Current Challenges and Innovations in the Mental Health Field | Check-In with Rachel Harrison

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the Mental Health Entrepreneur Podcast. I'm your host, Rachel Harrison. And today is going to look a little bit different. I'm actually doing a solo episode. I know I don't usually do these. I started off the podcast with a solo episode kind of talking about the origin story and the reason for this podcast, which, as most of you probably know, was the need that we have in this country specifically. But I think all over the world where we really have a crisis in the mental health care field, we need more options for mental wellness. We need to get creative, we need to think outside of the box. And that has led me to the guests that I have invited to this podcast to talk a little bit about what they are doing that's innovative. So I wanted to kind of do a check in episode and, and talk about what I've noticed so far, talk about where I am in my thinking in this process and think through where are we going? Where is this leading us? Because I think if we don't stop and reflect and sift through this information, it can be useful and inspiring, certainly. But I think it's important to also help us inform where we are going as a collective whole and what's needed in our communities. And so I wanted to just pause a moment today and talk to you about some of those things. So I hope that this is helpful for you. I hope it spurs ideas, I hope it maybe inspires you to think about things in a different way and maybe you completely disagree with me and that's great too. We need all of the views and all of the people and all of the things. Welcome to the Mental Health Entrepreneur Podcast. We are here to inspire creative ideas and connections for entrepreneurs and advocates working to address our mental health crisis. As you listen, I hope you will experience new ideas and motivation to innovate in your business, your community and in your life. I wanted to start by just talking about the fact that I am learning a few different things and so I'm going to kind of bullet point those for you. The one thing that has definitely come to the forefront is a lot of creative and innovative ideas out there that have been inspiring things I didn't even know were happening, like using drumbeats to treat autism, like grief camps, like using group therapy and EMDR to triage trauma. So many things are out there that people are doing and really passionate about. I hope you've heard that, I hope you've seen that. Also using preventative marriage therapy, like a check in, just like you would go to your doctor For a checkup. Every year, having a checkup for your relationship, your partner, that's pretty cool. So there have been some really great ideas, and I get a lot of feedback from those of you that are listening that one of the biggest things that this does for you is gives you some creative thinking, inspiration, some innovation inspiration, some new ideas. And I love that. That is a huge part of the goal of this. So that has definitely come of this. But I am also hearing both on and off the camera or the recording, when we are recording, is that launching these ideas within our current healthcare model is challenging. So many people have talked about this on the podcast and off air the podcast as well. But there's this idea, there's this thing that we're doing and trying to create and build, and there are definitely challenges that come up in our healthcare model. One of those is insurance. Insurance models are very specific to an outpatient care office or an inpatient hospital. There are some other options, such as, you know, intensive outpatient, that you heard about on one of my episodes. I think that was the second episode as well. And as people are pursuing this entrepreneur journey, they are finding along the way that this healthcare model we have can be challenging. So I'm just thinking that may be an area of focus that we need to really talk about and dive into a little bit more. Because if we're having limitations for what people can use their insurance for, if we're having limitations with what we're calling mental health care and who can support that and how we're doing that, I think that might be one of the barriers that I have encountered so far. So that is another piece that comes up for me just in terms of what I'm seeing and what I'm learning. I'm very curious to maybe talk to some more guests about how they are working around these things, how they are overcoming barriers as they emerge. More to come, hopefully, on that. And that sort of leads right into the next piece that I am noticing is that funding is a critical issue. I mean, we know this. Most people, I think, in the mental health world that I have encountered in, if they are not running a business or a nonprofit, they really wish that they could just help people for free. That is the heartbeat of a lot of mental health care workers. And I understand that we all come into this field wanting to help people. And there's this thing that happens when we also have to charge money for that. That can start to feel complicated. And I see this popping up though, everywhere with people trying to start these ideas because most of these ideas come out of a passion of helping people. And then we all have to pay our bills. So we have to figure out when we're hiring people, when we're doing the work ourselves, all of those things. How do our basic needs get funded? How do we pay ourselves? This idea of funding, I don't think is a simple answer. There are so many ways that we can get funding out there, but there are also complicated pieces to all of them. So for example, of course insurance is a way to get services funded, but only licensed mental health professionals can get that and only in certain situations. Another piece of that is that there's a little bit of, I would say, old research being touted out there as what constitutes a mental health session. So sometimes when we want to get creative, like equine therapy or like neurofeedback, insurance will either not pay for that or they will pay less for the things that cost more. Neurofeedback is a great example. I don't think we've had anybody on to talk about neurofeedback, but it's a lot of training and it's a lot of equipment and the insurance rates for that are lower than talk therapy. So there are these kinds of barriers out there with insurance. Of course, there's also, in the nonprofit world, funding via grants, which can be an awesome way to get something started. But sometimes sustainability, it becomes an issue with grant funding because the grants are often a one time thing or they have to be renewed. And I've worked for programs in my tenure that were grant funded and then suddenly not grant funded. And so then that program just goes. So I think there are some challenges inherent in that. A lot of providers have gone to a self pay model and that can be a little less headache for the providers and very attractive because maybe they can get more, they can be paid more because they are in control of the pricing instead of having to rely on insurance choosing what they get paid. But it is also complicated because it can't reach everybody. There are lots of people that are limited who are not able to pay those fees. So the idea of getting creative with funding is something that I have really been thinking through as we've been talking on these podcasts. I have, ever since I started this podcast, had sort of a vision of having almost like incubator opportunities for different people that are doing something in mental wellness that are innovative. And maybe we have almost like a shark tank kind of a situation and we have a competition. They give speeches, they get funding, they get Publicity, more to come on that. That's what I've been thinking about, but we're not there yet. So funding is something we need to also see creativity about. And I'm thinking about having more and more guests on that, may be able to talk about that funding piece as well. The last thing that I have seen, and you heard my deep sigh about this, is the need to address the new normal since COVID It's interesting, right, because we all recognize that Covid had an impact on us. And I think a lot of people right now are like, yeah, Covid already, let's not talk about it. Like, let's move on. Finally, we're back to the new normal, doing things. But I think what I keep hearing over and over from people working in this field and what I see in my own practice and training institute is that Covid has impacted the severity as well as the numbers of people that need support. And that makes sense, right? It's a trauma. It has also impacted, at the very same time the people who are providing the support. And so we end up all with these brains that are influenced by trauma. I mean, as a lot of, you know, trauma is kind of my thing. And as a trauma specialist, I know that when a trauma happens, it changes our brains. We might see small symptoms and we might see big symptoms, but to avoid some of that trauma or the feelings that came up, we might choose different avoidance tactics. Some of them healthy, some of them not so healthy. We may disconnect from ourselves. We may disconnect from other people. We may just have more fatigue. We may have less capacity to hold space for someone else. We may have difficulty focusing and using our frontal lobe. And all of those are actually trauma symptoms. We may have a higher stress response, more panic attacks. All of those things can be related to the global trauma that we all experience together and the changes that it has on our brain. And so that leads me to the need for all of us to address that. And that's my question for all of you listening. Have you addressed how Covid has impacted you? I know you might even roll your eyes at me saying that like, I don't even want to deal with it. I just want to move on. I get it. Maybe you're not ready to yet. But what I am seeing is if our helpers, the people caring for others in healthcare or any other place, are not okay, we're not going to be able to help those we're trying to help. And there are more of them than ever, and the need is greater than Ever. And so I keep coming back to this piece of what do we need to help the helpers? And I'll tell you, it's not as easy as just providing a program. We have actually tried that and had some people sign up. But a lot of people, not a lot of people say, no, thank you. We also need a way to do this that's actually going to change the way that the brain is holding the trauma. We need something that can be a type of therapy that integrates the body and a type of therapy that actually treats trauma. Being trauma informed is not enough. It is helpful and useful, but it does not shift the brain so that trauma is not having the same impact on the human that it was before. Things like emdr, things like neurofeedback, body based approaches that are not just talk therapy. Talk therapy affects our prefrontal cortex, the front of our brain. Trauma is held in the middle of our brain, the emotional part of our brain. We have to have a therapy modality that can address that. So here's what I am thinking. I think we need our leaders. And leaders may have an official title as a leader and they may not. They may be people that others just follow because they respect them. But I think we need leaders who are advocating for and seeking out effective trauma treatment to change their brains from the effects of COVID And if those leaders begin to feel better, those leaders are going to positively be able to help and have more capacity for helping those they are leading. And hopefully there is also a modeling there of inspiring other people to find the right research based approach to treat the trauma in their brain. I am amazed sometimes at how many people don't know that we can treat ptsd. We have a treatment for that. It is called emdr. It doesn't always work in one session. It's not a magic pill. Sometimes there are things that we have to do to get people prepared to do the emdr. So it can take a while, but it is one of the few tools I know in my 25 years of being a therapist that can actually change the brain and reduce the symptoms of ptsd. Now you might be thinking, I don't have full blown ptsd. Yeah, you might not. But if you have some of the symptoms I mentioned before, why not go ahead and clear that out, so to speak. Why not give your brain a boost? It can't hurt. We all carry around things and these things impact us whether we want them to or not. These things are held in our bodies. We know from all the research on trauma and so if you are a person running around putting that aside, and especially if you're a leader, my encouragement to you is that we need a movement where we are seeking out effective treatment that helps us gain capacity as leaders and then by turn also helps everybody else. So there you have it. Those are some of my musings. Those are some of the things going on in my brain after talking to all these amazing guests. And I just have to shout out to the guests that have been on this podcast if you are listening. You have really all been people who are so passionate and so strong in your beliefs about wanting to help people and wanting to see wellness in your communities. And that is inspiring. That is inspiring to us all. So thank you for what you are doing. If you would like to be involved more in this conversation that I'm talking about, about some of the barriers, about some of the things that are coming up as we are looking into innovative ideas and what can we do to support mental wellness in our communities, I invite you to reach out to me. I'd love to hear from you. Maybe we have a side conversation. Maybe we have podcast conversation. I think everybody's ideas are important here and it's going to take all of us to get to this goal of wellness for our communities. So I'm hoping that we can really focus on working together. We can focus on the fact that we're all on the same team, that we're all human beings and that we all need to extend the most kindness that we can because of that. So with that, I'm going to sign off my solo episode. I thank you for listening. I'd love to hear your responses as and we will be back next week with another guest, but I will probably periodically check in and do these solo episodes. So let me know what you think. Thank you for being here and give us a listen next week too. Take care.