Into the Fold: Issues in Mental Health

For the month of September, the Hogg Foundation is celebrating National Recovery Month. Throughout the month we’ll be highlighting the creativity, resilience, and leadership of people in recovery from mental and substance use conditions, and the many things our grantee partners are doing to transform mental health in their communities.

For this episode, we talk to two friends from within the Hogg Foundation’s wide network of changemakers. First, Jason Howell, executive director of RecoveryPeople, about the new film Humanly Possible, which explores the journeys of people recovering from substance use conditions. The film was produced with funding support from the Hogg Foundation. The second segment is a conversation with Hannah Slyzk, a past recipient of the Hogg Foundation’s Moore Fellowship for doctoral research, about youth mental health.

Related Links:

https://hogg.utexas.edu/recovery-month

https://recoverypeople.org/humanly-possible/premiere/

https://hogg.utexas.edu/rethinking-youth-suicide

Historically, the mental health system, and the conversation surrounding it, has given more value to the expert opinions of providers and clinicians than the experiences of those living with mental health conditions. For well over a decade now, the Hogg Foundation bas been elevating the visibility of mental health consumers and has thrown its full weight behind the peer support and recovery movement. But right at The University of Texas at Austin, there has been the full flowering of a peer support consumer specifically for students. Called Longhorn SHARE, it was launched in 2022 with the support of the University's Counseling and Mental Health Center. In this episode we talk to Adrian Lancaster, coordinator of Longhorn SHARE and a staunch advocate for student peer support.

How Peer Support Improves Community Mental Health

Peer Support in the Criminal Justice System

Peer Support for Young Adults

A New Mental Health App Comes to UT

Mental health care and recovery services have historically prioritized a clinical medical model. Under this model, expertise resided almost exclusively in the hands of professionally trained healthcare providers. Beginning in the 1960s and 70s, however, a recovery model emerged that put greater emphasis on the self-determination of “consumers” of mental health services and the expertise of individuals with lived experience of mental health challenges.

This episode of Into the Fold was recorded onsite at PeerFest 2024 and guest hosted by Anna Gray and Janet Paleo. Anna and Janet are co-founders of Prosumers International, and Anna is also its executive director. Rooted in the belief that purposeful recovery is possible, Prosumers aims to create an empowering environment where people with mental health challenges can achieve recovery on their own terms.

Anna and Janet spoke with Dr. Octavio N. Martinez, Jr., executive director of the Hogg Foundation, to learn more about the Hogg Foundation’s support of a mental health recovery model that prioritizes the voices of individuals with lived experience.

PeerFest is an educational and celebratory event for Texans who have faced mental health challenges and are on a journey to wellness.

Dr. William DeFoore, author of, among other books, Anger Among Angels: Shedding Light on the Darkness of the Human Soul. His keynote address is titled, "Goodfinding: A Comprehensive Approach to Mental Health Incorporating Emotional Intelligence and Positive Psychology."

 Sir Billy Dorsey (yes, an actual knight) will be delivering his keynote address, “In the Right Seat: Finding Purpose at the Intersection of Passion, Proficiency, and Positioning.” 

“Texas has a vibrant community of people who are using their personal recovery journeys to advocate for broader change in mental health. PeerFest 2024 is a not-to-be-missed chance for people to tap into this community, to be challenged and inspired, and to infuse that energy into their lives going forward.

By some accounts, young people's relationship to technology is unfolding crisis. It is now commonplace for adults to lament the “screen time” of young people and worry about its effect on their social lives and mental health. In 2023, the American Psychological Association issued a health advisory focusing on adolescent social media use, and the U.S. Surgeon General has said that social media can have “a profound risk of harm to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents. There is evidence that social media may contribute to issues like depression, anxiety, toxic social comparison, sleep problems, body image issues, and disordered eating.”

But is that the whole story? And if there is real cause for for alarm, what should be done? Dr. Carrie James and Dr. Emily Weinstein are co-founders of the Center for Digital Thriving at Harvard University. In their book Behind Their Screens, Emily and Carrie draw on a survey of more than 3,500 teens with the objective of adding to our understanding of teens’ online lives. In this episode we explore how young people navigate our increasingly networked world and how we balance safety, empathy, and technology in response. 

Related Links:

Improve Your Media Literacy During COVID

Mental Health and Media: Stop Raising Awareness Already

Dr. Melvin P. Sikes was a member of renowned unit of African American fighter pilots who flew during World War II known as the Tuskegee Airmen. After the war, Dr. Sikes earned a doctorate in education administration from the University of Chicago. He went on to become dean of Wilberforce University in Ohio and Bishop College in Marshall, Texas, a clinical psychologist with the Veterans Administration Hospital in Houston, and as we knew him best at the Hogg Foundation – a University of Texas at Austin professor of education psychology and a one-time member of the Hogg Foundation’s National Advisory Council. For Black HIstory Month, we are taking a look back at this remarkable man and his impact.

In this episode of Into the Fold, not only do we get contemporary analysis courtesy of Elizabeth Stauber, Hogg Foundation archivist and records manager, but we hear from Dr. Sikes himself, by way of a vintage 1972 interview in which he discusses the challenges of balancing intellectual rigor with a commitment to inclusivity, how higher education can answer the call of a rapidly changing society, and what support committed academics need in order to succeed while avoiding burnout.

In a bonus segment, we also include a brief interview with Adrian Fowler, former Hogg Foundation program officer and a close friend and colleague of Dr. Sikes. 

 Related links:

From the Archives: Dr. Kenneth Clark on Racism and Child Well-Being

From the Archive: Efua Sutherland on Theatre, Literature and Self-rediscovery

For this first podcast of the new year we are taking a look back at the National Day of Racial Healing. The National Day of Racial Healing is a nationwide observance that also coincides with Martin Luther King Day. For the second year in a row, the Hogg Foundation joined the celebration by holding an event in Austin, this time in partnership with Austin Justice Coalition, a local nonprofit organization dedicated to improving quality of life for people who are Black, Brown, and poor in the Austin community. It was on Sunday, January 14, the day right before MLK Day, that our host, Ike Evans, joined about 80 other people braved the cold for a day of facilitated dialogue, fellowship, music, a dab of spoken word poetry, and food. We visit with the two facilitators from the day, Dr. Angela Ward and Dr. Mary Rice-Booth, who are both educators who write, speak, facilitate, and think deeply on matters of equity.

Related links:

Brave Spaces for All

Episode 149: Juneteenth and Mental Emancipation

Racial Trauma and Resilience in African American Adults

it was back in 2017 that we had on Dr. Art Markman, co-host of the KUT show Two Guys on Your Head, to talk about political climate as a chronic stressor. And so, six years after the fact, we thought that it would make sense to close that circle by inviting on Dr. Markman's partner from Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Bob Duke. We recently had him come to the studio for a discussion of gratitude and an exploration of just what it means to stop and be thankful.

Dr. Duke is the Marlene and Morton H. Meyerson Centennial professor of Music at the Butler School of Music at the University of Texas at Austin. To quote him on gratitude, "When you do think about the capriciousness of life experiences, to me that is a real incentive for even greater levels of gratitude, because once you sort of recognize that you're not the author of your own story entirely, and that there are a lot of things that happen in your life to the good, which you actually had very little to do with, and it doesn't mean that what you did, you had no part in this. It's just that there's a lot of luck involved."

In addition, we're also taking a look back at the year in mental health, through a sampling of some of our most representative episodes from 2023. 

Related Links:

Diversity, Awareness and Wellness in Action

Teaching in a Time of Division

Podcast host Ike Evans speaks with two UT Austin students currently working with the Hogg Foundation’s operations department and a counselor from the UT Counseling and Mental Health Center’s Counselors in Academic Residence program (CARE) about the heightened stress students are feeling as final exams approach and the self-care tools that help them cope. Carissa Ceasor is a freshman pursuing a Rhetoric and Writing and African American Diasporic Studies double major, Montse Lopez is a third-year student majoring in Biology with a field of study in Psychology, and Tony LeBlanc is a CARE counselor embedded in the McCombs School of Business.  

For this episode, we offer a look back at Young Minds Matter 2023! We drop in on some of the attendees, as well as our featured guest, Brandie Meister, youth advocate, published author, and vice president of Real Queens Fix Each Other's Crown, an Austin-based organization devoted to improving the mental health of women and girls. it is also the debut of our first guest host, Nakia Sims, a member of the Hogg Foundation Contributors Circle!

Related links: