Michele Hart: Mental Health Emergencies

Transcript

[0:00:37] Charlie Hoehn: You’re listening to Author Hour, enlightening conversations about books with the authors who wrote them. I’m Charlie Hoehn. Today’s episode is with Michele Hart, the co-author of Mental Health Emergencies. Michele is a licensed clinical social worker and in this episode, you’re going to learn how to save a life. We talk about how to help the people that you love and that you work with and that you know. When they’re facing mental health emergencies like depression, anxiety and suicide. This might be the most important episode you’ll ever hear and it’s certainly the most personal episode I’ve done. This one holds a special place in my heart. Now, here is our conversation with Michele Hart.

[0:01:34] Michele Hart: Well my journey started about 25 years ago in social work. I’ve always worked with youth and my sister in law had a traumatic experience happen in her life at the time and we had to involve the FBI. She was kidnapped and we went through FBI, we went through many agencies, this was a year-long process and as I was moving through the process, what I realized was the only person really that helped was a social worker. At that point in time in my life, that’s when I made the determination that I wanted to be a social worker. I wanted to be that person that could break through all of the red tape and break down all of the barriers and give people access, get information, while helping them and supporting them emotionally. She did that for me and my family and you know, the end result turned out positive and it turned out okay and everything worked out but the only thing that stuck with me was the social worker that helped me through this. From that point on, I started college and I started with a bachelor’s degree and couldn’t get enough of social work. That led me to my career for the last 25 years and throughout my career, I’ve worked with many individuals and every time, as recent as today, I had a parent calling me and leaving a message saying, “What do I do, how do I get through this until I can get the proper mental health?” And it’s something that has come up daily throughout my 25 year career is “What do I do as a parent, what do I do as a spouse, how do I help this person as a family member, as a coworker, as a first responder and especially as a teacher?” When the idea of this book came up, that was what we wanted to do was say, “Here’s what you can do, these are the answers without you having to learn how to be a therapist, this is how you basically do mental health CPR, this is a first responder and how to hold something until the professionals can step in” and that’s the short version of what brought me to here today.

[0:04:06] Charlie Hoehn: Wow, my gosh, I just can’t even imagine, thank you for sharing that. I cannot fathom how intense that period must have been but I’ll tell you, I’ve heard that about social workers. During those extremely traumatic times when they are needed, they are the only ones that really make things happen in really significant meaningful ways to the victims and so just to echo what you just said, my cousin’s a social worker and she got into it after watching her – I don’t want to give away too many details but watching a child go through just a horrible experience with mental illness with her mom, drug abuse, that sort of thing. Thank you for sharing that. You’ve been doing this now for 25 years and say again what your official title is?

[0:05:10] Michele Hart: I’m a licensed clinical social worker and I have been an LCSW for the past 18 years. It is right now currently, I am employed as a middle school social worker doing therapy in groups in the school. We’ve expanded this mental health framework into the schools have decided this is needed within their own buildings. I have the opportunity and the privilege to be that person.

[0:05:42] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, I think that’s probably what makes this book so great as well. It is a great book, the fact that you probably had to start with sort of not a younger audience in mind but younger people dealing with these issues. When you start there, you end up reaching a broader audience of people that understand and can actually use this advice. Tell me, was there – I know you said this is every day that you’re hearing these types of things.

[0:06:16] Michele Hart: Yes.

[0:06:17] Charlie Hoehn: Was there a particular moment where you either said, “Enough is enough, I need to make a book.” Or were you approached by your co-author Nick and he came up with the idea or did you come up with the idea, how did that happen? How’d the book actually happen?

[0:06:35] Michele Hart: Nick, in the beginning of the book is an amazing story that brought Nick to the place where he felt this book was needed. Nick is not a clinician by trade, he was a QMHA and working as a business director at the agency I worked at.

[0:06:53] Charlie Hoehn: QMHA?

[0:06:54] Michele Hart: Yes, a QMHA, qualified mental health associate, which is somebody who is not really licensed to do therapy, however, again, he found himself time and time again being in the first responder position because clinicians are busy in a small world community. That’s where I met Nick and through his experience, which is the opening story in the book, he decided that this is something everybody needs to know because he found himself over and over on the front lines. When he approached me about the book, I agreed wholeheartedly in that this is the question that’s always brought to me and I find myself answering it over and over again that why not put this in written form and let people have it. The idea was Nick’s and I jumped right on board and offered the clinical perspective and helped with just firming up from a clinician’s point of view, how can we help people.

[0:07:53] Charlie Hoehn: How can we really help people? I know that there’s a lot of valuable ideas actually, but basically, instructions in the book on what people need to do, what people need to know. If you had to pick one overarching idea that you want listeners to take away from this podcast, what would it be?

[0:08:19] Michele Hart: It would be to understand yourself. To help others, you have to help yourself first. Always maintaining a healthy physical self is key. When people around you are crumbling, we tend to crumble with them. We need to understand that we as a support person or a person in our life or ourselves, suffering with mental health illness, we need to take care of ourselves. Primarily and most importantly is self-care. Secondarily is listening skills and being aware of body positioning, being just self-aware is the best thing anybody can do for themselves when needing to handle a mental health emergency, whether it be themselves or others.

[0:09:07] Charlie Hoehn: Can you give an example of what you’re talking about with the second one? I understand, obviously, taking care of yourself is – I mean, you’re totally right, people fall apart in these situations and they totally neglect themselves in an effort to take care of others but what do you mean by the second one?

[0:09:25] Michele Hart: The second one being –

[0:09:27] Charlie Hoehn: The listening.

[0:09:28] Michele Hart: The listening. Being an active listener, an active listener is made in steps. Being present in the moment, we tend to listen, people think we listen with our ears and we actually listen with our mind and our bodies. While being an active listener, being an attentive listener, is somebody who is tuned in to what you’re saying, who is nodding and not just thinking about the next thing they want to say. They are in the moment, they are hearing, they’re giving micro expressions, they’re leaning in, they’re reassuring and re-clarifying things that they may or may not hear and avoiding at all cost assumptions. Many people hear something and then they assume and when you’re dealing with mental health, assumptions are probably one of the most dangerous things you can do. It really ties into how can you be a good listener, how can you be a good person in a mental health crisis.

[0:10:27] Charlie Hoehn: To clarify, when you say, we’re listening with our bodies, you mean, we’re listening with what we see, we’re listening with our intuition? What we can feel from the other person or the other people. Anything else or am I on point in saying that?

[0:10:47] Michele Hart: You’re very on point in saying that, we’re listening with the way we position our bodies, our body posture, we’re listening with our mind, we’re thinking about what’s being said without being judgmental. We’re clearing our mind of all of the things that happen in our daily life and we’re really tuning in to an individual to hear what they’re trying to say and clarifying with them, so that they themselves could make and come up with answers rather than as answering the questions for them.

[0:11:16] Charlie Hoehn: Why is that so important for the listener and I know that might sound like – a question with an obvious answer, really paint the picture, why does this matter so much to be a great listener and to take care of yourself? What happens if they don’t?

[0:11:35] Michele Hart: Let’s talk about the listening part of it first, which is when you’re handling a mental health crisis or a mental health emergency, you’re dealing with a very vulnerable population or yourself being vulnerable. At that point in time, people want to jump in to the fix it mode, they want to give suggestions and they want to give answers and they want to problem solve. Being a good listener isn’t a problem solving time, you’re just taking in information that that person wants to impart in that moment. It may or may not have anything to do with the final solution of the problem. But this is the immediate need of the individual. Being an acute, astute listener is something that will help get you through that first emergent need in a mental health emergency. Taking care of yourself will allow you the stamina needed, this is not something that if you go into something situation where you’re needing to help somebody in the mental health crisis or emergency, you need to be rested, you need to be in physical shape, otherwise, you find yourself falling into your own crisis. This starts with every day. There’s days we’re better at that than others and same with listening skills and one thing that does point out is that, we’re not perfect. I’ve done this for 25 years and I wish I could say that I still had all these skills down. I don’t, it’s every day, every situation, brings a new problem that might arise or a new situation that you have to really think over. But if you’re remaining mindful, if you’re remaining in the moment, and if you’re genuine with that person, it will all come together and they need to know that this – you don’t have to be perfect, you don’t have to be a trained clinician, you just have to be someone who really cares and listening is a very caring thing for people to do.

[0:13:38] Charlie Hoehn: Michelle, how do you take care of yourself? You’ve been doing this for so long, what’s your routine if you have one?

[0:13:45] Michele Hart: I do, I use mindfulness. I’m a very mindful person and you know, my basic mindfulness is breathing, I make sure that I’m in a stressful moment, I’m taking time to take a deep breath and clear my mind. I make sure I get sleep. It’s very important to me and eating balanced foods. I would love to say I’m perfect at that part of it but I’m not, I’m human. For the most part, I try to remain balanced. I sleep a little and I play a lot, I make sure that for equal parts of the stress I feel, I have an outlet that allows me to go out and have some fun and play and hike and swim and play. Play is a very important part of being mindful. You have to be able to get out there and just let your cares go free, not worry about what other people think and just have fun. That to me is one of the biggest balances for me is to just go out, I go to places and I laugh and I talk and I make sure I’m with friends and I’m with people who care about me and myself, I’m around people that I care about. I try to just keep my life balanced with work and play.

[0:15:01] Charlie Hoehn: That’s great. Listeners of this podcast will know I’m 100% with you on that suggestion. I’m a huge believer in play and I think it can mitigate against a lot of common mental health emergencies. Maybe not emergencies but it can cut them off before they reach that point. I love that. Sleep is such a big one. I always think about how we have evolved for so long and yet we have all these traits as a species that allow us to survive and thrive in inevitably, we’ve become the most successful, arguably, the most successful species on the planet. Yet we still, for every two hours we’re awake, we still need one hour of sleep and we evolved that way. If we didn’t evolve that way or if we didn’t need eight hours of sleep, per night roughly, then we would have been able to get rid of that a long time ago. I think it’s so easy for people to neglect those two things in I guess to start our modern lifestyle. Before we get to kind of the content of the book. I want to hit upon stigma of mental health, of mental illness of mental health emergencies. Now, Americans don’t really know as much – they’re starting to become more aware I think because they’re realizing it’s so common and misunderstood that they’re sort of waking up but in countries like Australia, the stigma is basically nonexistent from what I can see. It’s just a thing, you got to take care of it, it’s not looked at as a horribly negative thing or a thing to be afraid of, it’s just something you have to take care of, it’s part of your health. Why do you think stigma, de-stigmatizing mental illness and mental health emergencies is so important in our world?

[0:17:12] Michele Hart: I believe that we’re starting to recognize, first of all, we had cultural concerns where in certain cultures, you don’t recognize this as in some cultures, it was seen as you’re possessed. A lot of culture and a lot of history have been developed around mental illness but in today’s world, we’re finding that it’s not them, it’s us. It’s not another person, it’s myself. You know, we’re seeing that mental illness isn’t some separate category and that it’s the whole person, it’s our self, it’s our spouse, it’s not a category of people that we used to set aside and put in places and historically, it’s been us and them. Now it’s become everybody and we have to recognize that because throughout your life, not everybody’s going to suffer with a mental health emergency but at any given point, in anybody’s life, you’re going to have some mental health concerns. I think people now, or through de-stigmatization are learning that we can say, “You know what? I did have some post-partum depression.” “I did have some anxiety” and recognize it for what it is rather than “You’re weak or you’re lazy” and we put so many labels on it that we have to destigmatize and say, “This is just a whole body response to an event. What can we do with it?”

[0:18:38] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, it’s been so misunderstood What I’d love to talk about, you cover the gamut in your book as – you cover so many different areas of how this manifests. What I’d like to talk about since, at the time of this recording, it’s such a news worthy thing right now, is suicide. I’d like to talk about that. Now, what are your recommendations in the book for someone who is suicidal that other people may not be recognizing?

[0:19:17] Michele Hart: Well, a lot of people – what we’re recognizing is that we’re starting to put parameters on suicide, like the leading cause of death is suicide now. You know, we blamed heart and cancer and now we’re starting to see that the leading – it is the number one, especially between now, it’s gone down to 15. 15 to 34 year old’s.

[0:19:38] Charlie Hoehn: Wow.

[0:19:41] Michele Hart: The knowledge that we’ve gained just learning about it, we have to know that a lot of people thought, “Oh they’re just people are trying to get attention” and it’s not something that we’ve decided we’re going to take lightly any longer as a society embedded in every culture, every community, every school, any kind of bureaucracy we have, everybody is trained in suicide awareness now. It’s necessary because we don’t want something that can be prevented to be the number one killer of our people. It just – we just need to stop that trend. You know, we reference a lot in the suicide hotline in the book, we reference – this is not something you want to deal with alone, this is something that takes immediate mental health care, don’t try to hold it, don’t try to keep it a secret, you know, what we found is secrets do kill people and we don’t want that to be the secret you keep. Bringing it out into the open and not having the shame surrounding it. It’s something that happens when people start feeling major depression or overwhelmed and we want people to know that there is immediate help in any emergency room, in any 911, in any situation that you might need anybody. Whether it’s a coworker or a stranger in the street. Take it seriously and get them the help they need right away.

[0:31:29] Charlie Hoehn: Author Hour is sponsored by Book in a Box. For anyone who has a great idea for a book but doesn’t have the time or patience to sit down and type it out, Book in a Box has created a new way to help you painlessly publish your book. Instead of sitting at a computer and typing for a year, hoping everything works out, Book in a Box takes you through a structured interview process that gets your ideas out of your head and into a book in just a few months. To learn more, head over to Bookinabox.com and fill out the form at the bottom of the page. Don’t let another year go by where you put off writing your book. Yeah. The shame thing is massive, right? I think it’s the reason Birney Brown struck such a huge cord with people and took off as it’s just so pervasive. How do you recognize when someone is at that point, what kind of queues are you looking out for?

[0:22:26] Michele Hart: you know, the number one is, you know, the most obvious would be – they’re saying like, “I don’t want to be here anymore. I don’t want to live any longer. I can’t take this life.” It’s the wording, the finality of the statements that they might make. If you see somebody that has been very depressed and then all of a sudden they wake up and they’re very happy. That extreme shift in a 24-hour period is one of the key indicators of suicidal behavior.

[0:22:55] Charlie Hoehn: Really?

[0:22:55] Michele Hart: Yes, they’ve come to terms that they can be happy now because they have a plan. And when a lot of people, they have not been able to complete. He said that, “I was relieved” it’s that instant relief and so people that have a really big shift within 24 hours period of emotional depression into elation or even into peace and happiness, is a risk factor. Giving away belongings, isolating themselves, collecting any kind of – you know anybody that has access to weapons would really need to be watched. You want to make sure you are watching for anything that is lethal and we want to make sure that we are protecting people at that point in time because depression is something that just kind of overpowers and overshadows the logical mind.

[0:23:51] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, you know it’s very tempting for me I’m finding to talk about how can we help others but I don’t think it would be fair to do this episode without sharing a personal story or two if you don’t mind. I think it will bring some of this home. So last year, I went through just a series of very large changes in my life that I did not plan for, expect, see coming really. My wife and I got unexpectedly pregnant a few months prior. We watched her father passed away basically in front of us having a heart attack. We moved twice, I switch to a job which I love now but I wasn’t necessarily planning on it at the time. I felt I had to make that switch and then one of my best friends back home, he went through – I spent months on the phone with him trying to talk him through his depression basically, encouraging him to get help and when his parents finally forced his hand to get help, he escaped and this was in Colorado. He left and disappeared for four days and I got a message from him at night, late at night saying he was homeless, scared, didn’t know where he was, didn’t have a wallet, didn’t have anything that like please call him and he was in a dangerous part of town. All of this stuff happened basically within two months and I was scared to have a kid. It wasn’t like I wasn’t overjoyed to hear that news. I felt a loss of my independence and I was ashamed to feel that, you know? I was ashamed to not really – I just felt exhausted. I felt I didn’t have control over much of anything anymore and for several months, it really lingered in this depression which vacillated between I’m feeling sad to feeling really deeply depressed and the friends that I would normally talk to about this stuff, you know I have been doing stuff in this realm in the mental health space casually. I am not a licensed person or anything but I know a good amount about it for a long time. I know the steps to take but still my natural inclination was to hide that from the world, to hide it from my wife. You know I’ve had talks with my wife but I don’t think I ever really laid out the full extent of it. It was incredibly challenging and also really frustrating in retrospect to know that if I’d just opened up but my inclination is not to do that. It’s to hide it, to seal it off, to move forward and to isolate and I don’t know how to do that for myself. To prevent myself from – even I have Michele, a friend of mine and I have talked on the phone every week for the past two years. He lives in San Francisco, I live in Austin. He’s been through a lot of stuff himself and so we both know the importance of this and we try to keep each other in check and still, I still manage to cut him off at times. So to an individual like me, what do you tell? What do you tell a person like me who struggles with hiding?

[0:27:46] Michele Hart: Well first I would say to be – you know we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to be something and when we say to reach out and help, that’s easier said than done and understand that what you go through is very real and very much what most people do. And so as a person with your background and you play as a big thing and you put out there that these are the things that keep you balanced, you want to hide because we fear the repercussions of someone sees us as weak and understanding that that’s the stigma, right? So reducing the stigma and understanding that that’s not a sign of weakness, that’s just a sign of where we are. It is usually a time in our lives where we do have stacked up things. It’s rarely just one instance, it’s a layering effect and so what I recommend is when we start feeling these big life events. So they are somewhere out there and I don’t have it handy with me as the top 100 things in life that can cause the biggest mental health catastrophes if you will. You have divorce, death, birth, marriage, moving and it sounds like you had probably the top three of the top five happen in a two month period and at some point we do retreat within ourselves but having that person that you talk to is what you need and it isn’t always going to be the perfect situation where you retreat but having that person. And then setting up a care plan if you will when you’re not feeling that. So if care plan looks similar to these are the things that happen when I start not feeling well and –

[0:29:46] Charlie Hoehn: Kind of like a checklist almost, a procedure.

[0:29:49] Michele Hart: Telling the people, a checklist and letting people around you that love you and you trust know what this checklist is so they can be watching because when it is you, it’s hard to recognize. You have a brain-body – it’s like your brain and body are out of step with each other.

[0:30:04] Charlie Hoehn: I love that. That’s so good. It is being able to share that with the people you are in contact with regularly. Whether it’s your partner, your friends, it could even be co – I mean it’s not even a bad idea in companies and schools like you talk about, yeah.

[0:30:24] Michele Hart: Yes and care plans are becoming really an essential part of agencies and that if you’ve ever had a hard time, they ask about your health. “Do you have diabetes or what you look like when you have a diabetic episode?” And we need to move that into the mental health arena and say you know, we need to be stigmatized, “Do you have depression? Well when you start feeling depressed, what does that look like for you?” And let your friends and your co-workers help you through that minute because at that point in time, you’re not recognizing it yourself.

[0:30:53] Charlie Hoehn: Wow that’s really powerful, that good.

[0:30:57] Michele Hart: And that’s what I would recommend is to make a checklist and give it to your loved ones, give it to more than one person and let them help you through that when you get there.

[0:31:06] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, I spoke with an author a few months ago named Jonathan Braddock. He specializes in when a person has passed away through natural causes or illness or whatever, what do you do after that? He encourages people to have that checklist ready to go far in advance before you end up passing away because the will and all of this stuff that people tend to put off but this is actually something that is even more practical and important. It’s the thing that saves you before you totally spin off the rails and that is such a powerful idea. I really love that. One of the things that I wish I’d been able to keep in mind is – well there’s a few things I wish I’d kept in mind. One and I didn’t know this at the time but your brain, from what I understand, your mind perceives these major changes, the ones that you just talked about as death, as a death to yourself, as a loss to yourself and so it’s part of the grieving to be really upset and saddened by it. Also, I’ve read a theory that part of dealing with depression and such is a person has lost their courage basically because they no longer feel like the hero of their own life. They feel that their independence has been stripped and they cannot act heroic and not in cinematic terms but to have control. I wish I’d kept in perspective that even on a hero’s journey, there are difficult challenges. That’s part of what makes it a journey and it’s easy to lose sight of that if you are not taking care of yourself, if you’re not getting good sleep, if you’re just ruminating and dwelling in your own thoughts all the time and not sharing and moving yourself into a better place. So I love the idea of creating your own mental health checklist and sharing your care point and then having that system in place to keep you safe. It’s really good.

[0:33:43] Michele Hart: It is and understanding when you want to be the hero in your life, everybody does and in all steps. We never want our autonomy taken from us and part of what this book explains is don’t step in and tell people how they should be doing or what they should be doing and just listen. You know your friend he returns and you return to your friend because your friend listens not because they guide or tell you how to live your life but they listen. And that is empowering instead of removing autonomy. It’s empowering to have somebody just hear and so that is a major premise of all of this is having somebody to listen.

[0:34:24] Charlie Hoehn: Why don’t we listen?

[0:34:26] Michele Hart: We’re problem solvers. We have to multi-task and we’ve trained our society that if you are only doing one thing at a time, it’s not enough. You know you are not productive enough, you’re not this enough or that enough and in being mindful, we learned that we have actually done an injustice by teaching multitasking. We’ve got, “You know I’m liking this when I am working with you” to say. “We’ve taught you, you should be doing more than one thing at once.” Well you can’t do anything good if you are doing more than that at the time. So be mindful in the moment, do one thing at a time. We’ve taught our youth through, I’ve got a text and I have to drive and people think they are super humans now because they can do five things at once but what they are forgetting is by doing those five things, you are not accomplishing the one thing you really want to set out to do and that to me drives the problem solving. It is what we get, we got to put this in a box and put a lid on it and move on and life isn’t like that anymore. We need to sometimes take time and stop and slow down and be mindful.

[0:35:38] Charlie Hoehn: So do you think mindfulness is the key to training yourself to be a better listener, A and B, what systems do you think maybe schools need to have in place to encourage children to grow up, to be good listeners to themselves and to others?

[0:35:59] Michele Hart: The systems in place to help with mindfulness I think listening is the key. I think understanding your emotional reactions, being able to understand what triggers you and what points in time to really get to know yourself and then how you communicate to others and how the people around you communicate. So it is getting to know yourself but then taking a step outside yourself and saying, “Well this is what triggers me, however this is what I see triggers my family”. And sometimes you will see them inherit that or do that because that’s what they’ve been taught. So in schools they are teaching a lot of character education for a lack of a better word to get specific on programs. Just basic, they are being mindful and they are taking time out and they are teaching kids now to step back and do something right rather than do something quickly. Quality rather than quantity and I’ve seen a great leaps and bounds in the 15, 25 years I’ve been with the schools often on that, I’ve seen that just be some of the biggest changes in the school setting.

[0:37:15] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, that’s really heartening to hear and I want to transition actually to kind on that lighter note, can you talk about some of your biggest, for a lack of better word, success stories. People who have implemented the things that you teach in your book and have used it to great effect.

[0:37:38] Michele Hart: I’ve had several stories that I feel have been – that have made me prop up a little bit and feel proud and one was a person who really had severe enough anxiety that they literary couldn’t drive a car anymore. In the area I live, it’s very urban, lots of traffic, high speeds, you know all roads are 50 and above. So, you don’t go anywhere with a slow pace and anybody with the slightest bit of anxiety can be triggered by all of that and they were able to –

[0:38:11] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah or somebody who has been in an accident before.

[0:38:13] Michele Hart: Yes, if you have a very close family member that’s working right now with the book on that very thing, a very traumatic accident and this particular individual was able to read through the book and understand how to slow themselves down. How to take care of themselves and it took a few months but they reported to me, the last discussion we had, that they’re driving not long distances, not on the freeway now but they are on the road. Another individual actually did get on the freeway and is able to drive his family around and is able to now not jump and beep and become rage-full behind the wheel. It really has helped with a lot of the road rage and driving seems to be the trigger where I am at this moment. Another individual when I had a book signing waited in line since my signing was at 1:00 and he had been waiting for a couple of hours because he felt he needed this book. He had read excerpts and felt he needed this book and he had been a vet. Well he is a vet and contacted me after he read it and he just was so thankful that sometimes just knowing you are not alone and this is real is enough for people. I think that is one of my proudest times is when somebody reads this and says, “This is real.” This is very everyday language, it’s not a textbook. It’s not trying to make me become something I am not. It’s just telling me that what I am experiencing is real and valid and I would say those are some of my greatest success stories.

[0:39:55] Charlie Hoehn: That is awesome. Now I want our listeners to really take all of this in and incorporate it into their lives and so for one, let’s start with a challenge. What can you tell our listeners to do this week from your book that will make a positive impact on their life?

[0:40:19] Michele Hart: Well I would say I would like them to identify any barriers they themselves have with mental illness to really sit down and take a look at themselves and say, “What was integrated in my life with mental illness and what are my views of it?” And try to expand that a little bit of a non-judgmental perspective, if you have a judgmental perspective. Some people have very negative interactions with people with mental illness but that is the exception not the rule. To step back and say it’s every day, it’s in our lives. I would like people to step back and evaluate their own self how they feel, are they taking enough care of themselves, what can I do to be better to myself and understanding your fears. You don’t have to be a warrior or champion or a hero when you’re doing this. It’s okay to have fear, it’s okay to go into it and say, “This scares me”. It’s okay to be afraid. It’s okay to face your fears and understand that we do have fears and it’s okay. It’s okay to have fears when you are dealing with mental illness not that you fear the person but you fear, “Am I going to do the right thing?” You being there is the right thing. So understanding them as a person is what somebody needs, not expertise at the moment.

[0:41:43] Charlie Hoehn: Right and really just to add to that last point, I think being aware of when you are reflexively giving advice, when somebody is not asking for it. This is especially common men to women obviously. I think that’s really good. It is just examining your beliefs, how you feel about mental illness. I’d love to do a giveaway of your book and I’m not totally sure what would be a meaningful entry. So I will put something out there and Michele, if you have a better idea please jump in. On authorhour.co, the website where this interview is, go to Michele’s interview, leave her a comment at the very bottom and just express things and maybe share how this has affected you in some way. Share your story or share how this is going to impact you going forward, does that sound good?

[0:42:52] Michele Hart: That sounds wonderful. I would love that.

[0:42:54] Charlie Hoehn: Great. So, we’ll figure out a way to giveaway a few copies there and we’ll get in touch with you if we really love your comment and that would be awesome for us to see. So finally, how can our listeners connect with you and maybe follow your journey? I don’t know if you do any speaking or workshops or if you are solely doing social work throughout the year but what’s the best way for people to stay connected with you?

[0:43:20] Michele Hart: Well the book itself, Mental Health Emergencies, has an Instagram. Myself and my co-author, Nick Benas is on LinkedIn and then we have author’s pages on Amazon. I am currently open to speaking engagements. I don’t have any booked. I do work fulltime but I love this topic and I would love to be able to educate people. I do book signings and I put them on Amazon on my author’s page. When I have a signing, I post it in advance. So, anybody is welcome to show up whether you buy a book or not, I’ve had people show up and just want to talk and I am happy to have conversations.

[0:44:02] Charlie Hoehn: Excellent, well it’s a fantastic book. Again, thank you so much for writing it with Nick and thank you so much for being here on the show.

[0:44:10] Michele Hart: Absolutely, thank you.

[0:44:17] ALEX: This is Alex, how can I help you?

[0:44:19] Charlie Hoehn: Hi Alex, my name is Charlie. I am doing a podcast about mental health emergencies and I just wanted to show my listeners that they should call the Suicide Hotline, that it’s safe and that it’s a good positive thing. So, I just wanted to call and say hello and maybe remove some of the fear from taking that first step so that’s why I called.

[0:44:42] ALEX: That’s great.

[0:44:43] Charlie Hoehn: So that’s all I got for you.

[0:44:45] ALEX: Hey, well let your callers know or your listeners that we’re here 24/7 and we’re here to provide help, okay?

[0:44:52] Charlie Hoehn: All right.

[0:44:52] ALEX: We have all sorts of prevention services with anxiety, coping skills, problem solving skills, depression, relationship problems, anger management and substance use, okay? Along with suicide. Making the effort to call is really where it’s at and there’s always somebody here to listen, to be heard.

[0:45:13] Charlie Hoehn: Many thanks to Michele Hart for being on the show. You can buy her book, Mental Health Emergencies, on amazon.com and don’t forget, we’re giving away a few copies so head over to authorhour.co, look at Michele’s episode page, scroll down, leave a comment and we might send you a signed copy of her book. Thanks again for listening to Author Hour, enlightening conversations about books with the authors who wrote them. We’ll see you next time.