Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Election Headquarters.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
Your long economic nice mare will very soon be over.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
It's going to be over. Fifty five cars be Talkstation
eight oh five, the thirty five kr CD talk station.
Every Friday Eve, God bless the American veterans and thanks again.
Already made it a CVG last night for the return
of the Honor Flight folks. More than twenty five hundred
people showed up to celebrate and salute the American veterans,
(00:26):
most notably the eighty Vietnam veterans who did not get
much of a welcome when they came home after serving
their country. And someone who knows all about this, my
next guest, Alison Feening. Allison is a dedicated mental health
professional with over a decade of experience in the field
of mental health. She founded in twenty seventeen this wonderful organization,
Pinpoint Behavioral Health Solutions, which you can find online at
(00:48):
PINPOINTBHS dot BHS dot com, where she and her team
specialized in providing essentral support support to first responders and
military communities. Licensed to practice in Ohio, Kentucky, and Florida.
Nominated for awards and award winning, she is acknowledged as
a wonderful professional in the field of mental health. It
is a pleasure to have you on the program, and
thanks for what you're doing for the American veteran. Alison Feening, Well.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Good morning, Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
You know, if I'd read your entire resume, we wouldn't
have any time to talk about what you're doing for
the American veterans. Let's just cut to the Chase PENPOINTBHS
dot com. You offer all kinds of mental health services
at your.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Organization, Yeah, we certainly do. We are the largest mental
health outpatient private practice in Ohio for first responders, emergency workers, military,
active and veterans and their family members.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Yeah. And I see that you do individual counseling, but
also couples as well. I expose of someone struggling with
mental health, that's certainly could have a profound impact on
a relationship.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
It absolutely does. I mean, if you think of any
of our stress and current economic strains that we have
and groceries and how that can just strain our day
to day operations in our home, and then think of
the stress of going on deployment and or the amount
of stress that our first responders and military have experienced,
and we know a key opponent of any type of
(02:12):
change is including all of the family and any of
their support people, and so that's really important. So we
do counseling outpatient, individual counseling. We have done couples and families.
We have several locations. We also have equine E M
d R, the only ones in the area to do
equine EMDR, which is freaking amazing.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Well, I'm glad you brought that up yourself, because that
was gonna be the next question because I am not
familiar with equine E M d R. And I why
did you explain that? Because equine of course we're talking
about horses here.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Yeah, so EMBR. Yeah, so people don't know. Em DR
is one of the only three evidence based treatments for PTSD.
It could also be done on lots of other things.
And E MDR scenes for eye movement, desensitization and reprocessing.
It's weird, but it's but it's incredible. I have we
have four clinicians and our practice trained in it. And
(03:06):
then additionally our clinicians Sabrina Menry, she runs our equine
program out in Claremont County. We have a farm with
three horses and some days they can act or outy
because if anyone who knows courses knows they have bold
personalities too. And Sabrina does a great job in incorporating
the equine EMDR. She is fully licensed and trained and
(03:27):
that trained and doing that. And so EMDR uses what's
called bilateral stimulation to go back and forth in the
hemispheres of the brain to change how an event has
an impacted you. We don't delete the memory, it just
reprocess it so it no longer disturbs you or distrusses you.
So if you think of let's say you're in a
car accident or something bad in your life has happened,
(03:47):
and anytime you think of it, you get really emotional
or you shake, or you have these maladaptive symptoms. Doing
EMDR on its own can help alleviate and eliminate some
of that. Additionally, doing e fine. Is this the whole
nother ballgame that it's just it's so fascinating in the
science and the research behind it. And they're doing that
a lot with veterans, and there's different organizations doing it
(04:10):
for free with thats and there's it's wonderful.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
So is it a form and forgive me for boiling
it down to something I think that I'm going to
try to make it relatable to at.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Least my understanding.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Is it like a form of a meditation in a
sense that you know you have a traumatic event. I'm
thinking of these guys who went around kicking doors in
and Fallujah, were always under constant threat of death and
they had to get up every single day and do
that same thing over and over again multiple times. That's
going to put you on edge. That is going to
put you at a high level level of adrenaline for
a long, long period of time, and once you're taking
(04:44):
out of that environment, it's like you can't shut it off.
That's one of the problems you struggle with post traumatic stress.
So again, if you're struggling with that anxiety, the emotion,
the adrenaline, the memories of all that, is it attempt
to like sort of free your mind of the thoughts
and put you in a better place like meditation does it.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
It's not meditation. Mindfullness based exercises and meditation work is
more of a coping skill or preventive method, right. This
is actively reprocessing those memories to change how they're stored.
In the brain, so that when you think of having
to Let's say you're a police officer and you were
overseas and you think of that situation overseas, and now
(05:26):
you go on a call and it's very similar situation. Right,
You're no longer having the same reaction, and you can
focus and not get tunnel vision and not have your
heart rate up. You know, you're still going to be
heart right up because you're doing some stuff that causes stress. Right,
You're no longer going to be associated with the past memories.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Huh. So retraining the brain to reprocess or process in
a different way, all right, And then to the fundamental point,
cutting to the chase. How do the horses help accomplish that?
Speaker 2 (05:56):
So the horses provide a different therapeutic art in opponent
to helping the person ground themselves. There is a form
of rhythmic writing, so if you are a horse person
out there, even just riding a horse can be very therapeutic,
and so we incorporate both. A lot of what we
do is groundwork. They're not normally riding our legal purposes
(06:17):
people and some people don't like horses, which is fine too,
and so sometimes it's just brushing, and you can actually
do this with your pet at home. You have your
pet and pets, you know, especially dogs, if they're on
your lap and you're just going back and forth with
petting them and you're just back and forth with your hands.
That is very similar to the same type of thing
(06:40):
that we can do with horses. So horses just bring
a totally different element. We're outside, which most of our
veterans and responders don't really like being indoors in an office,
they can you know, move around, we can eviilize the horse,
and then if somebody doesn't want the horse, we also
have those typical standard as well.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Fantastic and being a lifelong dog owner, I certainly understand
how the calming effect that a loving animal can have
on your mental state, because you know, it certainly works
that way with me. Alison. Now moving over to something
I have to ask. I thought, it's an interesting way
of phrasing it. I think I get it. But what's
neck up? Check up?
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Great question, thank you. So let me go back a
little a little bit on why we are here in
twenty seventeen. If you happen to remember a retired Assistant
Chief Ship Terry died by suicide. Yes, and when that occurred,
we had actually several suicides in our area of first responders.
And then you already know most folks know the rate
(07:46):
of death by suicide for our veterans. And at that point,
my husband's a fireman, and we were like, what do
we do? He spiraled and so we created this business. Well,
when we started looking at the suicide rates between our
veterans and our first responders, we identified why aren't what's
going on beforehand? Why are we only stopping them believe
(08:08):
when it's happening, And so my team and myself we
do these things called neckup checkups. There are annual mental
health wellness check ins with a mental health professional that
we have with our departments to help just hey, what's
going on. I'm actually in the current process of trademarking it.
It's been a very long process to trademark. If you've
(08:30):
ever trademarked something, it's expensive. And what we have found
is in our state and currently in Ohio, there's no
set standard for the medical professions to have annual mental
health checks. Like when you have a child, you go
to your annual wellness check. Well, there's nothing for mental
health in different states. The state of Massachusetts just created
(08:50):
a wall in April that it is required or it
is approved, that the insurance companies cover annual mental health checks,
which is freaking awesome.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
It is so current.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Yeah, it's really fascinating. I talked to the Attorney general
out there to get the information, and I wanted to
create a law here in Ohio, but time time is
not always on my side. So what we do is
every year the individuals we work with have an opportunity
to meet with us, with one of our team members
to check in to help prevent any stressors they're going on,
(09:25):
talk about any resources they may need, linked them to stuff,
and we've actually seen it prevent suicide.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
That's incredible.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
That is absolutely incredible, because, you know, identifying folks that
are struggling with suicidal ideation that usually is either going
to come from the person struggling with it if they're
honest enough to admit it to a family member, or
a family member notices that they're having some challenges and
sort of brings it to the attention of someone who
can help out, like maybe one of the Veteran Services
commissioned or in the case of you, would be pinpoint
(09:56):
BHS dot com.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
Yeah, the veterans are commission in their crisis line is awesome,
and then we provide crisis services for our current apartment.
So anyone who contracts with us, we do provide that
as a service because we know sometimes for our special
populations like our veterans and our military, calling a nine
eight A or the National Stupide Hotline, they don't always
(10:20):
get it. And so everyone on our team is either
some form, shape, way, shape or form connected with either
military or first responder. And that's very important to me
because I want them to understand we get it to
some capacity. I'm never going to completely understand if you
were over in Iraq. I'm never going to completely understand
if you are in a use of for situation, but
(10:40):
we at least can understand to a.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Degree, indeed well, the whole idea of an annual mental
health checkup. I guess I I wish it was more
readily available or more embraced by the medical community generally speaking,
because it would go along way to help destigmatize the
whole idea of getting mental health services. I mean, we
see the numbers increasing, and I think the statistical increase
(11:04):
in people saying or acknowledging they have mental health issues
has been brought about largely because we are now embracing
and accepting the concept of seeking some help when we
need it. You know, it's like, okay, it's okay to
get some help. It's not like the old days when
oh my god, you're seeing a shrink kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Right. Yeah, we've definitely gone to this separate side of
the pendulum. We've swung all the way to the other side,
which can be a good and a not so good
thing in our folks, because the loads out now on
the mental health field is there's not enough of us,
and there's definitely not enough of.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
Us to serve this right to serve others.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Right, So we're actively I'm actively networking. I have a
global networking organization that we connect with the responder therapists
and military therapists all over the all over the world
to help link and resource and connect and like what's
going on in this part of the country. You know,
there's free services, there's free sessions, there's free there's funders,
(11:58):
there's different things that people just don't know where to go.
And so a lot of what I do is that
a lot of that legwork from underneath the table of
trying to get people connected.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Indeed, and I note that you do offer telehealth, which
is a great thing.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Yeah, in twenty twenty. Before twenty twenty oh High was
what's called a parody state where it didn't approve the
insurance wouldn't approve telehealth for any type of provider medical
in the medical field. And so after twenty twenty in
COVID hit which is probably a good thing, that telehealth
is an option for any type of mental health professional
in the state. And then we have opportunity to provide
(12:33):
services in seven states with Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Florida, Virginia, Arizona,
and Texas.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Wow. And again it's PINPOINTBHS dot com for all the information.
You are a hip, a compliant, This is all confidential communications.
You're healing. Indeed, it's important.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Yes, we wouldn't be where we're at if people didn't
trust us. So we just want to thank everyone that
believes and trust. I mean that's and we think those
that are serving the serving those that serve.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Us well, it is a beautiful concept. I can't thank
you enough for helping out the first responders and most
notably my veteran friends out there who again statistically much
higher rate of suicides. We get a handle on that,
and I can't thank you enough, Alison Feening and your
team at PINPOINTBHS dot com for all you do. I'll
recommend my veteran then first responder friends at the extent
they need some assistance, head on over to the site,
(13:27):
check it out, and enjoy the benefits of these wonderful services. Allison,
God bless you keep up the great work.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Thank you, God bless everyone.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
It's been a real pleasure having you on the program.
It's eight nineteen. We'll have iHeart Media aviation expert Jay
Rattliffe at the bottom of the hour. Always enjoy those conversations.
I hope you do. Stick around right here at fifty
five KRCD Talk Station fifty five KRC dot Com, Cincinnati,