May 24, 2023 • 23 mins
Welcome to Unbreakable! A mental health podcast hosted by Fox NFL Insider Jay Glazer. On today’s episode, Dr. James Polo, the Vice President & Chief Medical Officer at Carelon Behavioral Health joins Jay for an important discussion on mental health.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is Unbreakable with Jay Glacier, a mental health podcast
helping you out of the gray and into the blue.
Now here's Jay Glacier saving again.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Welcome back to Unbreakable, a mental health podcast with Jay Glazer.
And if you're like many people, you may be surprised
to learn that one in five adults in this country
experienced mental illness last year, yet far too many fell
to receive the support they need. Carolyn behavior Health is
doing something about it. They understand that behavior health is
a key part of whole hell, delivering compassionate care that
(00:37):
treats physical, mental, emotional, and social needs and tandem Carolin
behavioral health raising the quality of life through empathy and action.
So you heard me talk about Carolyn there, and they
are the title sponsor of this show. And I'm not
the type who just has a title sponsor and says, oh,
let's just take the money and that's that. Anybody we
(00:58):
do a sponsorship deal with, I'm going to make sure
I believe it. I want to make sure I really
understand what they're doing and that they can help me
or help the world. So in doing this deal with Carolyn,
we said, hey, let's have some people from Carolyn on
so we can understand really where they can help us,
what they actually do, but also where they could help us,
so you know where they're able to help all of us.
(01:19):
We're talking about the mental health approach here, but they
take a whole holistic approach or all body approach to
helping people. So with that, I'm going to bring in
their chief medical officer, doctor Jim Polo. How are you, Jim? Hey,
I'm doing well. Jay.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
How are you today?
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Good to him? Gray Man living the Drains. Just got
back from a little trip to Atlanta where I was
helping out working with some combat vets. I know you're
a combat vet as well, right, Yes, that's correct. Would
you serve and win? Wow? Well, I spent total of
twenty nine years in the Army. Wow. I deployed multiple times.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
Deployed in Bosnia in support of a customer crisis, I
deployed to Honduras during the Haiti crisis, and I also
deployed to Iraq for a full year in two thousand
and seven.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
My god, that's quite a career there. And you know,
I we're with a lot of you know, veterans transition,
a lot of them like you have a chief medical
officer here, you've done great. For a lot of them struggle.
They don't know how to use what they've done in
the military to have it to quate for their next
step in life. How are you able to do that? Yeah,
that's you know, that is so true.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
I got lucky. And let me tell what I mean
by that. I mean I spent my year, my career
in the Army as a physician, so obviously my skills
were easily translatable when I left the service. Now, it
doesn't mean I didn't like have difficulties leaving army, and
it didn't mean that I didn't have difficulties with some
of my experiences, but at least from an occupational perspective,
(02:44):
I knew where I was going to be going. But
we have many young veterans, many young soldiers that have
skills that are really critical for the army, but those
skills aren't necessarily translatable into the savingian world.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
It's tough or But here's the thing. I think a
lot of them, I think you can relate a lot
they just don't know how to, you know, So if
you've done some wild stuff overseas, no matter what you're
good in chaos. Right, if you have taking care of
your brother and your sister and your right or you left,
you're accountable. Right, if you know you show up on top,
(03:16):
you have structure. So there are a lot of skills
that are vets have. They just don't talk about it. Yet,
not only do you not know how to talk about it,
you're told not to talk about it. You're told to
keep it down right, don't say anything when everybody else
is lying on their resume. You guys go the other
way and really minimize it and don't talk about it
at all.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
You know, that's that attitude of want need to be
strong and really being able to handle anything and everything. Now,
i'd be honest to tell you that the you know,
the service leadership for all of the services, Army, Air, Force, Navy,
I mean, they're trying to combat that. They're trying to
really fight against that idea that everybody has to be
(03:56):
strong and you can never have a problem and you
cannot be defective. But that's still hard to get through
the folks because you know, when you're in the service,
people are counting on you for important stuff and you've
got to be strong to be able to handle that
and so sometimes when folks can't, they don't want to
come forward.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Well again, so now you're in a position where you
could really help people out and get people obviously talk
a lot about mental health and open up more about
mental health, which was again the opposite of what we're
talking about in the military of you know, keep it
in your dirt, you know, show it and look, I'm
to blame when I trade my fighters and football players. Man,
don't over show your hurt, don't never show you're tired.
And now me and talking about mental health, I'm like, no,
(04:36):
let's let's go complete one eddy or show it all
and you know, be as vulnerable as you can and
talk about The more we can talk about it, the
more it's going to help us. How hard was that
for you to kind of brask and wrap your head
out to change you approach things? And where are you
now with? Yeah? That that that was hard.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
You know, I'll tell you the story. I'll just tell
you a story that maybe I won't outline it a
lot better than.
Speaker 4 (04:59):
Me, you know, describing it.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
I spent most of two thousand and seven part of
two thousand and six in Iraq, and I was in
Mosul right near the air base where the hospital was,
and we were getting shelved for about four months.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Every day every other day.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
There might be two three days where we weren't getting shelled.
And luckily, the you know, the insertions that were shelling
us were really they were bad. They couldn't aim well,
they had you know, defective mortar, so it wasn't really
causing a lot of damage. But there was this constant
like booming in the background that was erratic. You never
(05:37):
know when it was going to come next, sometimes in
the middle of the night. One time we did have
a shelling that actually landed very near the hospital and
we had a couple of folks that were injured with shrap.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
No luckily no one died. Okay, Now I had a mission.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
Every day, I was focused on the work I needed
to do, you know, managing a hospital, you know, flying
all over the sector that I was in charge of.
That experience kind of just went into the background. When
I got back afterwards, I was irritable.
Speaker 4 (06:07):
I was frustrated.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
I would find myself wanting to do things quickly without
realizing why I wanted.
Speaker 4 (06:13):
To do them quickly.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
And one of the things that was most disturbing to
me was. I became very reactive to any loud noise,
slammed or a drop book, I would just like shake.
And I was in meetings where this would happen and
I would be like kind of embarrassed, okay, and it
wasn't going away, and I finally had to reach out
to somebody myself. I'm atrist. I had to reach out
(06:36):
to somebody and say, hey, I'm having some struggles here.
I'm not really sure what it is, and I don't
think I have PTSD because I'm too strong for that.
And truth be told, I don't think I had anything
that was major in terms of saying, oh, yeah, I'm
I've got PTSD and I'm unable to work. But I
was struggling for a long period of time, impacting my relationships,
particularly with my wife, and I really had to kind
(06:58):
of face it and deal with and first of all,
just accept the fact that I was as vulnerable as
anybody else. Didn't have anything to do with strength, didn't
have anything to do with knowledge. It's just that experience
that was overwhelming. And of course, as a commander on
the battlefield, I couldn't show that ever in front of
my soldiers, and so it came out afterwards.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
So, now, like I said, you're twenty nine years there
and now you're the chief medical officer here at Charlyn.
Tell me you guys do a whole person approach. We
talk a lot about mental health here, right, what's the
whole person mean?
Speaker 3 (07:33):
So the whole person really means looking at the individual
considering both their physical health and their emotional mental well
being all together. So I'll just give you a very
simple example.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Cancer.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
If you have cancer, you clearly have a physical disease
that is potentially going to hurt you. But I don't
know anybody with cancer that's not also afraid and worried
and anxious.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
About what the future holds for them.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
You got to be able to treat not only their cancer,
but you've got to be able to treat their anxiety
of dealing with cancer. That's the holistic approach. And if
you think about it, our emotions are tied to everything
we face in life, every medical condition, every struggle within relationship,
every problem that we run into with finances. I mean,
(08:20):
our emotions are never far away from where we are.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
So what do you guys do that's different than other companies.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Well, one of the first things that we're doing is
we're taking a holistic approach first of all, when we
consider how we look at the entire population. So how
do we think first in terms of helping build resilience. Okay,
what are the things that we can do to help
get people prepared for the fact that they might have
difficulties in life. What are the things that we can
do to screen early find people that are struggling, and
(08:47):
then when we do, how do we help them get
to treatment sooner rather than later. I'll tell you an
alarming statistic. You highlighted that one in five in the
country right now, you know struggle at some level with
some kind of a mental health problem or diagnosis. And
that doesn't mean that they're dysfunctional, and it doesn't mean
they can't work. It just means they're struggling and help
would help them. Here's another statistic for you. The average
(09:09):
delay for folks that have a serious mental illness to
diagnosis in this country.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
It's about ten years.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
And in fact, seventy percent of all people that have
a chronic mental illness it started in childhood.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Right, Yeah, absolutely, Childhood trauma's real and the effect that
we have as kids and if you're not abused or something.
Things happened more we're grown up. That affects us that
nowadays I think loost. I think nowadays those things affect
us more than they ever did. Hey, you know, with
social media out there, I just did a talk in
front of seventy five or seventy four more clinicians like
(09:44):
yourself than me. Okay, so I say, listen, everybody here
is qualified and talk about mental health. You're qualified talk
about it because you're schooling. I'm qualified to talk about
it because I suffer. So what the difference is a
lot of the school that everybody went through, they went
through it before the cell phones were thing and Instagram
and Facebook and TikTok and Twitter, and that has just
(10:06):
affected our mental health. It's such a huge, huge way.
Where have you seen. Look, we're saying one in five.
I think it's four and five. I think it's way
higher than that.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
You know, it's interesting the pandemic brought that out a
little bit. I mean, when we say one in five
twenty percent of the population suffers from some kind of
an emotional ongoing problem, that statistic actually is held for
a long time.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
You know, that's who admits it. The problem is that
people don't admit it. Correct.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
So what happened during the pandemic, and this was partly
done from the work from the Kaiser Family Foundation, fifty
percent of the individuals of adults were reporting struggling with
their emotions, struggling with their with their feelings, struggling with
what was going on, and they were validated in a
way that they were interviewed where that fifty percent was
(10:57):
technically potentially diagnosable, much higher than our traditional you know,
one in five. I think what's important to say is
that when folks are struggling, it doesn't mean they're crazy,
it doesn't mean they're dysfunctional. It means that they have
something that's weighing on them, that's affecting their day to
day existence.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
And I think in the past where you're able to
deal with that a lot better. You know, it wasn't
it wasn't kind of thrown in your face if you
weren't looking at everybody else and seeing their filtered fraction
of a second online having a thrown in your face
thinking man, I'm just not doing.
Speaker 5 (11:28):
Well enough compared to everybody else, sir, or the well
we see on Twitter. You know, so, Jay, you're pointing
out something that's really critical. And I worry about the
younger generations. I mean, their whole lives are on display.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
Yes, you know, you know, before social media took over,
and before you could have instant you know everything, instant messaging,
instant pictures, instant conversations, at least if you were struggling,
there was some semblance of you could control the audience
for that, so to speak, okay, And with social media
these days, it's all out there, right, And while social
(12:01):
connections can be positive through social media, it doesn't necessarily
mean that it doesn't have an impact sometimes when it doesn't.
Speaker 4 (12:08):
Go off of folks.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Also, in the past, if something you had a bad day,
you can go home and shake it off. There's no
going home and shaking it off anymore because everyone's at
your home on Twitter. We're on Instagram, right, So it's like,
you know, look, we got our butts checked in the playground.
Growing up, it sucked for a month, right, right, That
was terrible for a month, But now we're get our
butts tiered a thousand times a second. It's not getting
(12:30):
away from it.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
I think of young kids that are bullied at school
and then they got home and they're cyber bullied online.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Hell, I'm cyber bullied online, not just that. It's all
of us. Yeah, but you can handle it. I don't
know about that. Man, not so much. Hey, my wallet's
not an antidepressant. I get session of these things. So
here's the other thing. We're talking about. How many people
need this help. But dude talk, that's where we need
to help, like men, like, hey, we're talking about one
(12:58):
in five, and that's what people said it right. But
I was surprised when I wrote my book I'm Breakable.
I thought it's gonna be all the dudes are going
to get it because it was football and fighting Mitch
martial arts and ballarts and all that. But it was
like predominantly women because they are the vulnerable ones. They're
the ones all yeah, okay, I have this too. I
can use this for some help. I could use the
words he's given us as a guy to help my
(13:20):
husband or my son, or my kids or myself. Where
dudes still act like now, I don't need to.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
It's interesting because there are gender differences between.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Men and women.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
You know, men are socialized to believe they should be
strong and furthermore, they should be taking care of whatever
is in front of them. It's a lot harder sometimes
for men to admit I'm struggling, I'm not happy, I'm depressed.
That's a hard thing to really admit, not only to yourself,
but definitely to other people outside.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Yeah, look, listen. I don't know if I was shocked,
it probably was. But when I started opening up to
my friends about this by depression and anxiety, it's really
opening up, Like man, the beast, guy out of the box.
To night, I can't go to dinner. Every one of
my friends has joked aboard like, hey, we got you,
we got you. Like. It's made me closer for my friends,
not push them away, and nobody said oh stop Jay
(14:14):
enough like And that's probably been the biggest lesson I
can learn and also give to people like, no one's
gonna push you awhere. They want to help you. Give
us some lessons that you could be part of the
world there to help deal with their mental health.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
You know. One of the things that I think is
really important, and it relates to exactly what you you
just said. You've shared your story and people rallied around
you when we're struggling and we don't share it with
other people. We're struggling alone, We're suffering in silence. It's
tempting to believe that we're the only ones. Do you
talk to somebody, you share a little bit about what's
(14:47):
going on. First of all, they're there, they're with you,
they understand. More often than not, you find out you're
not the only one. Hey, I've struggled too. Hey I'm
struggling right now as well. And suddenly you don't feel
so alone and just unburdening yourself of getting some of
that stuff out there. It's not like you need a solution,
you just need somebody to understand and validate that. Yeah,
(15:10):
you're struggling, now, what can we do to help?
Speaker 4 (15:13):
Okay, so just.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Getting it out is the first step to being able
to get better. But that's the hardest step for all
of us.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Yeah. Absolutely. You guys also deal with a lot with
people who are going through sobistance abuse issues. Yes, has,
and it's always obviously been there. Do you see a
difference before and after COVID?
Speaker 6 (15:31):
Is it just so you know, it's very interesting studies
have been done about this. Anytime we have any kind
of a disaster, there's always an uptick of substance use.
And you know, one of the things about substance is
it's cheap and easy to get, in fact, during the pandemic,
delivered right to your door by you know, Amazon, So
you know what wit.
Speaker 7 (15:50):
You caed what I didn't know about that, So so
you know, the way I looked at it is, Remember,
when people are using substances of any kind where it's
problematic for them, they're usually doing it for one of
two reasons.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
They're feeling something that they don't want to feel, or
they're not feeling something that they do want to feel,
and that's what the substance does for them. Unfortunately, there's
a consequence if you misuse, you know, and there's a
consequence if he caet addicted. But typically what we see
after disasters is months down the line we see an
uptick of not only use, but if people that are
(16:25):
having significant difficulties with addiction.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Hey, and you guys provide services with that as well.
Speaker 4 (16:29):
Absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
In the field of behavioral health, that generally includes all
of those things that we refer to as mental health, depression, anxiety,
and so forth, and then all of those things related
to substance use.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
So you know the other reason I'm trying to do
this podcast to obviously help the world, help give words
to mental health, so we could have this conversation. You know,
we see mental health, but really who gives it words? Right?
We need to have the words to talk to our
friends and our therapists, and our our sons and daughters
and parents and coworkers and every But the other reason
I'm doing this is the suicide rate this country is
(17:04):
just alarming. Man, It's just not okay. We're recallinge right,
and it's it's almost this power suggestion now where everybody
and I think it happens in the military too, with
twenty two vets a day, childremseelves that it's just not okay.
People are in so much pain and then they see
somebody else kill themselves and they go, Wow, everybody's coming out.
They're loving Johnny, They're missing Johnny. Well, I'm in so
(17:25):
much pain. I want to get love too. I'm going
to do the same thing. And it's just become such
an an epidemic of I think, different proportions than it's
ever been.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
You have the second leading cause of death in young
in young Americans today. Really, well, the Inuicide is something
that's always been with us and we haven't always paid
attention to it. Suicide is, ultimately it's an escape, and
when people are suffering and they're not thinking well and
they just want to get a pain, sometimes death seems attractive,
(17:55):
and that's when they can sometimes lead to an event
that will lead to supside. And the challenge is it's
a very permanent solution, usually to a problem that really
isn't but you don't know that in the moment because
you're not really sinking clearly. So we've got to do
a better job of helping people off the edge so
that they're not at that crisis point where that seems
like the only alternative for them.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Yeah, it's really difficult. I have a guy named Kevin
Hines on this show who jumped off the Golden Gate
Bridge and survived. We said the moment I jumped, and
he said, there are other survivors. Every one of them
said the moment they jumped, they immediately regretted it. Yep.
There's no takebacks though, you know.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
And so I have never, ever, never had a patient
that attempted, and I've had many that have that have said,
oh I wish I would have succeeded.
Speaker 4 (18:44):
They've always had some semblance of regret.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
Ironically, I've had some that have tried a second time
later on and they've come back to say, Yeah, what
happened to me? I didn't get it the second time either.
Speaker 8 (18:53):
So we don't always know what's going on in the moment,
but we have to help create systems of care that
help get people away from those moments of impulsivity.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
I try and tell people, listen, you got to lean
into your teammates, whether that's your literal teammate or your
friend or family, because there's not enough therapists for us yet.
We all need therapists. And you know, like mental health
is so reactive. We usually go to a therapists when
the sky's fall and we need to start doing it.
Like physical health where man, you bench pressed all the time,
you run four days if you're not there all the time. Right,
(19:26):
you throw a jab all the time in the boxer,
and you know if you break your arm, you get
a cast on. Everybody signs it. You brag about those stars, right,
But mental health is only man. When the sky is falling,
we go to the therapists and I'm like we got
to do it constantly. But I don't know if there's
enough therapists yet. How much has power line chip go ahead?
Speaker 3 (19:43):
Yeah, Well, first of all, I just got to say,
there's a lot of wisdom in what you're saying. You know,
the reality is, when it comes to our physical bodies,
we recognize, hey, I got to build up, I got
to go through a little bit of pain so that
my body is stronger so I can you know, handle
whatever is in front of me. Is the same thing emotionally,
it's the same thing. There are ways that we can
build resilience, emotional resilience knowing full well you're.
Speaker 4 (20:06):
In a struggle with things.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
You know, the three most common things that people struggle
with a relationship problem, difficulties with money, or problems with
a job or not having a job. Right that, you
can almost bank on the fact that you're gonna have
one of those at some point, and maybe two or
three of them. So are there ways that we can
help people build resilience before they they have those problems,
so that they're able to withstand them a little bit
(20:29):
better and bounce back from them. Yes, I believe there
are ways, and technology is one of the ways.
Speaker 4 (20:34):
That we're moving in that direction.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
There's all kinds of apps, all kinds of solutions that
are coming to market by startup companies that are trying
to help folks really engage in taking care of themselves,
building resilience so they can just face the natural struggles
that face all of us every days.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
This is why I like partnering with you guys, because,
like I said, we need more therapies out there, we
need more people we're able to be there for those
who need the all, but not just when the sky's
fall right constantly and as you say, also, hey, if
something's going on physically with you to deal with between
the ears. And again I bring it back to sports
and just told these teams of all the time, and
they're trainers and coaches, listen, somebody in your and your
(21:12):
team is injured, they can't play that week. Don't just
say hey, hey, you doing they're just like really, they're
not doing good. They're not doing well at all. Between
the years, like really see how they're doing, like take
care and figure out you could build them up while
they're sitting on the sidelines, because it's lowly when the
physical part is hurting. So I'm proud to partner with
you guys in this and walk on this walk together
(21:34):
because man are, like I said, I'm trying to save lives.
I'm trying to get it to be okay for us
to talk about this. I'm trying to get it words.
But also I'm not the expert in this. I'm not
a therapist, I'm not a doctor. I'm just a dude
who's messed up, who's good with his messed upness, who
has a big mouth. So I'm proud to be parted
with what you guys were able to do and the
at least, you know, give people aware, aware to go.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
Yeah, And frankly, it's voices like yours that actually bring
it to life for everyday people. The ability to speak openly,
sharing your own difficulties without any kind of shame because
we all struggle.
Speaker 4 (22:12):
We all struggle, you know.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
I just give you a quick story prior to the
pandemic and now it's coming back. I used to have
lost speaking. I'd be in large audiences, you know where
I would be talking about behavioral health and I'd ask
the audience raise your hand if you have a mental
health problem.
Speaker 4 (22:29):
Nobody would raise their hand, and I.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
Would say, if you have a friend or somebody you
know that having a problem, raise your hand.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
All the hands will go up the friend right quota
with quote fession partser and okay, so all those people
that are struggling are not in the room.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
So no, it's just something about the fact that people
are afraid to kind of say, yeah, I struggle with this.
We don't have any problem telling somebody, yes, spreading my leg.
I'm gonna, you know, walk a little slower today, you know, absolutely, Doc, I.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
Really appreciate a your service. P you're joining today. You know,
I always say let's let's walk this walk together. And man,
there's a lot of room for us to walk this
walk together and help a lot of people together today.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
And we're gonna walk with you.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Thanks appreciating so much.
This is Unbreakable with Jay Glacier, a mental health podcast
helping you out of the gray and into the blue.
Now here's Jay Glacier saving again.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Welcome back to Unbreakable, a mental health podcast with Jay Glazer.
And if you're like many people, you may be surprised
to learn that one in five adults in this country
experienced mental illness last year, yet far too many fell
to receive the support they need. Carolyn behavior Health is
doing something about it. They understand that behavior health is
a key part of whole hell, delivering compassionate care that
(00:37):
treats physical, mental, emotional, and social needs and tandem Carolin
behavioral health raising the quality of life through empathy and action.
So you heard me talk about Carolyn there, and they
are the title sponsor of this show. And I'm not
the type who just has a title sponsor and says, oh,
let's just take the money and that's that. Anybody we
(00:58):
do a sponsorship deal with, I'm going to make sure
I believe it. I want to make sure I really
understand what they're doing and that they can help me
or help the world. So in doing this deal with Carolyn,
we said, hey, let's have some people from Carolyn on
so we can understand really where they can help us,
what they actually do, but also where they could help us,
so you know where they're able to help all of us.
(01:19):
We're talking about the mental health approach here, but they
take a whole holistic approach or all body approach to
helping people. So with that, I'm going to bring in
their chief medical officer, doctor Jim Polo. How are you, Jim? Hey,
I'm doing well. Jay.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
How are you today?
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Good to him? Gray Man living the Drains. Just got
back from a little trip to Atlanta where I was
helping out working with some combat vets. I know you're
a combat vet as well, right, Yes, that's correct. Would
you serve and win? Wow? Well, I spent total of
twenty nine years in the Army. Wow. I deployed multiple times.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
Deployed in Bosnia in support of a customer crisis, I
deployed to Honduras during the Haiti crisis, and I also
deployed to Iraq for a full year in two thousand
and seven.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
My god, that's quite a career there. And you know,
I we're with a lot of you know, veterans transition,
a lot of them like you have a chief medical
officer here, you've done great. For a lot of them struggle.
They don't know how to use what they've done in
the military to have it to quate for their next
step in life. How are you able to do that? Yeah,
that's you know, that is so true.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
I got lucky. And let me tell what I mean
by that. I mean I spent my year, my career
in the Army as a physician, so obviously my skills
were easily translatable when I left the service. Now, it
doesn't mean I didn't like have difficulties leaving army, and
it didn't mean that I didn't have difficulties with some
of my experiences, but at least from an occupational perspective,
(02:44):
I knew where I was going to be going. But
we have many young veterans, many young soldiers that have
skills that are really critical for the army, but those
skills aren't necessarily translatable into the savingian world.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
It's tough or But here's the thing. I think a
lot of them, I think you can relate a lot
they just don't know how to, you know, So if
you've done some wild stuff overseas, no matter what you're
good in chaos. Right, if you have taking care of
your brother and your sister and your right or you left,
you're accountable. Right, if you know you show up on top,
(03:16):
you have structure. So there are a lot of skills
that are vets have. They just don't talk about it. Yet,
not only do you not know how to talk about it,
you're told not to talk about it. You're told to
keep it down right, don't say anything when everybody else
is lying on their resume. You guys go the other
way and really minimize it and don't talk about it
at all.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
You know, that's that attitude of want need to be
strong and really being able to handle anything and everything. Now,
i'd be honest to tell you that the you know,
the service leadership for all of the services, Army, Air, Force, Navy,
I mean, they're trying to combat that. They're trying to
really fight against that idea that everybody has to be
(03:56):
strong and you can never have a problem and you
cannot be defective. But that's still hard to get through
the folks because you know, when you're in the service,
people are counting on you for important stuff and you've
got to be strong to be able to handle that
and so sometimes when folks can't, they don't want to
come forward.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Well again, so now you're in a position where you
could really help people out and get people obviously talk
a lot about mental health and open up more about
mental health, which was again the opposite of what we're
talking about in the military of you know, keep it
in your dirt, you know, show it and look, I'm
to blame when I trade my fighters and football players. Man,
don't over show your hurt, don't never show you're tired.
And now me and talking about mental health, I'm like, no,
(04:36):
let's let's go complete one eddy or show it all
and you know, be as vulnerable as you can and
talk about The more we can talk about it, the
more it's going to help us. How hard was that
for you to kind of brask and wrap your head
out to change you approach things? And where are you
now with? Yeah? That that that was hard.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
You know, I'll tell you the story. I'll just tell
you a story that maybe I won't outline it a
lot better than.
Speaker 4 (04:59):
Me, you know, describing it.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
I spent most of two thousand and seven part of
two thousand and six in Iraq, and I was in
Mosul right near the air base where the hospital was,
and we were getting shelved for about four months.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Every day every other day.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
There might be two three days where we weren't getting shelled.
And luckily, the you know, the insertions that were shelling
us were really they were bad. They couldn't aim well,
they had you know, defective mortar, so it wasn't really
causing a lot of damage. But there was this constant
like booming in the background that was erratic. You never
(05:37):
know when it was going to come next, sometimes in
the middle of the night. One time we did have
a shelling that actually landed very near the hospital and
we had a couple of folks that were injured with shrap.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
No luckily no one died. Okay, Now I had a mission.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
Every day, I was focused on the work I needed
to do, you know, managing a hospital, you know, flying
all over the sector that I was in charge of.
That experience kind of just went into the background. When
I got back afterwards, I was irritable.
Speaker 4 (06:07):
I was frustrated.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
I would find myself wanting to do things quickly without
realizing why I wanted.
Speaker 4 (06:13):
To do them quickly.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
And one of the things that was most disturbing to
me was. I became very reactive to any loud noise,
slammed or a drop book, I would just like shake.
And I was in meetings where this would happen and
I would be like kind of embarrassed, okay, and it
wasn't going away, and I finally had to reach out
to somebody myself. I'm atrist. I had to reach out
(06:36):
to somebody and say, hey, I'm having some struggles here.
I'm not really sure what it is, and I don't
think I have PTSD because I'm too strong for that.
And truth be told, I don't think I had anything
that was major in terms of saying, oh, yeah, I'm
I've got PTSD and I'm unable to work. But I
was struggling for a long period of time, impacting my relationships,
particularly with my wife, and I really had to kind
(06:58):
of face it and deal with and first of all,
just accept the fact that I was as vulnerable as
anybody else. Didn't have anything to do with strength, didn't
have anything to do with knowledge. It's just that experience
that was overwhelming. And of course, as a commander on
the battlefield, I couldn't show that ever in front of
my soldiers, and so it came out afterwards.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
So, now, like I said, you're twenty nine years there
and now you're the chief medical officer here at Charlyn.
Tell me you guys do a whole person approach. We
talk a lot about mental health here, right, what's the
whole person mean?
Speaker 3 (07:33):
So the whole person really means looking at the individual
considering both their physical health and their emotional mental well
being all together. So I'll just give you a very
simple example.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Cancer.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
If you have cancer, you clearly have a physical disease
that is potentially going to hurt you. But I don't
know anybody with cancer that's not also afraid and worried
and anxious.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
About what the future holds for them.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
You got to be able to treat not only their cancer,
but you've got to be able to treat their anxiety
of dealing with cancer. That's the holistic approach. And if
you think about it, our emotions are tied to everything
we face in life, every medical condition, every struggle within relationship,
every problem that we run into with finances. I mean,
(08:20):
our emotions are never far away from where we are.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
So what do you guys do that's different than other companies.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Well, one of the first things that we're doing is
we're taking a holistic approach first of all, when we
consider how we look at the entire population. So how
do we think first in terms of helping build resilience. Okay,
what are the things that we can do to help
get people prepared for the fact that they might have
difficulties in life. What are the things that we can
do to screen early find people that are struggling, and
(08:47):
then when we do, how do we help them get
to treatment sooner rather than later. I'll tell you an
alarming statistic. You highlighted that one in five in the
country right now, you know struggle at some level with
some kind of a mental health problem or diagnosis. And
that doesn't mean that they're dysfunctional, and it doesn't mean
they can't work. It just means they're struggling and help
would help them. Here's another statistic for you. The average
(09:09):
delay for folks that have a serious mental illness to
diagnosis in this country.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
It's about ten years.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
And in fact, seventy percent of all people that have
a chronic mental illness it started in childhood.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Right, Yeah, absolutely, Childhood trauma's real and the effect that
we have as kids and if you're not abused or something.
Things happened more we're grown up. That affects us that
nowadays I think loost. I think nowadays those things affect
us more than they ever did. Hey, you know, with
social media out there, I just did a talk in
front of seventy five or seventy four more clinicians like
(09:44):
yourself than me. Okay, so I say, listen, everybody here
is qualified and talk about mental health. You're qualified talk
about it because you're schooling. I'm qualified to talk about
it because I suffer. So what the difference is a
lot of the school that everybody went through, they went
through it before the cell phones were thing and Instagram
and Facebook and TikTok and Twitter, and that has just
(10:06):
affected our mental health. It's such a huge, huge way.
Where have you seen. Look, we're saying one in five.
I think it's four and five. I think it's way
higher than that.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
You know, it's interesting the pandemic brought that out a
little bit. I mean, when we say one in five
twenty percent of the population suffers from some kind of
an emotional ongoing problem, that statistic actually is held for
a long time.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
You know, that's who admits it. The problem is that
people don't admit it. Correct.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
So what happened during the pandemic, and this was partly
done from the work from the Kaiser Family Foundation, fifty
percent of the individuals of adults were reporting struggling with
their emotions, struggling with their with their feelings, struggling with
what was going on, and they were validated in a
way that they were interviewed where that fifty percent was
(10:57):
technically potentially diagnosable, much higher than our traditional you know,
one in five. I think what's important to say is
that when folks are struggling, it doesn't mean they're crazy,
it doesn't mean they're dysfunctional. It means that they have
something that's weighing on them, that's affecting their day to
day existence.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
And I think in the past where you're able to
deal with that a lot better. You know, it wasn't
it wasn't kind of thrown in your face if you
weren't looking at everybody else and seeing their filtered fraction
of a second online having a thrown in your face
thinking man, I'm just not doing.
Speaker 5 (11:28):
Well enough compared to everybody else, sir, or the well
we see on Twitter. You know, so, Jay, you're pointing
out something that's really critical. And I worry about the
younger generations. I mean, their whole lives are on display.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
Yes, you know, you know, before social media took over,
and before you could have instant you know everything, instant messaging,
instant pictures, instant conversations, at least if you were struggling,
there was some semblance of you could control the audience
for that, so to speak, okay, And with social media
these days, it's all out there, right, And while social
(12:01):
connections can be positive through social media, it doesn't necessarily
mean that it doesn't have an impact sometimes when it doesn't.
Speaker 4 (12:08):
Go off of folks.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Also, in the past, if something you had a bad day,
you can go home and shake it off. There's no
going home and shaking it off anymore because everyone's at
your home on Twitter. We're on Instagram, right, So it's like,
you know, look, we got our butts checked in the playground.
Growing up, it sucked for a month, right, right, That
was terrible for a month, But now we're get our
butts tiered a thousand times a second. It's not getting
(12:30):
away from it.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
I think of young kids that are bullied at school
and then they got home and they're cyber bullied online.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Hell, I'm cyber bullied online, not just that. It's all
of us. Yeah, but you can handle it. I don't
know about that. Man, not so much. Hey, my wallet's
not an antidepressant. I get session of these things. So
here's the other thing. We're talking about. How many people
need this help. But dude talk, that's where we need
to help, like men, like, hey, we're talking about one
(12:58):
in five, and that's what people said it right. But
I was surprised when I wrote my book I'm Breakable.
I thought it's gonna be all the dudes are going
to get it because it was football and fighting Mitch
martial arts and ballarts and all that. But it was
like predominantly women because they are the vulnerable ones. They're
the ones all yeah, okay, I have this too. I
can use this for some help. I could use the
words he's given us as a guy to help my
(13:20):
husband or my son, or my kids or myself. Where
dudes still act like now, I don't need to.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
It's interesting because there are gender differences between.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Men and women.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
You know, men are socialized to believe they should be
strong and furthermore, they should be taking care of whatever
is in front of them. It's a lot harder sometimes
for men to admit I'm struggling, I'm not happy, I'm depressed.
That's a hard thing to really admit, not only to yourself,
but definitely to other people outside.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Yeah, look, listen. I don't know if I was shocked,
it probably was. But when I started opening up to
my friends about this by depression and anxiety, it's really
opening up, Like man, the beast, guy out of the box.
To night, I can't go to dinner. Every one of
my friends has joked aboard like, hey, we got you,
we got you. Like. It's made me closer for my friends,
not push them away, and nobody said oh stop Jay
(14:14):
enough like And that's probably been the biggest lesson I
can learn and also give to people like, no one's
gonna push you awhere. They want to help you. Give
us some lessons that you could be part of the
world there to help deal with their mental health.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
You know. One of the things that I think is
really important, and it relates to exactly what you you
just said. You've shared your story and people rallied around
you when we're struggling and we don't share it with
other people. We're struggling alone, We're suffering in silence. It's
tempting to believe that we're the only ones. Do you
talk to somebody, you share a little bit about what's
(14:47):
going on. First of all, they're there, they're with you,
they understand. More often than not, you find out you're
not the only one. Hey, I've struggled too. Hey I'm
struggling right now as well. And suddenly you don't feel
so alone and just unburdening yourself of getting some of
that stuff out there. It's not like you need a solution,
you just need somebody to understand and validate that. Yeah,
(15:10):
you're struggling, now, what can we do to help?
Speaker 4 (15:13):
Okay, so just.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Getting it out is the first step to being able
to get better. But that's the hardest step for all
of us.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Yeah. Absolutely. You guys also deal with a lot with
people who are going through sobistance abuse issues. Yes, has,
and it's always obviously been there. Do you see a
difference before and after COVID?
Speaker 6 (15:31):
Is it just so you know, it's very interesting studies
have been done about this. Anytime we have any kind
of a disaster, there's always an uptick of substance use.
And you know, one of the things about substance is
it's cheap and easy to get, in fact, during the pandemic,
delivered right to your door by you know, Amazon, So
you know what wit.
Speaker 7 (15:50):
You caed what I didn't know about that, So so
you know, the way I looked at it is, Remember,
when people are using substances of any kind where it's
problematic for them, they're usually doing it for one of
two reasons.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
They're feeling something that they don't want to feel, or
they're not feeling something that they do want to feel,
and that's what the substance does for them. Unfortunately, there's
a consequence if you misuse, you know, and there's a
consequence if he caet addicted. But typically what we see
after disasters is months down the line we see an
uptick of not only use, but if people that are
(16:25):
having significant difficulties with addiction.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Hey, and you guys provide services with that as well.
Speaker 4 (16:29):
Absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
In the field of behavioral health, that generally includes all
of those things that we refer to as mental health, depression, anxiety,
and so forth, and then all of those things related
to substance use.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
So you know the other reason I'm trying to do
this podcast to obviously help the world, help give words
to mental health, so we could have this conversation. You know,
we see mental health, but really who gives it words? Right?
We need to have the words to talk to our
friends and our therapists, and our our sons and daughters
and parents and coworkers and every But the other reason
I'm doing this is the suicide rate this country is
(17:04):
just alarming. Man, It's just not okay. We're recallinge right,
and it's it's almost this power suggestion now where everybody
and I think it happens in the military too, with
twenty two vets a day, childremseelves that it's just not okay.
People are in so much pain and then they see
somebody else kill themselves and they go, Wow, everybody's coming out.
They're loving Johnny, They're missing Johnny. Well, I'm in so
(17:25):
much pain. I want to get love too. I'm going
to do the same thing. And it's just become such
an an epidemic of I think, different proportions than it's
ever been.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
You have the second leading cause of death in young
in young Americans today. Really, well, the Inuicide is something
that's always been with us and we haven't always paid
attention to it. Suicide is, ultimately it's an escape, and
when people are suffering and they're not thinking well and
they just want to get a pain, sometimes death seems attractive,
(17:55):
and that's when they can sometimes lead to an event
that will lead to supside. And the challenge is it's
a very permanent solution, usually to a problem that really
isn't but you don't know that in the moment because
you're not really sinking clearly. So we've got to do
a better job of helping people off the edge so
that they're not at that crisis point where that seems
like the only alternative for them.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Yeah, it's really difficult. I have a guy named Kevin
Hines on this show who jumped off the Golden Gate
Bridge and survived. We said the moment I jumped, and
he said, there are other survivors. Every one of them
said the moment they jumped, they immediately regretted it. Yep.
There's no takebacks though, you know.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
And so I have never, ever, never had a patient
that attempted, and I've had many that have that have said,
oh I wish I would have succeeded.
Speaker 4 (18:44):
They've always had some semblance of regret.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
Ironically, I've had some that have tried a second time
later on and they've come back to say, Yeah, what
happened to me? I didn't get it the second time either.
Speaker 8 (18:53):
So we don't always know what's going on in the moment,
but we have to help create systems of care that
help get people away from those moments of impulsivity.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
I try and tell people, listen, you got to lean
into your teammates, whether that's your literal teammate or your
friend or family, because there's not enough therapists for us yet.
We all need therapists. And you know, like mental health
is so reactive. We usually go to a therapists when
the sky's fall and we need to start doing it.
Like physical health where man, you bench pressed all the time,
you run four days if you're not there all the time. Right,
(19:26):
you throw a jab all the time in the boxer,
and you know if you break your arm, you get
a cast on. Everybody signs it. You brag about those stars, right,
But mental health is only man. When the sky is falling,
we go to the therapists and I'm like we got
to do it constantly. But I don't know if there's
enough therapists yet. How much has power line chip go ahead?
Speaker 3 (19:43):
Yeah, Well, first of all, I just got to say,
there's a lot of wisdom in what you're saying. You know,
the reality is, when it comes to our physical bodies,
we recognize, hey, I got to build up, I got
to go through a little bit of pain so that
my body is stronger so I can you know, handle
whatever is in front of me. Is the same thing emotionally,
it's the same thing. There are ways that we can
build resilience, emotional resilience knowing full well you're.
Speaker 4 (20:06):
In a struggle with things.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
You know, the three most common things that people struggle
with a relationship problem, difficulties with money, or problems with
a job or not having a job. Right that, you
can almost bank on the fact that you're gonna have
one of those at some point, and maybe two or
three of them. So are there ways that we can
help people build resilience before they they have those problems,
so that they're able to withstand them a little bit
(20:29):
better and bounce back from them. Yes, I believe there
are ways, and technology is one of the ways.
Speaker 4 (20:34):
That we're moving in that direction.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
There's all kinds of apps, all kinds of solutions that
are coming to market by startup companies that are trying
to help folks really engage in taking care of themselves,
building resilience so they can just face the natural struggles
that face all of us every days.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
This is why I like partnering with you guys, because,
like I said, we need more therapies out there, we
need more people we're able to be there for those
who need the all, but not just when the sky's
fall right constantly and as you say, also, hey, if
something's going on physically with you to deal with between
the ears. And again I bring it back to sports
and just told these teams of all the time, and
they're trainers and coaches, listen, somebody in your and your
(21:12):
team is injured, they can't play that week. Don't just
say hey, hey, you doing they're just like really, they're
not doing good. They're not doing well at all. Between
the years, like really see how they're doing, like take
care and figure out you could build them up while
they're sitting on the sidelines, because it's lowly when the
physical part is hurting. So I'm proud to partner with
you guys in this and walk on this walk together
(21:34):
because man are, like I said, I'm trying to save lives.
I'm trying to get it to be okay for us
to talk about this. I'm trying to get it words.
But also I'm not the expert in this. I'm not
a therapist, I'm not a doctor. I'm just a dude
who's messed up, who's good with his messed upness, who
has a big mouth. So I'm proud to be parted
with what you guys were able to do and the
at least, you know, give people aware, aware to go.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
Yeah, And frankly, it's voices like yours that actually bring
it to life for everyday people. The ability to speak openly,
sharing your own difficulties without any kind of shame because
we all struggle.
Speaker 4 (22:12):
We all struggle, you know.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
I just give you a quick story prior to the
pandemic and now it's coming back. I used to have
lost speaking. I'd be in large audiences, you know where
I would be talking about behavioral health and I'd ask
the audience raise your hand if you have a mental
health problem.
Speaker 4 (22:29):
Nobody would raise their hand, and I.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
Would say, if you have a friend or somebody you
know that having a problem, raise your hand.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
All the hands will go up the friend right quota
with quote fession partser and okay, so all those people
that are struggling are not in the room.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
So no, it's just something about the fact that people
are afraid to kind of say, yeah, I struggle with this.
We don't have any problem telling somebody, yes, spreading my leg.
I'm gonna, you know, walk a little slower today, you know, absolutely, Doc, I.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
Really appreciate a your service. P you're joining today. You know,
I always say let's let's walk this walk together. And man,
there's a lot of room for us to walk this
walk together and help a lot of people together today.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
And we're gonna walk with you.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Thanks appreciating so much.
Hosts And Creators
Jason Smith
Mike Harmon
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