and all kinds of stuff.
(15:20):
It can do wonderful things.
Yeah.
Great.
Yeah!
This is where education becomes so critical.
Like how are we getting this messaging across?
Not even that we have this resource, but also what happens to your brain when youmeditate?
I mean, I have an hour presentation on that.
literally don't have time to go into that, but thinking about, okay, if I'm an employer, Iwant somebody to not be again in this fight, flight or freeze.
(15:49):
I want them to not have foggy thinking or distracted or difficulty with concentration,which happens when we're in that.
response and we know meditation you're thinking about in minutes like if you were to dobox breathing which they teach Navy SEALs you go into that relaxed state you're more
focused you can think clearly be more productive if it were me I would want to give thatto all my employees but you don't know what you don't know right I mean a lot of people
(16:19):
are how am I gonna buy groceries this week and pay my bills and I don't have somebody towatch my kids or you know
mean, there's so much going on for people that we have to be there to help them as well.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's em I like.
I like this message of well, one, we have to do a better job of being conscientious aboutwhat kind of plans, what kind of benefits, what kind of programs that we have available,
(16:46):
like as individuals um and then the employees themselves, right, have to reallycommunicate that out, like remind people.
I love the idea of the Slack channel, like a mental health Slack channel um and then justkind of the ownership as a people manager.
to ensure that your people are like remembering that they have access to this sort ofthing.
(17:06):
Because if we're all, if we're all breathing a little bit easier, right?
And, and doing meditation and that sort of thing uh or getting therapy, whatever thatlooks like, then we're more productive.
We're happier people, both at home, at work, you know, all the places.
(17:26):
love that.
So,
I'm going to kind of move into kind of our second part of this discussion here.
This is my official segue for the record.
ah Because I think we've really kind of set up the what are we here to talk about?
Right.
Today is really about what do you do on behalf of GBS and in terms of mental health andbehavior health benefits, working with employers, consulting with them to say this is
(17:59):
what I think makes sense for you, right?
Like based on the industry, based on, I'm sure there's a lot of factors, but you obviouslyhave a lot of clinical expertise in this space and you and I have chatted a little bit
before.
So I have a little bit of your background, but like what actually brought you into thisrole?
Like what was kind of that pathway for you and that kind of clinical expertise that youbring to making these kinds of, um I guess, recommendations.
(18:24):
Absolutely.
So it's a bit of a long story.
So we're going to shorten it so nobody falls asleep during your podcast.
uh But the abbreviated story, so my background, I'm a licensed clinical social worker anda physician assistant.
And I love mental health.
I've been in mental health for more than 20 years now.
(18:44):
uh But what I love the most is preventative health care through lifestyle.
So I went back and got
board certification, a subspecialty from the American College of Lifestyle Medicine,essentially using allopathic medication.
Well, allopathic means just our typical, like if you were to go to a doctor and getmedication, so using evidence-based there, but in conjunction with six pillars of health.
(19:10):
So how we sleep, how we stress, how we eat, how we move, cessation of risky substances inour community, because we know, for example,
There are studies that have been done that show if somebody is moving their body, that canhelp improve their depression the same, if not more than medications.
(19:34):
Now, I always want to put a big asterisk towards that.
I prescribe medications.
Medications are life-saving.
This is not to demonize medications.
It's to highlight how important it is that we need more tools because medications aren'tperfect and
They also have side effects and not everybody feels 100%.
So, you know, thinking about using all the tools that we have available, we see peoplereally thrive and that's so important.
(20:01):
So I've worked inpatient in the hospital for the University of Utah and outpatient and Igot this, I was working inpatient in the hospital.
I love that job, probably would have never left that job, but I got this incredibleopportunity to become
a master trainer for iFit.
It's the company that makes Nordic track.
(20:21):
Essentially it meant that I got to travel all over the world um and write the mentalhealth uh programming for workouts.
So think if you were on your treadmill or if you were on a rower, there would be maybe anOlympic athlete talking about mental health and I wrote all the back end.
And then I was there when we were running on a trail in Greece.
(20:44):
Like I lived in Greece for a month.
Wow.
That sounds like a really cool job.
Yeah.
That's crazy.
Probably the only thing that would have taken me from the U.
And it was fun.
It was amazing.
But post-pandemic fitness, connected fitness, really took a nosedive.
And so unfortunately, I was part of a rift there.
(21:06):
And um they laid off the majority of their workforce.
So that job evaporated.
But I don't know.
always think when something ends, something better begins.
And that really happened because that's how I got my job at GBS.
And I thought, gosh, this is such an amazing space because prevention is so close to myheart, thinking about what can we be doing in the workplace?
(21:33):
What is the research saying?
How can I help people that spend 40, 50, 60 hours a week at work?
That's way more time than I can spend with somebody in clinic helping leadership.
And then you increase
everybody's happiness, including employers who get better outcomes, thinking about medicalplan spend.
(21:54):
And there's just all of these things that really we have a lot of impact on, but I don'tthink maybe we realize it or it feels overwhelming.
So I've been at GBS for three years.
I still work one day in clinic, you know, to keep my skills and stay relative.
And I love still practicing medicine.
(22:15):
But the marriage of these two,
has just been such a fantastic opportunity.
That's awesome.
I've worked with a number of people over the years em who are, you know, they have likeadministrative kind of clinical type jobs, like when I was at Aetna, but many of them
would still go back and make sure like there was a chief medical officer that I workedwith with one of the joint venture health plan, joint venture health plans, and he would
(22:41):
work one weekend a month in the ER because he said it kept him um like in like on thefront lines, right?
Like so that he wasn't making decisions.
in this vacuum of like no longer knowing what was happening actually out there in theworld and not making decisions on behalf of the health plan that was like impacting so
(23:01):
many lives and not being able to speak from like that firsthand experience.
I, so I love that when I hear that you're, you know, you're still out there and actuallystill practicing.
So I think that's so important.
And as people change and the world kind of evolves and I don't know, people's needs changeand you know oh how they want to get.
access to mental health or what does that look like, right?
(23:24):
Exactly, at GBS, so to answer that specific question, that's been really fun because Ikind of got to create part of this role.
There was a psychiatrist that was working part-time but doing a lot of the, we do thesebeautiful clinical insight reports, which we have a pharmacist that has their own, then we
have our medical director does their own, and then for me, I have one that I'll sit downonce a year with our clients and we can see.
(23:51):
overall picture of what mental health spend has been.
anxiety, depression, ADHD, bipolar, substance use disorder, and dive deep into each ofthose.
So I do that now, but also just big picture advising.
So policies, procedures, outside solutions, third party vendors, and then I do a lot oftraining.
(24:17):
So I train mental health first aid,
I'm also certified to train vital cog, which is suicide prevention in the workplace.
And then I have my whole list of seminars, which are like how we sleep impacts our mentalhealth and fueling your brain with the food you eat and community.
know community people that are disconnected or higher rates of mental health also stroke,heart attack, diabetes.
(24:42):
um So that is so fun for me to go into the workplace and deliver these either in person orwebinars.
or train leadership in mental health first aid, because it just brings so much awarenessand so many people are like, I had no idea that if I wasn't sleeping seven to eight hours
a night, this whole, there's all of these negative outcomes from that.
(25:04):
So what does that mean in the workplace?
People don't have a good work-life balance, you know?
That's impacting your bottom line.
Can you expound a little on the concept of mental health first aid?
Thank Jeremy.
knew you were going to ask and I was hoping.
I feel like I might kind of know what that means, but I would love to hear what you haveto say about that.
(25:25):
Yeah, that's a great question.
So we have CPR, right?
If somebody were to become unconscious, we train people in first aid, CPR, what that lookslike.
But historically, really, we haven't talked about mental health crisis or somebody with aworsening mental health condition.
(25:46):
Mental Health First Aid is an organization that has a training and somebody has to becomecertified to do it.
But essentially, the training is a full day training.
It's not for clinicians, this is for leadership, employees, it's for anybody in the publicreally could take it.
How to recognize common mental health conditions, how to speak to them, how toappropriately give people recommendations.
(26:13):
So they talk about self-care.
So everything from sleep to groups to community, all the things that we talked about, andthen professional resources.
It's not to train somebody to be a clinician.
I always say this to anybody that comes to my training.
This isn't getting a new job.
You don't have to manage this at your workplace.
It's just recognize that feeling comfortable speaking to it and giving them appropriateresources.
(26:39):
That's cool.
I've been a taxi driver for 15 years.
I feel like I should take that class.
That doesn't make sense.
I get people in some states sometimes, let me tell you.
I can only imagine.
Yeah, that's true though.
Uber and Lyft.
Yeah, that's what they call it now.
I've been doing it so long.
I still call myself a taxi driver.
(27:01):
I still spent more years in a taxi than I have with an Uber sticker on my windshield.
professional driver over here and maybe part-time therapist.
oh That's so funny.
Okay.
Thank you for explaining that.
(27:21):
That's interesting.
if, if, like, so if a client of GBS has the desire for something like this, they wouldbring you on site to conduct this kind of training.
Yeah, so I can do it in person or virtual.
Is this normal?
It's just like the CPR classes, but mental health first aid.
(27:45):
It makes a lot of sense, actually.
I've never heard of this before and I've worked for a lot of different companies.
I'm like, is this pretty standard or is this something pretty special?
Sounds new.
Sounds like a new thing.
Yeah.
Yeah, I will say, and I mean, I'm not biased because I love GBS, which I do.
(28:05):
But they really have kind of gone above and beyond at looking at what is needed in theworkplace.
And that's really how I have my job because so many people were talking about mentalhealth in the workplace.
They knew that there was a space that needed to be filled.
so I work along with our wellness team.
(28:25):
So wellness in the workplace has
has been around for a long time.
But there was a specific need for mental health.
So that was really fun because I got to kind of create my job.
I got to look at all the evidence that was out there.
What are people doing?
We're seeing more more research being done.
And also talk to employers.
(28:46):
What are they struggling with?
What don't they know how to handle?
That has been eye opening because the thing that I hear overall from HR is,
You know, I was used to going over the policy for our leave or our dental benefits.
And now I have people coming into my office telling me about domestic violence or suicidethoughts that they have.
(29:13):
And I'm not, I don't just say I'm not equipped to do that, to work with that.
What do I do?
And so this has just been something that I hear.
I mean, it's not uncommon now.
It's one of the...
the most common things that I hear is that we need more support, more people are askingfor mental health in the workplace.
I think generationally, it's changing a lot as well.
(29:36):
When you think about the arc of people that are working, like the happiness arc, people,as long as they were born in well-adjusted, happy households, you're usually doing pretty
good cooking along with your happiness level until you hit about...
the end of college, starting a job, getting a house payment, having some kids, we seepeople become really stressed and anxious and their happiness levels go down.
(30:03):
But then it gets better as people go into retirement and kids are leaving the house andyou have some more security.
And then you see it gets better when you retire and kids are doing their own thing.
Not that people aren't happy with young kids, it's just stress, right?
A new mortgage is stress.
starting out in your career.
(30:25):
And so that's really interesting because that's the bulk of when people are working aswell.
So I always say this is my first time being human.
I'm doing the best that I can.
And I think for everybody else that's until we are perfect, we need to address brainhealth.
Everybody has a brain.
We worry about heart.
(30:46):
We worry about lungs.
We got to worry about our brain.
Yeah.
I was going to ask you like, what, what has changed?
And you kind of started speaking to that.
It's a generational thing, right?
Like as a, you know, even your, you know, well, we've got Jen alpha is my youngest.
And then we've got what Jen Z, which I think is my oldest.
(31:07):
I'm still trying to remember all the names and then millennials.
we've got, I'm sorry.
Who'd I skip?
I do.
I know.
I know it's weird.
I never understand how that
I don't know either.
But um all I know is that I'm Gen X and we're the best generation.
Yeah, we're also like kind of to the point of this conversation is that Gen X have alwaysbeen, you know, very like, I can handle this, right?
(31:37):
Like independent, you know, we were the latchkey kids, like, I don't need any help.
I've got this right.
And like, we've been kind of bringing up our, you know, in our lives, right?
Like,
I've got this all handled.
I feel like this shift, at least generationally for Gen X Gen Xers like myself has beenvery inspired quite honestly.
(31:59):
And maybe this is just me by the openness and the desire of millennials, which many I amfriends with.
They are my younger cousins.
They are my neighbors.
They are even my friends.
And I feel like, well, they've like made it okay because they've made this whole mentalhealth thing.
maybe more than any generation.
And maybe like all the ones that come behind them are going to be even like more elevated.
(32:23):
But I feel like millennials were kind of the ones that opened the door and said, you knowwhat, screw this.
Like, let's take care of ourselves.
And I'm listening.
so is that like, am I, is that just my story or do you kind of see that actually playingout in the universe?
Yeah, this is so, this is again, I mean, I think my whole background being in in socialwork is just so interesting to hear this story, because what you just said is something
(32:51):
I've heard over and over again, from HR and leadership.
Because very much, I mean, I think about my grandparents, I could give my grandma like,some twigs and rocks from outside, and she would make the best homemade bread.
I mean, this is like depression era.
Silent Generation.
Yeah, that's my mom.
Yeah.
(33:12):
Exactly.
And then same thing, my, you know, my dad's like, pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
I mean, I got bucked off by a horse literally and had to get back on.
It was very different mindset.
And so a lot of times people will say to me, it just because we're talking about it more?
Well, I think there's nothing in a vacuum, right?
(33:33):
Everything's multifactorial.
And, and I think that there are a lot of
different challenges that we didn't have a decade, two decades ago.
mean, thinking about social media for young minds, that has completely changed, you know,our brains and we could table that for a second.
(33:54):
being a kid, right?
Like a young person.
And then to have social media layer on top.
Yeah, I can't even.
It's it hurts to think about it.
My space didn't happen until I was in college.
I can't even imagine the stuff we got away with, man.
Right?
No, I know no videos
(34:14):
we did like we wouldn't have done half the stuff we did if social media was a thing.
It's crazy to think about.
man.
We know from the research, if children spend more than two hours and thinking children,adolescents spend more than two hours on social media, they're at 50 % increased risk for
(34:35):
depression.
know females, their brains are disproportionately impacted.
It seems like self-esteem, thoughts, know, exactly that.
I love comparison.
That's already heightened for,
women even higher we see.
(34:57):
And so that's just a portion, let alone feeling left out or not included.
I mean, I say this all the time.
I'm so thankful I didn't have social media growing up as a kid.
So we see those changes, you know, and those people are coming into the workforce, thoseteenagers, young adults, but then also how they communicate.
We also have the pandemic.
(35:17):
Remember where everybody was separated.
And think about this, if you have somebody
who now is in their early 20s, but they were in high school when the pandemic, like theirjunior and senior year, think about how much you grew in just socialization skills in your
junior and senior year that were completely lost.
You didn't get that.
(35:39):
I mean, we don't even know what that implication is going to be.
So you have somebody that's in leadership trying to talk to somebody that maybe has notdeveloped some of these skills, also has a brain that texts.
when we text, we have time to edit our thoughts, right?
Like you can think about what you're saying versus having this conversation and I have tohave this with my leader and think on the spot and I don't get a chance to edit that.
(36:03):
That can be very anxiety provoking.
Things that we were all used to doing, like that just wasn't something we dealt with.
And then you think about like all the other things when we're thinking about the changingmental health landscape is
You have two people really that have to work in the house.
Before you usually had one parent that could stay home.
That was more typical.
You need two incomes now.
(36:25):
That puts on a different strain.
Not that that's bad, but it's just different strain that you have.
More difficult to buy a house.
There's just a lot of change, which makes sense.
So you have a generation that's more open to talk about it.
And then many things are different than they were a decade to a decade, definitely.
(36:45):
three, four ago.
So it's kind of not surprising, right?
No.
Yeah, I was just going to say, too, like you were talking about, like, you know, teenagersthat are now entering the workforce or, you know, early 20s, whatever.
And what COVID did like I saw with my own son, you know, 16, he was in sixth grade duringlike the main COVID year.
(37:07):
And then when everybody went back to school for like seventh and eighth grade, like therewas some serious social delays, like they didn't know they legit like did not know how.
to interact with each other, uh particularly boys and girls, right?
And so I actually even noticed that the kind of the boy and girl interaction was likesignificantly delayed, I would say even to like high school, whereas like normally in
(37:32):
middle school, you see a lot of that kind of with the hormones and all the things, but itwas like they had to like relearn how to act with one another.
That was really interesting to see too at that age.
And just to see like, and you can,
The impact of that, doesn't, it's not fixed overnight.
(37:53):
It's a crazy butterfly effect where it compounds on itself in so many ways that it's hardto even measure the depth of the change that that caused in a whole generation of people.
Literally a whole generation of people.
And then to think about how, you know, what are they like going into this next, you know,stage of their life of being in the workforce?
(38:15):
And, you know, the longer I've been in my career, the more younger people I've worked withbecause I'm becoming a much smaller portion of the pie chart in terms of like, know, when
you look at like the age demographics and stuff.
so you really do, it's either you kind of, you have to evolve and it is,
(38:35):
A thing for me, it's listening to them.
getting some of my cues from them, from these younger people on how I should be kind ofgoing about, you know, because dealing with a bunch of Gen Xers and probably boomers, you
know, right?
Like we would all be like the bootstrap people and be like, we'll figure it out.
(38:56):
Right.
Like, you know, there's like no sensitivity whatsoever.
eh
started a podcast.
That's very millennial.
That's a very millennial thing to do.
Thank you.
So here we are talking about mental health in the workplace.
What do you think?
I want to ask a question about like what you've seen change.
(39:18):
I know you've only been with the GBS for three years, but you've been a therapist.
You've been in other roles.
How em have companies kind of gotten on board with things?
are there certain industries that are better at understanding and like supporting mentalhealth for their employees than others?
Are some of them just kind of completely missed the mark and are just like old school?
(39:40):
Like I know that there are like certain industries that are just a little behind thetimes, right?
Like they're not the first adopters we'll say.
Exactly.
Yes.
The tech world is more forward thinking, I would say, when you're looking at top.
(40:00):
I would say municipalities and schools, they really want to be, they're really challengedbecause their budgets are so challenged and people are quite overworked in those
industries.
But I also think they see a lot of suffering.
And so, and we see that too in the data.
I mean,
teachers are just struggling so much.
(40:25):
So most certainly.
then it can, I mean, so you can see differing between industries, thinking about firstresponders as well.
But then it's really, this is why I always like circle back to who's in the leadership,what is their messaging, you know, how are they speaking to employees?
(40:47):
Because
you could have maybe an industry that would typically be more forward thinking, but theirleadership is very much not there yet.
um Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
I worked really hard.
You should too.
And I just think that's fine.
You can have that attitude, but you're hurting yourself because this isn't made upanymore.
(41:09):
I mean, you can go to the CDC.
You can go
I mean, we have our outgoing surgeon general had a whole report on mental health in theworkplace.
Down the line through all of these research institutions, the World Health Organization,all can tell you this is what happens when you don't address people's mental health.
You have more turnover, more workplace accidents.
(41:32):
So I've been working with one of our groups.
They're very forward thinking.
They work in an industry that safety is number one.
thinking about transportation, um dealing with substances that can be toxic.
They wanna make sure that people's brains are doing well because that means somebody candie if they're overwhelmed, fall asleep, getting, not having um proper care for their
(42:02):
brain.
So it just really depends who's sitting at the top of that and making the call.
and do they see that it impacts their bottom line?
Like I was saying, presenteeism, safety, their medical claims, substance use in theworkplace, people may be showing up, but they're not actually doing work, turnover, it's
(42:25):
all impacted.
Yeah, it's definitely out there.
Yeah, it's amazing how much it just, you you spend, I think you even said it, you youspend 40, 50, some 60 hours a week um at a job.
Like you need to be happy and productive and feel good about where you're at and howmiserable of a life is it for somebody to put that much time into a job and not feel, you
(42:51):
know, and not feel good, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, I just this present.
sorry.
Sorry, I didn't mean to cut in there, but it's like you said before, we've heard multipletimes in our mental health episodes about the construction industry.
And you think about that life, those guys get injured all the time.
They probably have a lot of pain issues, which what gets them on the opioids to beginwith.
(43:13):
And we all know where that leads.
But there's also like so much of construction is they send you somewhere for two months tobuild something.
And you're living in a hotel room, you're away from your family and friends.
All you have is your crew.
And if you don't like them, you know what I mean?
Like, and you're probably not eating good food and you're probably not doing anything butwork and you go to work and you go eat dinner and you go to sleep and you get up and you
(43:38):
go to work and good, you know, and I can see how that industry would be a place thatcreates that kind of mental health.
It's almost like, like it's, it's endemic in the industry with the way the industry worksin a lot of ways.
So, I mean, it's, it's good that there's people actually focusing on the, you know,
who actually needs this the most.
(44:01):
I like that that keeps coming up.
I just wanted to get that in there.
I think you're 100 % spot on.
okay, what can in that specific situation, right, those people leaders that are there withthose crews, what can they do?
how can we get them moving, not just going to the hotel room, maybe eating this high fattymeal, drinking, and then going to sleep?
(44:26):
Okay, let's get people moving.
What kind of activities can we do together?
We know that community and movement is amazing for our brain, really, so serotonin anddopamine.
I mean, there's all of these things that we could talk about.
And this is what I tell employers, it's not that your job can't get done, it's that youjust have to make opportunity for healthy behaviors and support.
(44:48):
within that.
Yeah.
So I want to kind of wrap up this conversation.
It's been really great.
And I would love for you to maybe leave us with a word of advice.
And that is, if you could tell every employer about mental health in the workplace, how dothese programs improve their employees' And even for the employees, right, that might have
(45:14):
access to these benefits that their employers are offering to them, which
By the way, I need to do a better job of taking advantage of my own benefits everywherethat I've been.
Yeah, I'm a big offender of that as well.
So I get it.
um What would you tell them?
Like, what would be your piece of advice?
Like, what would you leave everybody with regarding mental health benefits, behavioralhealth programs that are available?
(45:40):
Yeah, absolutely.
I would say don't get overwhelmed.
There's a lot that you can do and that can be very overwhelming.
And what happens when we get in those situations, we just end up not doing anything.
take like a little internal temperature.
What are you noticing specifically in your industry?
(46:02):
Where can you reach out for support?
This is not meant for one person to take this all on.
And this is also something I talk to HR leadership about all the time is, I have afull-time job that's already taking all my time.
How do I take on all these initiatives?
So what resources are out there?
And just what is one small step?
(46:22):
This is what I tell not only like an employer, but also just us as individual.
We all have things that we wanna attain, but
We just have to take that, like what is one small step to start building that wall?
I mean, you think about a brick wall that didn't get built overnight.
It was literally one brick at a time.
(46:43):
So think about this as maybe your brick wall of protection, not a barrier.
And what's one small thing.
And I'm happy to send you, I have a workplace toolkit for mental health in the workplace.
I'm happy to send that to you if anybody would like to use that.
It's a free resource.
And essentially it can show you by category like an EAP or policies and procedures ortraining and leadership what that looks like.
(47:12):
And if that would be helpful for somebody, I'm happy to share that.
Some of the resources may be specific to GBS, but in general, it's just a resource uh alsonot specific to GBS.
Okay, great.
Yeah, that'd be awesome.
Yeah, I think the main message is like start somewhere, right?
(47:36):
No matter if you're an employer looking at new benefits or if you're the employee who hasaccess to the benefits and you're listening, um start somewhere, right?
And there's something out there, hopefully, right?
um There's usually something out there that you can access to help.
And it does seem to be that we all,
(47:56):
can benefit from some kind of mental health support in some way or another.
um I'm here for it.
I need to do a better job of myself.
Although I have to say though, I'm excited.
We're doing a series on like holistic health and wellbeing.
um I've started doing uh breath work um and sound therapy.
(48:18):
um We are bringing people on the show to talk about that.
Breath work, by the way, is one of
the best things that I have ever done.
um Talk about meditation.
Like if everybody could just do some breathing, like somatic breath work or whatever, anyof that stuff.
when we come full circle like that.
(48:41):
I would, so one, just one, like you don't know what you don't know and to put an asteriskon what you just said, there was a study done where they took people who had never
meditated before.
They had them meditate for 20, I think it's 26 minutes, maybe 26, 27 minutes a day foreight weeks.
Think about that.
(49:01):
That's two short months.
I mean, tomorrow it's gonna be Christmas.
We know that.
Like I'm waiting to go to the store and Christmas trees be out.
Meditate every day.
They took imaging of their brain before and after to the structure in your brain where wehave anxiety, fear, that grew smaller.
And the part of our brain where we have empathy, introspection, mammary grew bigger ineight weeks of just breathing.
(49:30):
Wow.
I don't have any medicine that...
Yeah, I mean that is just amazing.
I'd love if we could, I'd love if we could get you back on to do an entire meditationepisode.
said you had a whole hour thing on that.
I would, I would love to hear that.
Not to put you on the hook or anything, but.
you
(49:50):
I'm here for it.
I love to spread the good word.
Well, this has been really um enlightening.
Again, you know, uh really appreciate you coming on and talking about all the work thatyou do in this space.
And I hope that everyone listening is paying attention because, yeah, this stuff isn'tgoing away.
It's only going to, I think, increase in terms of the need and the desire, right, fromlike both ends, right, from the employers and both the employees.
(50:17):
But it's really finding the thing that works for you.
So a lot of options.
So.
Yeah.
Well, thank you so much.
We appreciate you coming on today.
This has been a great conversation.
Thanks so much.
(50:37):
And there you go, our conversation with Catherine Van Tassel from GBS.
Very cool stuff.
But I'll pass it to you first, Heather.
What's our main takeaways from that?
Well, I'm encouraged quite honestly that um it seems that the, you know, I guess desirefor uh programs around mental health, behavioral health type of stuff, whether it be in
(51:02):
the, you know, the employer space, employer benefit space or not is just growing.
There seems to be, there's an acknowledged demand and need for it.
And so,
people like Catherine and her roles are really important and advising their clients whoare employers um and getting the right programs and the right products because another
(51:28):
really interesting takeaway, which wasn't a big surprise to me because I've worked inhealthcare and employee benefits for many years.
uh Every industry is different.
They have different needs, know, like hospitality versus construction versus like anengineering firm, you know, and
Therefore, they have different mental health needs that show up in different ways throughthe types of products and the programs and the apps and the things, m
(51:57):
thousand of them a year.
That was an overwhelming piece for me was there's so many of these products, programs andnew ones coming out all the time.
She said a thousand of them a year.
That's crazy.
I mean, being able to find somebody who can filter that for you is, I feel like that'sdefinitely a really helpful thing.
(52:17):
Yeah.
Yeah.
That alone actually, that was an interesting piece of data that she shared.
So, but that, think that also means though, that there's a lot of people that are, youknow, interested and realize we need we, the collective we, the real we, we need, we need
(52:38):
something.
So it's, I think it's, it's good for, it's good for us.
You know, there's a lot of people thinking about it.
So.
The one thing that struck me in that conversation was, uh, she said that after COVID therewas actually a big pullback in funding for, know, this, this mental health stuff that, uh,
I made a note, what did I say?
(52:59):
Uh, oh yeah.
The, the, uh, mental health through fitness aspect that she was working on with all theblack biometric wearables and stuff that that space she was in.
And then after COVID, she said there was a huge pullback in that space and a lot of
jobs dried up and I'm like, shouldn't that have been the other way around?
Like, didn't we need more mental health through fitness after COVID than we did before?
(53:23):
We reacted in some bad ways to that whole thing.
Yeah.
The Nordic track, Nordic track and all that.
Yeah.
That, that, was the one thing that was said in the episode that I didn't like get, didn'tthink to respond to in real time was.
Yeah.
Yeah.
If we see her again, I got to remember to ask about it.
(53:43):
the fact that.
You know, if we ever needed a mental health through fitness regime in America, it wasafter COVID and that's when they pulled back on it.
That, that was a little counteractive to me, but it's good to see that, you know, peoplelike this with companies like this are still out there trying to make it happen.
Yeah, yeah, I think so.
know, the employers have a lot of opportunity, um especially the bigger they are becausethey have big populations of employees and therefore you can make you can make a big
(54:14):
impact.
So that's a lot of people's lives.
So, yep.
I mean, other than that, like, let's just keep this mental health conversation going.
I love that we're really starting to dig into this topic from a lot of different anglesagain.
So we got a few more of these coming up on the schedule too, which is cool.
So if you want to keep following us through this, mental health journey and maybe, youknow, help make us all a little better in the end, make sure to hit all those happy little
(54:40):
fun buttons with the likes and subscribes and shares or whatever it may be on whateverplatform you're watching or listening on.
We are on all the major audio platforms.
We're on YouTube.
If you want to see us on video, we also have video on our Patreon at patreon.com slashhealthcare uprising, where you can.
monetarily help the uprising exist.
ah I'm going to be honest, we don't offer a lot of extra stuff on there.
(55:03):
It's really just if you want to throw us some money, join the Patreon.
I'm just going to be honest on that.
But what else we got to tell them here, Heather?
You can find us online at healthcare uprising dot com, but mostly on social media is wherewe are active.
We're on LinkedIn.
We are on Facebook, Instagram and blue sky.
So we post up there a lot.
Anytime our episodes are dropping and resharing a lot of the posts from people andorganizations that come on the show.
(55:29):
It's a really great place to kind of keep in, keep in in touch with what's happening inhealth care industry.
um Let's see.
We are always looking.
for people to come on the show.
If you have a new product or your healthcare startup founder and you're looking for aplace to talk about the good you're doing in the world or if you're a human, I mean, we're
(55:52):
all humans, but um if you're a regular like human on the street and you have a story aboutyour journey through some kind of healthcare experience, good or bad or otherwise and
everything in between, we would love to hear from you.
love for you to be part of our human story series.
So reach out to us at healthcareuprising.gmail.com.
(56:17):
Give us a shout and we'll set up some time to chat.
Other than that, I think this is your final dose of, what do I say?
have completed this week's doves.
I need some mental health therapy quick.
I could use a little myself.
So keep looking for the good in the world.
(56:38):
Sometimes it's where you least expect it.
(57:36):
This has been a Shut Up
All right, hello Health Heads.
Welcome and thank you for checking in to this dose of the healthcare uprising.
I'm your producer in the back, Jeremy Carr, here with your host in the front row, HeatherPierce.
So let's tell them what's on the agenda for today.
Today we have with us Katherine Van Tassel, who is currently the Director of BehavioralHealth Consulting at GBS Benefits, which is out of Salt Lake City, and who I had the
(00:38):
pleasure of working with for several years.
She's been with them just over three years.
But her background expands into...
Let's see, she is a licensed clinical social worker.
She is an American College of Lifestyle Medicine diplomat and an NASM certified personaltrainer.
So she has been around the uh clinical world quite a bit.
(01:02):
um Behavioral health is kind of her thing, mental health, all of that kind of stuff.
And with GBS, what she does is uh works with their clients.
who um are interested in bringing on mental health and behavioral health type programs andproducts for their employees and consults on them.
cool.
Yeah, she consults on that.
yeah.
All right.
(01:23):
I don't think we've done a mental health one in a little while.
So it'd be good to get back into that space here.
And never from this perspective.
Okay, cool.
Well, let's get into it.
Without further ado, here's our conversation with Catherine Van Tassel from GBS.
(01:44):
Hi, and welcome to the Healthcare Uprising podcast.
Today we have with us Katherine Van Tassel, the Director of Behavioral Health Consultingwith GBS.
Welcome to the show, Katherine.
Thanks for having me.
Great.
So Catherine is our uh resident expert on behavioral health, mental health um in the uhbenefits space.
(02:05):
So GBS is essentially a brokerage.
uh And Catherine and I got connected through a previous employer of mine, Levitt Group,who GBS is a part of.
So thanks, Haley, for connecting me and me and Catherine and having you on the show.
uh And so today we're going to just quickly kind of high level cover
(02:27):
some of the things around mental health benefits, behavioral health programs, et cetera,that employers offer.
um And that's really where Katherine's expertise sits.
So with that, what can you tell us as it comes to employers, since that's really whereyou're focused?
Why do we need them?
How has it changed?
What's improved?
(02:48):
Really, what are some of the best ones you've seen on the market?
So just kind of high level to really get.
um
to get a good idea of kind of the purpose of them and what they aim to achieve and how dothey benefit people.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think a good way to look at it is all the opportunities that an employer may have intheir workplace to address mental health.
(03:11):
And really nice because when you look at that way, there are low cost, lower loadstrategies that you can take, and then also integrating with a mental health solution,
like a paid program, a third party vendor.
And high level there, I always say
one of the best things that you can do just initially is starting with the top down,meaning that C-suite, HR, leadership, anyone that's in a people leader position is trained
(03:42):
in some sort of mental health, like leadership training.
So think mental health first aid and also suicide prevention.
We really have to think about suicide as well in the workplace, because there are manyfactors in the workplace that
can lead to suicidal ideation.
And um of course, it's not something we want to have happen.
(04:05):
So we can do trainings for leadership, people leaders, whatever our policies look like.
Internally, what is our access to mental health?
So whether that's through the medical plan or then these mental health solutions thatyou're asking about specifically.
So there are many on the market.
And actually during
(04:25):
Right around the end of the pandemic, maybe last quarter or last third to the end, I hadbeen talking to somebody in that space and they said about a thousand mental health
solutions will come onto the market each year for employers.
And I thought, how overwhelming is that for an employer?
(04:47):
Like, where do you even start if there are that many different options out there?
It's really difficult.
So
That's really great when somebody works with their broker or somebody that's in that spaceto help delineate, like, what is a good option for me?
Like, what is our industry?
We know construction struggles with opioid use disorder, substance use disorder, mentalhealth, suicide.
(05:14):
When you think about entertainment industry or hospitality, very high rates of substanceuse disorder.
That would be, oh okay, we wanna get a solution that has a good, carve out would be maybea word to use, but has a good internal solution wrapped up to do assessments for substance
(05:37):
use disorder and then appropriate resources.
So just thinking about a couple of options out there to give concrete examples.
We have solutions like Spring Health and...
Headspace actually teamed up with Ginger, which was a program that came out at MIT.
Ginger?
(05:58):
Yeah.
Oh.
Yeah, see?
There's a thousand.
There's so many and I thought I'd yeah
Yeah.
And like CureLink, um Uliance, I could go on and on and on.
But essentially, if you want the Cliff Notes version, or just kind of like the cheat sheetof what you want to be looking for, think about how quickly do people access care?
(06:24):
What is the way people access care?
So can they do it through an app?
Can they do it on a desktop?
Can they speak to somebody?
Do that online?
Are they able to filter through different um therapists?
Because somebody might wanna see a male and not a female.
Somebody maybe want to see somebody with their ethnic background.
(06:46):
Maybe they need to see them in the morning, in the evening.
Essentially we know people with mental health conditions get better as long as we reducethe barriers into getting help and then we don't have long wait times.
So, okay.
How do people access care?
Who are the people that are gonna be treating them?
Do we have good access and quick access to care?
(07:09):
m Is there some functional ability for people to choose a therapist and if it's not a goodfit, get a new therapist?
And then subspecialty.
What does this industry look like?
What are the special needs that we have?
And then does that platform support them?
Yeah, every industry, like all industries are not made the same, right?
(07:29):
So I feel like this comes up to Jeremy.
This is probably like ringing some bells.
Like we've talked about this and even mentioned like construction and hospitality.
We've done a series on ketamine therapy with a company called Enthia.
Actually, Haley also connected me with them in doing ketamine therapy.
Highly prevalent industries like construction.
They're getting in with like labor unions.
(07:50):
So like and not all mental health apps and programs are
the same, right?
So they kind of can have niche uh focus areas, I would imagine.
I mean, I don't know all the ins and outs, but.
That's just a thousand a year.
how do you keep up with that?
Like how do you know?
Like what works for who?
And like that's, it almost seems like too much abundance going on there.
(08:15):
Yeah, yeah, I mean that's my full-time job.
You're like, keep on coming without those products.
You'll keep me employed.
That's a never ending work.
That's good job security.
Your job's never going to go away if they keep coming out with a thousand new things foryou to check out every year.
Yeah.
The that I have to say about them is not all of them are good.
(08:36):
And I think all of them have good intention, I believe that.
But I think some of them try to be a little bit too niche.
And the problem with being too niche is that if you bring in this product, then it's onlygoing to speak to a fraction of your workplace.
So
I like solutions that have clinical and subclinical skills.
(09:00):
So this may be another little tip when you're looking at a mental health solution is,okay, we talked about therapy, high level what you're looking for, but do they also have
support for everybody in the workplace?
Thinking, meditations, uh maybe movement opportunities.
(09:21):
So like you can go and do a 30 minute.
m chair yoga, or even cardio, know, again, speaking to everybody there.
Do they have self-guided DBT or CBT exercises, sleep stories, thinking about all thesedifferent things that you can help um also in the way that we live our life.
(09:42):
How are we eating?
How are we moving?
How are we stressing our community?
Having support there, and many of the good ones do.
Do you think, and so there's a lot of stuff out there and maybe this is thinking more interms of like use of these types of programs from your perspective, has there been a
(10:03):
growing increase in the utilization of them by the employees?
Like the employers make the decision, find you the right programs and whatnot, theyimplement them into place, make you know they offer them to their people.
Are you seeing a higher utilization?
we
Do people just not know what to do sometimes?
I feel like a lot of people are confused about what their benefits are, about like, how doI use it?
(10:27):
Is this actually for me?
Or there's like apprehension or fear.
Do you see that a lot?
You know, that's such a great question because there's so many factors within that.
I mean, just one is how is the employer speaking to their employees about it and likeconstantly reminding them.
(10:48):
And this is something I always talk to employers about is you have to remember how thebrain operates.
So essentially when we become stressed, overwhelmed, burned out, or have an untreatedmental health condition, two parts of our brain down-regulate.
We go into that stressed flight or flight or freeze response.
(11:10):
And our frontal lobe where we make good executive thinking, that's not working as well.
And also in the back of our brain, our hippocampus, that's where we retain memory.
That also kind of goes to sleep while we're in this stressed uh state.
So the employer may have said,
a million times, hey, we have this EAP or we have spring or headspace or you name it.
(11:36):
But at that moment, it's just like, it's gone.
Like there's nobody there in that part of the brain to bring that back.
So the more times you talk about it, this is when I talk about having mental healthchampions, having a mental health slack or teams channel, having constant reminders is
really helpful.
The other part in coming back to when I was saying,
(11:59):
talking about training leadership or having these mental health champions that have takenmental health first aid and can recognize common signs of mental health or stress or
burnout, they can almost be this proxy frontal lobe.
Hey, you seem really, really stressed.
Have you called ex solution?
Because everything's really overwhelming.
(12:20):
I mean, just think about if you've been under slept and overworked and have too manythings to do.
It's like one small thing that would normally be no big deal.
would just be completely overwhelming or just like, cannot do one more thing.
So that person can be like, hey, let's just call and make an appointment for you to get inand talk to somebody.
(12:40):
So thinking about having these types of initiatives, groups, plans, special interestgroups within the workplace, this all can help drive utilization because we know with like
a basic EAP, maybe think about a free EAP through disability.
we are getting like one to 4%.
(13:00):
But if you have a more robust, then we see like 10, 14, maybe 20.
And then again, we see that's industry specific as well.
Hmm.
That's I've I've used DAP before, but there's been, you know,
EAP.
Oh.
What is EAP?
(13:23):
do you want it?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Just uh to spell it out for those of us.
Assistance Program.
employee assistance program.
Yeah, like every benefit it changes right like I've had it typical I feel like six freesessions um And at least in the past that was like in person, but now I'm sure it again I
(13:45):
haven't used the AP in a long time.
I probably could have used it quite honestly now I'm thinking shoot somebody should reallyencourage me to get some therapy and also I should probably encourage my people You know
that are on my team and I love that actually is that's such a great leadership tiphonestly um
for me as a manager of people to because I do have a full time job.
(14:08):
uh Yeah, the podcast isn't, you know, is my moneymaker, uh but it is my joy maker.
That's my therapy.
I hang out with Jeremy and talk to really cool people.
It is, but like that's such a great idea, though.
(14:28):
for me to think about, like, I should be more aware as a people manager what our benefitsare.
So if I see somebody on my team, like stressing out, because I can tell you, my boss hasdefinitely seen me, like, you know, hitting a wall.
And if somebody had said, you know, you should maybe think about, you know, doing this orlike we have the Calm app, like, maybe go take a minute and, you know, sometimes you need
(14:56):
that push from the person
that you report to because then it's validating, right?
Like they're saying it's okay.
And meditation in the workplace, you did mention that and now you mentioned it again, I'llbring it up too.
Meditation in the workplace can be a wonderful thing and really bring down those stresslevels and enhance the cooperation amongst coworkers and all kinds of stuff.
(15:20):
It can do wonderful things.
Yeah.
Great.
Yeah!
This is where education becomes so critical.
Like how are we getting this messaging across?
Not even that we have this resource, but also what happens to your brain when youmeditate?
I mean, I have an hour presentation on that.
literally don't have time to go into that, but thinking about, okay, if I'm an employer, Iwant somebody to not be again in this fight, flight or freeze.
(15:49):
I want them to not have foggy thinking or distracted or difficulty with concentration,which happens when we're in that.
response and we know meditation you're thinking about in minutes like if you were to dobox breathing which they teach Navy SEALs you go into that relaxed state you're more
focused you can think clearly be more productive if it were me I would want to give thatto all my employees but you don't know what you don't know right I mean a lot of people
(16:19):
are how am I gonna buy groceries this week and pay my bills and I don't have somebody towatch my kids or you know
mean, there's so much going on for people that we have to be there to help them as well.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's em I like.
I like this message of well, one, we have to do a better job of being conscientious aboutwhat kind of plans, what kind of benefits, what kind of programs that we have available,
(16:46):
like as individuals um and then the employees themselves, right, have to reallycommunicate that out, like remind people.
I love the idea of the Slack channel, like a mental health Slack channel um and then justkind of the ownership as a people manager.
to ensure that your people are like remembering that they have access to this sort ofthing.
(17:06):
Because if we're all, if we're all breathing a little bit easier, right?
And, and doing meditation and that sort of thing uh or getting therapy, whatever thatlooks like, then we're more productive.
We're happier people, both at home, at work, you know, all the places.
(17:26):
love that.
So,
I'm going to kind of move into kind of our second part of this discussion here.
This is my official segue for the record.
ah Because I think we've really kind of set up the what are we here to talk about?
Right.
Today is really about what do you do on behalf of GBS and in terms of mental health andbehavior health benefits, working with employers, consulting with them to say this is
(17:59):
what I think makes sense for you, right?
Like based on the industry, based on, I'm sure there's a lot of factors, but you obviouslyhave a lot of clinical expertise in this space and you and I have chatted a little bit
before.
So I have a little bit of your background, but like what actually brought you into thisrole?
Like what was kind of that pathway for you and that kind of clinical expertise that youbring to making these kinds of, um I guess, recommendations.
(18:24):
Absolutely.
So it's a bit of a long story.
So we're going to shorten it so nobody falls asleep during your podcast.
uh But the abbreviated story, so my background, I'm a licensed clinical social worker anda physician assistant.
And I love mental health.
I've been in mental health for more than 20 years now.
(18:44):
uh But what I love the most is preventative health care through lifestyle.
So I went back and got
board certification, a subspecialty from the American College of Lifestyle Medicine,essentially using allopathic medication.
Well, allopathic means just our typical, like if you were to go to a doctor and getmedication, so using evidence-based there, but in conjunction with six pillars of health.
(19:10):
So how we sleep, how we stress, how we eat, how we move, cessation of risky substances inour community, because we know, for example,
There are studies that have been done that show if somebody is moving their body, that canhelp improve their depression the same, if not more than medications.
(19:34):
Now, I always want to put a big asterisk towards that.
I prescribe medications.
Medications are life-saving.
This is not to demonize medications.
It's to highlight how important it is that we need more tools because medications aren'tperfect and
They also have side effects and not everybody feels 100%.
So, you know, thinking about using all the tools that we have available, we see peoplereally thrive and that's so important.
(20:01):
So I've worked inpatient in the hospital for the University of Utah and outpatient and Igot this, I was working inpatient in the hospital.
I love that job, probably would have never left that job, but I got this incredibleopportunity to become
a master trainer for iFit.
It's the company that makes Nordic track.
(20:21):
Essentially it meant that I got to travel all over the world um and write the mentalhealth uh programming for workouts.
So think if you were on your treadmill or if you were on a rower, there would be maybe anOlympic athlete talking about mental health and I wrote all the back end.
And then I was there when we were running on a trail in Greece.
(20:44):
Like I lived in Greece for a month.
Wow.
That sounds like a really cool job.
Yeah.
That's crazy.
Probably the only thing that would have taken me from the U.
And it was fun.
It was amazing.
But post-pandemic fitness, connected fitness, really took a nosedive.
And so unfortunately, I was part of a rift there.
(21:06):
And um they laid off the majority of their workforce.
So that job evaporated.
But I don't know.
always think when something ends, something better begins.
And that really happened because that's how I got my job at GBS.
And I thought, gosh, this is such an amazing space because prevention is so close to myheart, thinking about what can we be doing in the workplace?
(21:33):
What is the research saying?
How can I help people that spend 40, 50, 60 hours a week at work?
That's way more time than I can spend with somebody in clinic helping leadership.
And then you increase
everybody's happiness, including employers who get better outcomes, thinking about medicalplan spend.
(21:54):
And there's just all of these things that really we have a lot of impact on, but I don'tthink maybe we realize it or it feels overwhelming.
So I've been at GBS for three years.
I still work one day in clinic, you know, to keep my skills and stay relative.
And I love still practicing medicine.
(22:15):
But the marriage of these two,
has just been such a fantastic opportunity.
That's awesome.
I've worked with a number of people over the years em who are, you know, they have likeadministrative kind of clinical type jobs, like when I was at Aetna, but many of them
would still go back and make sure like there was a chief medical officer that I workedwith with one of the joint venture health plan, joint venture health plans, and he would
(22:41):
work one weekend a month in the ER because he said it kept him um like in like on thefront lines, right?
Like so that he wasn't making decisions.
in this vacuum of like no longer knowing what was happening actually out there in theworld and not making decisions on behalf of the health plan that was like impacting so
(23:01):
many lives and not being able to speak from like that firsthand experience.
I, so I love that when I hear that you're, you know, you're still out there and actuallystill practicing.
So I think that's so important.
And as people change and the world kind of evolves and I don't know, people's needs changeand you know oh how they want to get.
access to mental health or what does that look like, right?
(23:24):
Exactly, at GBS, so to answer that specific question, that's been really fun because Ikind of got to create part of this role.
There was a psychiatrist that was working part-time but doing a lot of the, we do thesebeautiful clinical insight reports, which we have a pharmacist that has their own, then we
have our medical director does their own, and then for me, I have one that I'll sit downonce a year with our clients and we can see.
(23:51):
overall picture of what mental health spend has been.
anxiety, depression, ADHD, bipolar, substance use disorder, and dive deep into each ofthose.
So I do that now, but also just big picture advising.
So policies, procedures, outside solutions, third party vendors, and then I do a lot oftraining.
(24:17):
So I train mental health first aid,
I'm also certified to train vital cog, which is suicide prevention in the workplace.
And then I have my whole list of seminars, which are like how we sleep impacts our mentalhealth and fueling your brain with the food you eat and community.
know community people that are disconnected or higher rates of mental health also stroke,heart attack, diabetes.
(24:42):
um So that is so fun for me to go into the workplace and deliver these either in person orwebinars.
or train leadership in mental health first aid, because it just brings so much awarenessand so many people are like, I had no idea that if I wasn't sleeping seven to eight hours
a night, this whole, there's all of these negative outcomes from that.
(25:04):
So what does that mean in the workplace?
People don't have a good work-life balance, you know?
That's impacting your bottom line.
Can you expound a little on the concept of mental health first aid?
Thank Jeremy.
knew you were going to ask and I was hoping.
I feel like I might kind of know what that means, but I would love to hear what you haveto say about that.
(25:25):
Yeah, that's a great question.
So we have CPR, right?
If somebody were to become unconscious, we train people in first aid, CPR, what that lookslike.
But historically, really, we haven't talked about mental health crisis or somebody with aworsening mental health condition.
(25:46):
Mental Health First Aid is an organization that has a training and somebody has to becomecertified to do it.
But essentially, the training is a full day training.
It's not for clinicians, this is for leadership, employees, it's for anybody in the publicreally could take it.
How to recognize common mental health conditions, how to speak to them, how toappropriately give people recommendations.
(26:13):
So they talk about self-care.
So everything from sleep to groups to community, all the things that we talked about, andthen professional resources.
It's not to train somebody to be a clinician.
I always say this to anybody that comes to my training.
This isn't getting a new job.
You don't have to manage this at your workplace.
It's just recognize that feeling comfortable speaking to it and giving them appropriateresources.
(26:39):
That's cool.
I've been a taxi driver for 15 years.
I feel like I should take that class.
That doesn't make sense.
I get people in some states sometimes, let me tell you.
I can only imagine.
Yeah, that's true though.
Uber and Lyft.
Yeah, that's what they call it now.
I've been doing it so long.
I still call myself a taxi driver.
(27:01):
I still spent more years in a taxi than I have with an Uber sticker on my windshield.
professional driver over here and maybe part-time therapist.
oh That's so funny.
Okay.
Thank you for explaining that.
(27:21):
That's interesting.
if, if, like, so if a client of GBS has the desire for something like this, they wouldbring you on site to conduct this kind of training.
Yeah, so I can do it in person or virtual.
Is this normal?
It's just like the CPR classes, but mental health first aid.
(27:45):
It makes a lot of sense, actually.
I've never heard of this before and I've worked for a lot of different companies.
I'm like, is this pretty standard or is this something pretty special?
Sounds new.
Sounds like a new thing.
Yeah.
Yeah, I will say, and I mean, I'm not biased because I love GBS, which I do.
(28:05):
But they really have kind of gone above and beyond at looking at what is needed in theworkplace.
And that's really how I have my job because so many people were talking about mentalhealth in the workplace.
They knew that there was a space that needed to be filled.
so I work along with our wellness team.
(28:25):
So wellness in the workplace has
has been around for a long time.
But there was a specific need for mental health.
So that was really fun because I got to kind of create my job.
I got to look at all the evidence that was out there.
What are people doing?
We're seeing more more research being done.
And also talk to employers.
(28:46):
What are they struggling with?
What don't they know how to handle?
That has been eye opening because the thing that I hear overall from HR is,
You know, I was used to going over the policy for our leave or our dental benefits.
And now I have people coming into my office telling me about domestic violence or suicidethoughts that they have.
(29:13):
And I'm not, I don't just say I'm not equipped to do that, to work with that.
What do I do?
And so this has just been something that I hear.
I mean, it's not uncommon now.
It's one of the...
the most common things that I hear is that we need more support, more people are askingfor mental health in the workplace.
I think generationally, it's changing a lot as well.
(29:36):
When you think about the arc of people that are working, like the happiness arc, people,as long as they were born in well-adjusted, happy households, you're usually doing pretty
good cooking along with your happiness level until you hit about...
the end of college, starting a job, getting a house payment, having some kids, we seepeople become really stressed and anxious and their happiness levels go down.
(30:03):
But then it gets better as people go into retirement and kids are leaving the house andyou have some more security.
And then you see it gets better when you retire and kids are doing their own thing.
Not that people aren't happy with young kids, it's just stress, right?
A new mortgage is stress.
starting out in your career.
(30:25):
And so that's really interesting because that's the bulk of when people are working aswell.
So I always say this is my first time being human.
I'm doing the best that I can.
And I think for everybody else that's until we are perfect, we need to address brainhealth.
Everybody has a brain.
We worry about heart.
(30:46):
We worry about lungs.
We got to worry about our brain.
Yeah.
I was going to ask you like, what, what has changed?
And you kind of started speaking to that.
It's a generational thing, right?
Like as a, you know, even your, you know, well, we've got Jen alpha is my youngest.
And then we've got what Jen Z, which I think is my oldest.
(31:07):
I'm still trying to remember all the names and then millennials.
we've got, I'm sorry.
Who'd I skip?
I do.
I know.
I know it's weird.
I never understand how that
I don't know either.
But um all I know is that I'm Gen X and we're the best generation.
Yeah, we're also like kind of to the point of this conversation is that Gen X have alwaysbeen, you know, very like, I can handle this, right?
(31:37):
Like independent, you know, we were the latchkey kids, like, I don't need any help.
I've got this right.
And like, we've been kind of bringing up our, you know, in our lives, right?
Like,
I've got this all handled.
I feel like this shift, at least generationally for Gen X Gen Xers like myself has beenvery inspired quite honestly.
(31:59):
And maybe this is just me by the openness and the desire of millennials, which many I amfriends with.
They are my younger cousins.
They are my neighbors.
They are even my friends.
And I feel like, well, they've like made it okay because they've made this whole mentalhealth thing.
maybe more than any generation.
And maybe like all the ones that come behind them are going to be even like more elevated.
(32:23):
But I feel like millennials were kind of the ones that opened the door and said, you knowwhat, screw this.
Like, let's take care of ourselves.
And I'm listening.
so is that like, am I, is that just my story or do you kind of see that actually playingout in the universe?
Yeah, this is so, this is again, I mean, I think my whole background being in in socialwork is just so interesting to hear this story, because what you just said is something
(32:51):
I've heard over and over again, from HR and leadership.
Because very much, I mean, I think about my grandparents, I could give my grandma like,some twigs and rocks from outside, and she would make the best homemade bread.
I mean, this is like depression era.
Silent Generation.
Yeah, that's my mom.
Yeah.
(33:12):
Exactly.
And then same thing, my, you know, my dad's like, pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
I mean, I got bucked off by a horse literally and had to get back on.
It was very different mindset.
And so a lot of times people will say to me, it just because we're talking about it more?
Well, I think there's nothing in a vacuum, right?
(33:33):
Everything's multifactorial.
And, and I think that there are a lot of
different challenges that we didn't have a decade, two decades ago.
mean, thinking about social media for young minds, that has completely changed, you know,our brains and we could table that for a second.
(33:54):
being a kid, right?
Like a young person.
And then to have social media layer on top.
Yeah, I can't even.
It's it hurts to think about it.
My space didn't happen until I was in college.
I can't even imagine the stuff we got away with, man.
Right?
No, I know no videos
(34:14):
we did like we wouldn't have done half the stuff we did if social media was a thing.
It's crazy to think about.
man.
We know from the research, if children spend more than two hours and thinking children,adolescents spend more than two hours on social media, they're at 50 % increased risk for
(34:35):
depression.
know females, their brains are disproportionately impacted.
It seems like self-esteem, thoughts, know, exactly that.
I love comparison.
That's already heightened for,
women even higher we see.
(34:57):
And so that's just a portion, let alone feeling left out or not included.
I mean, I say this all the time.
I'm so thankful I didn't have social media growing up as a kid.
So we see those changes, you know, and those people are coming into the workforce, thoseteenagers, young adults, but then also how they communicate.
We also have the pandemic.
(35:17):
Remember where everybody was separated.
And think about this, if you have somebody
who now is in their early 20s, but they were in high school when the pandemic, like theirjunior and senior year, think about how much you grew in just socialization skills in your
junior and senior year that were completely lost.
You didn't get that.
(35:39):
I mean, we don't even know what that implication is going to be.
So you have somebody that's in leadership trying to talk to somebody that maybe has notdeveloped some of these skills, also has a brain that texts.
when we text, we have time to edit our thoughts, right?
Like you can think about what you're saying versus having this conversation and I have tohave this with my leader and think on the spot and I don't get a chance to edit that.
(36:03):
That can be very anxiety provoking.
Things that we were all used to doing, like that just wasn't something we dealt with.
And then you think about like all the other things when we're thinking about the changingmental health landscape is
You have two people really that have to work in the house.
Before you usually had one parent that could stay home.
That was more typical.
You need two incomes now.
(36:25):
That puts on a different strain.
Not that that's bad, but it's just different strain that you have.
More difficult to buy a house.
There's just a lot of change, which makes sense.
So you have a generation that's more open to talk about it.
And then many things are different than they were a decade to a decade, definitely.
(36:45):
three, four ago.
So it's kind of not surprising, right?
No.
Yeah, I was just going to say, too, like you were talking about, like, you know, teenagersthat are now entering the workforce or, you know, early 20s, whatever.
And what COVID did like I saw with my own son, you know, 16, he was in sixth grade duringlike the main COVID year.
(37:07):
And then when everybody went back to school for like seventh and eighth grade, like therewas some serious social delays, like they didn't know they legit like did not know how.
to interact with each other, uh particularly boys and girls, right?
And so I actually even noticed that the kind of the boy and girl interaction was likesignificantly delayed, I would say even to like high school, whereas like normally in
(37:32):
middle school, you see a lot of that kind of with the hormones and all the things, but itwas like they had to like relearn how to act with one another.
That was really interesting to see too at that age.
And just to see like, and you can,
The impact of that, doesn't, it's not fixed overnight.
(37:53):
It's a crazy butterfly effect where it compounds on itself in so many ways that it's hardto even measure the depth of the change that that caused in a whole generation of people.
Literally a whole generation of people.
And then to think about how, you know, what are they like going into this next, you know,stage of their life of being in the workforce?
(38:15):
And, you know, the longer I've been in my career, the more younger people I've worked withbecause I'm becoming a much smaller portion of the pie chart in terms of like, know, when
you look at like the age demographics and stuff.
so you really do, it's either you kind of, you have to evolve and it is,
(38:35):
A thing for me, it's listening to them.
getting some of my cues from them, from these younger people on how I should be kind ofgoing about, you know, because dealing with a bunch of Gen Xers and probably boomers, you
know, right?
Like we would all be like the bootstrap people and be like, we'll figure it out.
(38:56):
Right.
Like, you know, there's like no sensitivity whatsoever.
eh
started a podcast.
That's very millennial.
That's a very millennial thing to do.
Thank you.
So here we are talking about mental health in the workplace.
What do you think?
I want to ask a question about like what you've seen change.
(39:18):
I know you've only been with the GBS for three years, but you've been a therapist.
You've been in other roles.
How em have companies kind of gotten on board with things?
are there certain industries that are better at understanding and like supporting mentalhealth for their employees than others?
Are some of them just kind of completely missed the mark and are just like old school?
(39:40):
Like I know that there are like certain industries that are just a little behind thetimes, right?
Like they're not the first adopters we'll say.
Exactly.
Yes.
The tech world is more forward thinking, I would say, when you're looking at top.
(40:00):
I would say municipalities and schools, they really want to be, they're really challengedbecause their budgets are so challenged and people are quite overworked in those
industries.
But I also think they see a lot of suffering.
And so, and we see that too in the data.
I mean,
teachers are just struggling so much.
(40:25):
So most certainly.
then it can, I mean, so you can see differing between industries, thinking about firstresponders as well.
But then it's really, this is why I always like circle back to who's in the leadership,what is their messaging, you know, how are they speaking to employees?
(40:47):
Because
you could have maybe an industry that would typically be more forward thinking, but theirleadership is very much not there yet.
um Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
I worked really hard.
You should too.
And I just think that's fine.
You can have that attitude, but you're hurting yourself because this isn't made upanymore.
(41:09):
I mean, you can go to the CDC.
You can go
I mean, we have our outgoing surgeon general had a whole report on mental health in theworkplace.
Down the line through all of these research institutions, the World Health Organization,all can tell you this is what happens when you don't address people's mental health.
You have more turnover, more workplace accidents.
(41:32):
So I've been working with one of our groups.
They're very forward thinking.
They work in an industry that safety is number one.
thinking about transportation, um dealing with substances that can be toxic.
They wanna make sure that people's brains are doing well because that means somebody candie if they're overwhelmed, fall asleep, getting, not having um proper care for their
(42:02):
brain.
So it just really depends who's sitting at the top of that and making the call.
and do they see that it impacts their bottom line?
Like I was saying, presenteeism, safety, their medical claims, substance use in theworkplace, people may be showing up, but they're not actually doing work, turnover, it's
(42:25):
all impacted.
Yeah, it's definitely out there.
Yeah, it's amazing how much it just, you you spend, I think you even said it, you youspend 40, 50, some 60 hours a week um at a job.
Like you need to be happy and productive and feel good about where you're at and howmiserable of a life is it for somebody to put that much time into a job and not feel, you
(42:51):
know, and not feel good, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, I just this present.
sorry.
Sorry, I didn't mean to cut in there, but it's like you said before, we've heard multipletimes in our mental health episodes about the construction industry.
And you think about that life, those guys get injured all the time.
They probably have a lot of pain issues, which what gets them on the opioids to beginwith.
(43:13):
And we all know where that leads.
But there's also like so much of construction is they send you somewhere for two months tobuild something.
And you're living in a hotel room, you're away from your family and friends.
All you have is your crew.
And if you don't like them, you know what I mean?
Like, and you're probably not eating good food and you're probably not doing anything butwork and you go to work and you go eat dinner and you go to sleep and you get up and you
(43:38):
go to work and good, you know, and I can see how that industry would be a place thatcreates that kind of mental health.
It's almost like, like it's, it's endemic in the industry with the way the industry worksin a lot of ways.
So, I mean, it's, it's good that there's people actually focusing on the, you know,
who actually needs this the most.
(44:01):
I like that that keeps coming up.
I just wanted to get that in there.
I think you're 100 % spot on.
okay, what can in that specific situation, right, those people leaders that are there withthose crews, what can they do?
how can we get them moving, not just going to the hotel room, maybe eating this high fattymeal, drinking, and then going to sleep?
(44:26):
Okay, let's get people moving.
What kind of activities can we do together?
We know that community and movement is amazing for our brain, really, so serotonin anddopamine.
I mean, there's all of these things that we could talk about.
And this is what I tell employers, it's not that your job can't get done, it's that youjust have to make opportunity for healthy behaviors and support.
(44:48):
within that.
Yeah.
So I want to kind of wrap up this conversation.
It's been really great.
And I would love for you to maybe leave us with a word of advice.
And that is, if you could tell every employer about mental health in the workplace, how dothese programs improve their employees' And even for the employees, right, that might have
(45:14):
access to these benefits that their employers are offering to them, which
By the way, I need to do a better job of taking advantage of my own benefits everywherethat I've been.
Yeah, I'm a big offender of that as well.
So I get it.
um What would you tell them?
Like, what would be your piece of advice?
Like, what would you leave everybody with regarding mental health benefits, behavioralhealth programs that are available?
(45:40):
Yeah, absolutely.
I would say don't get overwhelmed.
There's a lot that you can do and that can be very overwhelming.
And what happens when we get in those situations, we just end up not doing anything.
take like a little internal temperature.
What are you noticing specifically in your industry?
(46:02):
Where can you reach out for support?
This is not meant for one person to take this all on.
And this is also something I talk to HR leadership about all the time is, I have afull-time job that's already taking all my time.
How do I take on all these initiatives?
So what resources are out there?
And just what is one small step?
(46:22):
This is what I tell not only like an employer, but also just us as individual.
We all have things that we wanna attain, but
We just have to take that, like what is one small step to start building that wall?
I mean, you think about a brick wall that didn't get built overnight.
It was literally one brick at a time.
(46:43):
So think about this as maybe your brick wall of protection, not a barrier.
And what's one small thing.
And I'm happy to send you, I have a workplace toolkit for mental health in the workplace.
I'm happy to send that to you if anybody would like to use that.
It's a free resource.
And essentially it can show you by category like an EAP or policies and procedures ortraining and leadership what that looks like.
(47:12):
And if that would be helpful for somebody, I'm happy to share that.
Some of the resources may be specific to GBS, but in general, it's just a resource uh alsonot specific to GBS.
Okay, great.
Yeah, that'd be awesome.
Yeah, I think the main message is like start somewhere, right?
(47:36):
No matter if you're an employer looking at new benefits or if you're the employee who hasaccess to the benefits and you're listening, um start somewhere, right?
And there's something out there, hopefully, right?
um There's usually something out there that you can access to help.
And it does seem to be that we all,
(47:56):
can benefit from some kind of mental health support in some way or another.
um I'm here for it.
I need to do a better job of myself.
Although I have to say though, I'm excited.
We're doing a series on like holistic health and wellbeing.
um I've started doing uh breath work um and sound therapy.
(48:18):
um We are bringing people on the show to talk about that.
Breath work, by the way, is one of
the best things that I have ever done.
um Talk about meditation.
Like if everybody could just do some breathing, like somatic breath work or whatever, anyof that stuff.
when we come full circle like that.
(48:41):
I would, so one, just one, like you don't know what you don't know and to put an asteriskon what you just said, there was a study done where they took people who had never
meditated before.
They had them meditate for 20, I think it's 26 minutes, maybe 26, 27 minutes a day foreight weeks.
Think about that.
(49:01):
That's two short months.
I mean, tomorrow it's gonna be Christmas.
We know that.
Like I'm waiting to go to the store and Christmas trees be out.
Meditate every day.
They took imaging of their brain before and after to the structure in your brain where wehave anxiety, fear, that grew smaller.
And the part of our brain where we have empathy, introspection, mammary grew bigger ineight weeks of just breathing.
(49:30):
Wow.
I don't have any medicine that...
Yeah, I mean that is just amazing.
I'd love if we could, I'd love if we could get you back on to do an entire meditationepisode.
said you had a whole hour thing on that.
I would, I would love to hear that.
Not to put you on the hook or anything, but.
you
(49:50):
I'm here for it.
I love to spread the good word.
Well, this has been really um enlightening.
Again, you know, uh really appreciate you coming on and talking about all the work thatyou do in this space.
And I hope that everyone listening is paying attention because, yeah, this stuff isn'tgoing away.
It's only going to, I think, increase in terms of the need and the desire, right, fromlike both ends, right, from the employers and both the employees.
(50:17):
But it's really finding the thing that works for you.
So a lot of options.
So.
Yeah.
Well, thank you so much.
We appreciate you coming on today.
This has been a great conversation.
Thanks so much.
(50:37):
And there you go, our conversation with Catherine Van Tassel from GBS.
Very cool stuff.
But I'll pass it to you first, Heather.
What's our main takeaways from that?
Well, I'm encouraged quite honestly that um it seems that the, you know, I guess desirefor uh programs around mental health, behavioral health type of stuff, whether it be in
(51:02):
the, you know, the employer space, employer benefit space or not is just growing.
There seems to be, there's an acknowledged demand and need for it.
And so,
people like Catherine and her roles are really important and advising their clients whoare employers um and getting the right programs and the right products because another
(51:28):
really interesting takeaway, which wasn't a big surprise to me because I've worked inhealthcare and employee benefits for many years.
uh Every industry is different.
They have different needs, know, like hospitality versus construction versus like anengineering firm, you know, and
Therefore, they have different mental health needs that show up in different ways throughthe types of products and the programs and the apps and the things, m
(51:57):
thousand of them a year.
That was an overwhelming piece for me was there's so many of these products, programs andnew ones coming out all the time.
She said a thousand of them a year.
That's crazy.
I mean, being able to find somebody who can filter that for you is, I feel like that'sdefinitely a really helpful thing.
(52:17):
Yeah.
Yeah.
That alone actually, that was an interesting piece of data that she shared.
So, but that, think that also means though, that there's a lot of people that are, youknow, interested and realize we need we, the collective we, the real we, we need, we need
(52:38):
something.
So it's, I think it's, it's good for, it's good for us.
You know, there's a lot of people thinking about it.
So.
The one thing that struck me in that conversation was, uh, she said that after COVID therewas actually a big pullback in funding for, know, this, this mental health stuff that, uh,
I made a note, what did I say?
(52:59):
Uh, oh yeah.
The, the, uh, mental health through fitness aspect that she was working on with all theblack biometric wearables and stuff that that space she was in.
And then after COVID, she said there was a huge pullback in that space and a lot of
jobs dried up and I'm like, shouldn't that have been the other way around?
Like, didn't we need more mental health through fitness after COVID than we did before?
(53:23):
We reacted in some bad ways to that whole thing.
Yeah.
The Nordic track, Nordic track and all that.
Yeah.
That, that, was the one thing that was said in the episode that I didn't like get, didn'tthink to respond to in real time was.
Yeah.
Yeah.
If we see her again, I got to remember to ask about it.
(53:43):
the fact that.
You know, if we ever needed a mental health through fitness regime in America, it wasafter COVID and that's when they pulled back on it.
That, that was a little counteractive to me, but it's good to see that, you know, peoplelike this with companies like this are still out there trying to make it happen.
Yeah, yeah, I think so.
know, the employers have a lot of opportunity, um especially the bigger they are becausethey have big populations of employees and therefore you can make you can make a big
(54:14):
impact.
So that's a lot of people's lives.
So, yep.
I mean, other than that, like, let's just keep this mental health conversation going.
I love that we're really starting to dig into this topic from a lot of different anglesagain.
So we got a few more of these coming up on the schedule too, which is cool.
So if you want to keep following us through this, mental health journey and maybe, youknow, help make us all a little better in the end, make sure to hit all those happy little
(54:40):
fun buttons with the likes and subscribes and shares or whatever it may be on whateverplatform you're watching or listening on.
We are on all the major audio platforms.
We're on YouTube.
If you want to see us on video, we also have video on our Patreon at patreon.com slashhealthcare uprising, where you can.
monetarily help the uprising exist.
ah I'm going to be honest, we don't offer a lot of extra stuff on there.
(55:03):
It's really just if you want to throw us some money, join the Patreon.
I'm just going to be honest on that.
But what else we got to tell them here, Heather?
You can find us online at healthcare uprising dot com, but mostly on social media is wherewe are active.
We're on LinkedIn.
We are on Facebook, Instagram and blue sky.
So we post up there a lot.
Anytime our episodes are dropping and resharing a lot of the posts from people andorganizations that come on the show.
(55:29):
It's a really great place to kind of keep in, keep in in touch with what's happening inhealth care industry.
um Let's see.
We are always looking.
for people to come on the show.
If you have a new product or your healthcare startup founder and you're looking for aplace to talk about the good you're doing in the world or if you're a human, I mean, we're
(55:52):
all humans, but um if you're a regular like human on the street and you have a story aboutyour journey through some kind of healthcare experience, good or bad or otherwise and
everything in between, we would love to hear from you.
love for you to be part of our human story series.
So reach out to us at healthcareuprising.gmail.com.
(56:17):
Give us a shout and we'll set up some time to chat.
Other than that, I think this is your final dose of, what do I say?
have completed this week's doves.
I need some mental health therapy quick.
I could use a little myself.
So keep looking for the good in the world.
(56:38):
Sometimes it's where you least expect it.
(57:36):
This has been a Shut Up
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