Behavioral Health Today

Building a Professional Network for Practitioners with Brandon Jones & Oliver Lubin – Episode 105

What if mental health practitioners had, in addition to state organizations, a network that provided national access and connection with colleagues, as well as larger exposure to numerous services, job listings, and licensing information to use as practitioners? The Triad Network is a free-of-charge hub for education, community, and career resources specifically for behavioral and mental health professionals focused on both helping people, help people, and providing a space for practitioners to come together. In today’s episode, Dr. Graham Taylor speaks with Brandon Jones, CEO, and Oliver Lubin, CTO, for Triad. Together they discuss the trends that led to the conception, the challenge of isolation in the mental health community, and creating a network that is content-specific and intentionally niche for behavioral health. The Triad Network includes community resources, education both exam prep and continuing education, public groups specifically for mental health and available to both students and professionals, job listings, and products and services offered by partners. We encourage you to check out www.hellotriad.com, both to equip yourself as a professional and to join others for support and encouragement.

 

Get your FREE Triad profile, please visit: www.hellotriad.com

For more information about the Triad Network’s Jobs Marketplace, please visit: app.hellotriad.com/jobs

For more information about Triad and the brands and services they provide, please visit: www.triadhq.com

Emotionally Focused Therapy with Kelly Bourque, LMFT – Episode 104

Emotion is like our north star. Emotion gets us where we want to be. In this episode, Dr. Graham Taylor is joined by Kelly Bourque. Kelly is a founder of Red Therapy Group, a group practice in the Nashville area. She is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Certified Emotionally Focused Therapist and supervisor with over a decade of experience, working with couples in private practice. Together they discuss this theoretical orientation being emotionally focused, understanding protective patterns, attachment systems, and the disowned part of self. And the approach to working with couples to contextually understand their reactivity of emotions. Kelly speaks about her shift to working with couples within the context of intensives, the collaborative process, and a walk-through of the client experience. As an EFT, you learn to trust to follow emotion. And it takes us to those places that have not been processed.

 

For more information about Red Therapy Group, please visit: https://redtherapygroup.com

If you’re a couple looking for resources, please visit Red Therapy’s free resources:https://redtherapygroup.com/resources

If you are interested in intensive couples therapy, please visit:  https://www.eftmarriageintensive.com

For interactive couples thearpy resource, please visit Hold Me Tight Online, by Sue Johnson: https://holdmetightonline.com

 

A Unique Opportunity to Bring Mental Health into Schools with Stephanie Taylor – Episode 103

Right now, there is a unique opportunity that schools have to contribute to the social and emotional development of children and that behavioral health journey. In today’s episode, Dr. Graham Taylor is joined by Stephanie Taylor, school psychologist and clinical director for psycho-educational services at PresenceLearning. We speak on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on children’s mental health and the position schools are in due to the unique circumstances that have allowed an opportunity to address mental health services in the educational model. Together they discuss re-establishing the norms of social development, challenges schools are facing, the connection of academic performance and mental health needs, and ways schools can begin to add mental health services to the rich learning experience. Let's try something for this year that we don't usually have the opportunity to do. And let's allow ourselves to see some results because once you see results, it is so much easier to keep up with it.

 

For more information about PresenceLearning, please visit: https://www.presencelearning.com

For more information about PresenceLearning resources for schools and parents, please visit: https://www.presencelearning.com/resources/content-library/

Part 2: Establishing 988 for National Suicide Hotline with U.S. Rep. Chris Stewart & U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton – Episode 102

This episode resumes the conversation with Dr. Graham Taylor and Congressmen Chris Stewart and Seth Moulton. In our last episode, we discussed the role each of these congressmen played in the creation of this new program, the importance and willingness to deal with mental health struggles, their goals and benefits they anticipate with the new hotline number and what it can provide and advocate for mental health. We’ll resume today’s talk by discussing the details and services available with this new 988 3-digit crisis hotline number and how this service can open conversations about mental wellness. This national hotline will help reduce suicide rates and ideally provide specific responses for those in a mental health crisis. And subsequently we're going to anticipate better outcomes for those with mental health needs. While the 988 3-digit number is not established yet, it is scheduled to deploy in 2022.

For more information about 988 3-digit hotline, please visit: https://www.fcc.gov/suicide-prevention-hotline or visit https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/

If you are in a Crisis and need help, please call:
SAMSHA National Helpline 1-800-622-HELP (4357) or by texting TalkWithUs to 66746, for Veterans please text, 838255, or visit: https://www.samhsa.gov/
Help prevent suicide with the National Suicide Prevention 24/7 Lifeline, please call 1-800-273-TALK (8255)

Part 1: Establishing 988 for National Suicide Hotline with U.S. Rep. Chris Stewart & U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton – Episode 101

In 2020 our federal government responded to the growing mental health epidemic with the creation of the 988, a 3-digit national suicide prevention hotline specific for mental health crisis services. In our show today Dr. Graham Taylor is honored to speak with Congressman Chris Stewart of Utah and Congressman Seth Moulton of Massachusetts on the inspiration, creation, and hopes for this new national emergency number. Together they discuss the experiences in each of their lives that led to the inspiration of this idea, the willingness to address mental health struggles, and the roles each of the congressmen played in the creation of this new program. This was a bipartisan effort to establishing the hotline with the hopes of helping Americans get the help they need and advocating for mental health across the nation. The hotline is scheduled to deploy in 2022.

For more information about 988 3-digit hotline, please visit: https://www.fcc.gov/suicide-prevention-hotline or visit https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/

If you are in a Crisis and need help, please call:
SAMSHA National Helpline 1-800-622-HELP (4357) or by texting TalkWithUs to 66746, for Veterans please text, 838255, or visit: https://www.samhsa.gov/
Help prevent suicide with the National Suicide Prevention 24/7 Lifeline, please call 1-800-273-TALK (8255)

Complicated Grief & the Meaningfulness of Loss with Dr. Kathy Shear – Episode 100

At some point in all our lives, we will experience loss. The most difficult loss is the loss of someone close to us. With this loss, the landscape of our life changes and the process of experiencing and working through our grief begins. In this episode, Dr. Graham Taylor speaks with Dr. Kathy Shear, professor of psychiatry at the Columbia School of Social Work and founder and director of the Center for Complicated Grief. She shares with us the grief process, how to recognize complicated grief, and her recent research contribution and inclusion of this condition, now called Prolonged Grief Disorder, into the forthcoming DSM-V. There is life to be lived after this loss and if we can grieve in productive and growth-oriented ways, we can find a path that can allow us to continue to grow and have joy in our lives while continuing to carry and relate to the one we've lost in a very meaningful way.

 

For more information about the Center for Complicated Grief, please visit: https://complicatedgrief.columbia.edu
For more information about training, please visit: https://complicatedgrief.columbia.edu/professionals/training/
And for more information about resources on Complicated Grief, please visit: https://complicatedgrief.columbia.edu/professionals/resources-pro/

Part 2: Mental Health of Athletes & the NBA with Dr. William Parham – Episode 99

This episode resumes the conversation with Dr. Graham Taylor and Dr. William Parham the inaugural Director of the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) Mental Health and Wellness Department. We have not yet begun to see what real GOAT (greatest of all time) behavior looks like. If we to invest, from the beginning all of those systems early on should have a mental health and wellness component as part of their regimen. If we can look at the developmental part of it first, that athletic performance will just naturally evolve the way that it's designed to evolve. Mental health is the missing link and maximizing one's true potential.

For more information about the NBPA Mental Health and Wellness Department, please visit: https://nbpa.com/mentalwellness

Other resources provided by Dr. Parham include:
HBO Special - Weight of Gold: https://www.hbo.com/documentaries/the-weight-of-gold
Adverse Childhood Experience (ACEs) Study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6675915/
ISSP Sports Psychology Consensus document: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1612197X.2019.1570473
West by West. Memoir shedding light on mental health in the NBA: https://www.amazon.com/West-My-Charmed-Tormented-Life-ebook/dp/B004QZ9PFG
Washington Post, article One’s Mental Health in Olympic Athletes: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2021/06/19/olympics-mental-health-simone-manuel/
Aeon Magazine Invisible Tattoos - article on childhood trauma in athletes: https://aeon.co/essays/if-trauma-can-propel-athletes-healing-can-make-them-soar
The Positive Coaching Alliance: https://positivecoach.org

 

 

Part 1: Mental Health of Athletes & the NBA with Dr. William Parham – Episode 98

Athletes are aesthetically pleasing and like the theater, it's a venue for emotional expression. However, while we fans may be enjoying their performances we get to watch, we don't often fully appreciate the degrees of pressure on elite athletes. The win-it-all mentality presents a unique concern for the mental health among athletes. In this episode Dr. Graham Taylor is joined by Dr. William Parham the inaugural Director of the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) Mental Health and Wellness Department. Together they discuss the psychological demands on professional and elite athletes and strategies to support their mental health. Everybody wins when you invest in the whole person and their mental health and wellness. 

For more information about the NBPA Mental Health and Wellness Department, please visit: https://nbpa.com/mentalwellness

Other resources provided by Dr. Parham include:
HBO Special - Weight of Gold: https://www.hbo.com/documentaries/the-weight-of-gold
Adverse Childhood Experience (ACEs) Study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6675915/
ISSP Sports Psychology Consensus document: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1612197X.2019.1570473
West by West. Memoir shedding light on mental health in the NBA: https://www.amazon.com/West-My-Charmed-Tormented-Life-ebook/dp/B004QZ9PFG
Washington Post, article One’s Mental Health in Olympic Athletes: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2021/06/19/olympics-mental-health-simone-manuel/
Aeon Magazine Invisible Tattoos - article on childhood trauma in athletes: https://aeon.co/essays/if-trauma-can-propel-athletes-healing-can-make-them-soar
The Positive Coaching Alliance: https://positivecoach.org

 

Teaching Trauma-Responsive Practices with Ragan Schriver, PsyD, MSW – Episode 97

Being trauma-responsive means that we can recognize that the person that’s coming to see us has lived very difficult situations, but there are huge strengths in that. We as therapists want to join arms and walk with them to collaborate on their issues and strengths to help them grow. On today’s podcast, Dr. Graham Taylor speaks with Ragan Schriver, PsyD, MSW. Ragan is an Associate Professor of Practice at the University of Tennessee’s College of Social Work and director of the MSW program. In their certification program, Ragan teaches his students about trauma-informed and trauma-responsive practices. Together, Graham and Ragan discuss the experiences of teaching students to actively respond to an individual’s struggle, the relational aspects of therapy, defining trauma in the curriculum with students, and working through a strengths-based perspective.

For more information about the University of Tennessee and its Social Work Program, please visit: https://www.csw.utk.edu/
If you have any questions related to the certificate program, the process of earning a certificate, the content, or concerns, please contact Dr. Ragan Schriver at rschriv1@utk.edu

Weaving EMDR into Therapy with Wendy Byrd, LPC, LMFT – Episode 96

We know that at its best talk therapy, regardless of the theoretical approach being utilized is typically limited in helping folks fully process through and let go of trauma. But, what about those times when, as therapists, we find ourselves working with a patient that seems to be stuck in their treatment process, due to experienced trauma? Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is an approach we can utilize to help patients accelerate the information, processing other traumatic events, and developing more truth-based assessment and understanding of the event and themselves. In this episode, Dr. Graham Taylor is joined by Wendy Byrd, LPC, LMFT, and president of the Board of Directors for EMDR International Association (EMDRIA). Wendy has over 15 years of experience in working with trauma and together Graham and Wendy discuss the incorporation of EMDR woven into the therapeutic process.

 

For more information about EMDR International Association (EMDRIA), please visit
https://www.emdria.org

For more information about Wendy Byrd and her private practice, please visit:
https://www.wendybyrd.com

For more information about Connected Heart Therapy, please visit:
https://connectedheart.net/therapy/

Part 2: Children’s Mental Health & Preparing for the Fall Semester with Jerry Barone – Episode 95

This episode resumes the conversation with Dr. Graham Taylor and Jerry Barone of Effective School Solutions (ESS). Together they discuss key aspects of self-care in teachers and administrators, the confidence needed for a safe environment for our children, and practical strategies to help navigate students back into the school year. As we reenter schools this fall semester we encourage parents, teachers, and administrators to promote a familiar routine, master competency to show kids confidence, practice mindfulness, and use genuine validation, but then envision how we will rise out of this.

For more information about Effective School Solutions, please visit:
https://www.effectiveschoolsolutions.com/

Read articles on Thought Leadership, please visit:
https://www.effectiveschoolsolutions.com/thought-leadership

If you are in a Crisis and need help, please call:
SAMSHA National Disaster Distress Helpline 1-800-985-5990 or by texting TalkWithUs to 66746
Reach a crisis counselor by texting the Crisis Text Line, text HOME to 741741
Help prevent suicide with the National Suicide Prevention 24/7 Lifeline, please call 1-800-273-TALK (8255)

Part 1: Children’s Mental Health & Preparing for the Fall Semester with Jerry Barone – Episode 94

There's no better place than to address mental health issues from our point of view than at school where children can be surrounded by teachers and leaders. In this episode, Dr. Graham Taylor speaks with Jerry Barone from Effective School Solutions (ESS) about children’s mental health and preparation for the fall semester. Together they discuss the prevalence rates in children’s mental health, services, and the best practices available to the school to address the needs of students, and finally the warning signs that parents and teachers should be aware of. During the COVID-19 pandemic, research is suggesting that depression, anxiety in the youth demographics. This is a good time for teachers to be getting back and putting their focus on students to recognize signs and symptoms. Let’s do things to enhance the environment and keep kids in the classroom.

 

For more information about Effective School Solutions, please visit: https://www.effectiveschoolsolutions.com/

Read articles on Thought Leadership, please visit:

https://www.effectiveschoolsolutions.com/thought-leadership

If you are in a Crisis and need help, please call:
SAMSHA National Disaster Distress Helpline 1-800-985-5990 or by texting TalkWithUs to 66746
Reach a crisis counselor by texting the Crisis Text Line, text HOME to 741741
Help prevent suicide with the National Suicide Prevention 24/7 Lifeline, please call 1-800-273-TALK (8255)

Clinician Series: Inner-Work for the New Trauma Therapist with Guy Macpherson Ph.D. – Episode 93

Special Offer for BHT Listeners: Save 40% OFF Inner-Work for New Trauma Therapists Course with promo code TRIADGUY. Learn More at: https://the-trauma-therapist-project.teachable.com/p/inner-work-for-the-new-trauma-worker

What the patient needs most is the ability to be themselves, but for them to see themselves, as therapists, we need to know ourselves fully first. In this episode, Dr. Graham Taylor continues the discussion with Dr. Guy Macpherson, clinical psychologist, creator of the Trauma Therapist Project, and the host of the Trauma Therapist Podcast, about the Inner-Work for the New Trauma Therapist Course and the importance of understanding your journey and bringing that awareness into session. This course will walk practitioners through a personal discovery process to help give them as therapists a sense of who they are. The goal to empower therapists to believe who they are is enough but getting there can be very challenging within the context of working with someone who’s been impacted by trauma. “It's about being a human being with another human being”.

 

For more information about Trauma Therapist 2.0, please visit:
https://the-trauma-therapist-project.teachable.com/p/trauma-therapist-2-0-1

For more information on the Trauma Therapist Podcast, please visit:
https://www.thetraumatherapistproject.com/podcast

For more information about The Inner Work for New Trauma Therapists, please visit: https://the-trauma-therapist-project.teachable.com/p/inner-work-for-the-new-trauma-worker

Early Career Experiences in Cultivating Authenticity with Guy Macpherson Ph.D. – Episode 92

Special Offer for BHT Listeners: Save 40% OFF Inner-Work for New Trauma Therapists Course with promo code TRIADGUY. Learn More at: https://the-trauma-therapist-project.teachable.com/p/inner-work-for-the-new-trauma-worker

As therapists, we are our own greatest tool. But how does one come about becoming their own best tool? And what personal components go into the cultivation of this therapeutic self? And what does this inner work look like? These questions and professional development are particularly relevant for those of you listening on today's podcast that are early-career practitioners, cultivating clarity about your why in coming into this field, identifying your strengths, and doing your own inner work, such that you can bring authenticity presence and courage to your therapy. In this episode, Dr. Graham Taylor speaks with Dr. Guy Macpherson, clinical psychologist, creator of the Trauma Therapist Project, and the host of the Trauma Therapist Podcast, about the importance of authenticity and defining your role in the healing process.

If you’re working with people who have been impacted by trauma, working in this area alone is very challenging. The Trauma Therapist Project is creating a community and safe space for trauma therapists to care for each other, share their experiences, and encourage each other.

 

For more information about Trauma Therapist 2.0, please visit:
https://the-trauma-therapist-project.teachable.com/p/trauma-therapist-2-0-1

For more information on the Trauma Therapist Podcast, please visit:
https://www.thetraumatherapistproject.com/podcast

For more information about The Inner Work for New Trauma Therapists, please visit: https://the-trauma-therapist-project.teachable.com/p/inner-work-for-the-new-trauma-worker

 

Promoting W.E.A.L.T.H. in Melanated Communities with Alethea Glave – Episode 91

We, as therapists, have an opportunity to educate and challenge people to the conscious and unconscious aspects of racism. In this episode, Dr. Graham Taylor speaks with Alethea Glave, LCSW, about therapy specifically addressing mental health in underserved and underrepresented communities. Together they discuss the importance of creating a safe space and being intentional on normalizing and decolonizing therapy, helping clients recognize the other dimensions to their mental health, understanding history and recognizing they systemic issues, and ways to grow and promote W.E.A.L.T.H. principles (worth, esteem, awareness, love, tuning, and healing). If we, as therapists, can have that trust in the relationship together, and this is a safest place a client can have, we can invite them to get uncomfortable and challenge the ideas and their contributions to racism.

For more information about Alethea Glave and Melanated Counseling, please visit: https://www.melanatedcounseling.com
For more information about Alethea’s work with Coordinated Behavioral Care (CBC), please visit: https://cbcare.org

Or the innovative Pathway Home Program, please visit: https://cbcare.org/innovative-programs/pathway-home/
For more information about Mental Health specifically for black communities or for information and resources, please visit: https://mhanational.org

For more information about Shawna Murray Browne, please visit: https://www.shawnamurraybrowne.com