Peer Support on Campus

August 19, 2024 00:36:35
Peer Support on Campus
Into the Fold: Issues in Mental Health
Peer Support on Campus

Aug 19 2024 | 00:36:35

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Show Notes

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.

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[00:00:00] Speaker A: Into the Fold is part of the Texas podcast Network, the conversations changing the world brought to you by the University of Texas at Austin. The opinions expressed in this podcast represent the views of the hosts and guests and not of the University of Texas at Austin. Hi, welcome to into the Fold, the mental health podcast. I am your host, Ike Evans, and today I'm delighted to bring you episode 164, peer support and student well being. [00:00:29] Speaker B: And those have all been so lovely and personal and speak a lot to the effort that the students put in. And this is a thing I look forward to every week, and it's a place where I feel like I can let go. This is my respite. This is my safe place. This is my home on campus. I didn't think I'd find my community and how I have. And then I think the most compelling and meaningful feedback to me has been from the shared sports specialists themselves and the community that we've built. I've said so many times that I feel the most safe in a room of my own students than anywhere else in my life. [00:01:01] Speaker A: Historically, the mental health system and the conversation surrounding it has given more value to the expert opinions of providers and clinicians than to the experiences of those living with mental health conditions. But for a while now, that has been changing. For well over a decade, the Hogg foundation has been elevating the visibility of mental health consumers and has thrown its full weight behind the peer support and recovery movement. But did you know that right here at the University of Texas at Austin, there's been the full flowering of a peer support community specifically for students? Called Longhorn Share, it was first launched in 2022 with the support of the university's counseling and mental health center. Its first and only coordinator is our guest for this episode. Adrian Lancaster has dedicated his life to student mental health and well being. With the fall semester soon to ramp up, there's no better time to have him in our studio for a conversation about what recovery and peer support looks like for our campus community? [00:02:12] Speaker C: Okay, well, Adrian, welcome to the podcast. [00:02:16] Speaker B: Thank you so much. Happy to be here. [00:02:18] Speaker C: So I would just love to know a little bit more about Longhornshare, how it got off the ground, or the initial ideating that led to it, and any major milestones along the way. [00:02:33] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I was actually hired in 2021 to create a mental health related peer support program at Utah. I was really invested already, after having worked at the university since 2015 in trying to figure out ways for students to connect with each other and support each other. I had been working in student support related roles where they would come to my office, cry, talk about things they were struggling with. And there were so many repeated refrains and a lot of them leading to, I'm the only one. And obviously, I knew that wasn't true because I talked to thousands of individual students. But I often found myself thinking, man, if I could just get them in the same room together, they would experience so much more validation and realize that a lot of these struggles, while not obviously the same, weren't singular, they weren't unusual. So I was hired to create this program because for many years, there had been students in student government and just individually, anecdotally, who'd been asking for something like peer support at UT and specifically around mental health. Originally, at least, because there's been this growth in demand for clinical services through the counseling and mental health center, there's an impression that they don't have enough availability, that there's a limitation on how much support that they can receive on the clinical side when they're struggling with something. Right. Which both is and isn't true. Right. It's always more complicated than that. But I think after Covid, because everyone was observing this rise in loneliness and just difficulties around connection and kind of social anxiety and all of the things that came post Covid, among students especially, I think that was the impetus behind the decision to finally create this program. So they had to hire somebody to create it. And that was me, which is interesting because I was nothing. I don't have a clinical background in mental health. I have a background in what was called human relations in my master's program. It's under the counseling and school psychology program. But I mostly learned how to be an academic advisor, how to do career counseling, things like that non clinical space. And I could have gone the clinical track and realized that I really loved working with students in academic advising because we got to focus on their strengths and. And goals and values and the impact they wanted to make in the world. And so I ended up leaning that direction and then slowly have worked my way back toward mental health again, which I think is really funny. But I've always just had a knack for creating community among students and kind of listening in ways that made them feel heard. And so I think this is not me bragging on myself, but maybe a little bit. I'm good at gaining students trust and helping them see the strengths that they have in themselves. And so the big part of this program has been, well, this is a peer support program. I'm not a peer. I will not be involved. I should not be there. That's sort of not the point. Right. So how do I create a program that will be for students without them? So the biggest first decision I made before the pilot, before we launched any of that, was to put together a student advisory group. We didn't call it a committee group. Sounded more friendly. Right. I was just ten student leaders who'd had experience doing peer related leadership activities on campus, and so we met for a couple of hours every week that first semester in the fall after I was hired to discuss where there were gaps on campus in peer related programs and what students feelings were around and how they talked about mental health, what skills they would need to learn if they were to do peer support work at UT. And then we started practicing those skills, sort of testing them out, as I was sort of putting together this curriculum for training peer supporters at UT through this program. And we decided to name it the Longhorn Cher project toward the end of that fall semester in 2021, after a lot of debate. And CheR is an acronym which stands for support, healing, active listening, reciprocity, and empowerment. The e almost stood for empathy, and we decided to go with empowerment instead. Because one of the things that the students and I both really wanted for the program is for it to not feel like this is a place where people go and talk about their feelings and everybody looks at them with sad eyes. No, we're trying to empower them to know how to seek help, know what their boundaries and needs are, how to define their feelings, how to support other people competently and feel good about creating community through mutual support. So much more of an empowerment than empathy vibe, obviously. Yeah. [00:07:21] Speaker C: Okay, so I want to ask a follow up on something you said that sort of stood out your skill at trust building with students. I mean, if there's anything, I guess, especially, like, if you were to give tips to someone else on doing that, what would that look like? [00:07:45] Speaker B: Sure. I think a lot of it is just seeing the person or people with you or across from you as equally capable, equally wise, if not more people that you can learn from and not making decisions without them that impact them ever, if you can help it. And it's complicated because I get paid to do this work, right. And I have to make some final decisions. But I think a big part of trust building is just assuming that there are things that the people in the room know that you don't and that you need to know them, and that knowing those things will benefit everyone and being really, really kind of, almost obnoxiously authentic. That's a huge piece of it, too. I don't. There used to be a version of me before I transitioned, because I'm trans, before I went to college, before I lived and had my life kind of broken down to pieces and then built back up again several times that would have just, I don't know, done what I thought was right, and I would act like a chameleon, and I'd be molding myself in different spaces to what I think they'd want from me. And I can't do that anymore. Physically, emotionally, literally can't do that. So what they get with me is the same person I am in my office, with my colleagues, with my wife at home, and I think that makes a big difference. And I think seeing that you're not going to be a different person, you're not going to say one thing to my face and then turn around and explain it differently or misrepresent it to someone else somewhere else. I know how you'll explain it, because I know this is who you are. And authenticity is a big piece that I think that students struggle with, too, at the college age, speaking mostly of traditionally aged college students. But, of course, I think it's something lots of people struggle with. Just there's a vulnerability in that, where if you are really in need of support or a friend, you don't want this one thing about you to be what turns them off from liking you, from thinking you're cool, all of that stuff. The social risk is really high, and I think not having ever really been taught communication skills, just human ones in school, that's not something they teach you. They don't teach you. How to have a healthy relationship is something that our program has really ended up focusing on quite a bit. [00:10:09] Speaker C: I would love to know more about how the program works. You know, what skill sets are required, what is the, I guess, the cadence of activities during the semester and kind of how it all flows. [00:10:24] Speaker B: Sure, I'll start with the skill piece, because that was one of the big questions with the original advisory group, and we ended up deciding and realizing, really, that I don't need to teach people about their own lived experience. So peer support in any field or any area, right? There's recovery, peer support, for example, for folks in recovery from substance use or misuse, and a lot of the same skills are taught. So you know your lived experience, you know what you've been through. I know more about my own identity than somebody else's, obviously. And so it's using that as sort of the connection. And I give everybody this sort of skeleton of the skills that they can hang their lived experiences upon, if I'm using an awkward metaphor. So it's mostly communication and group facilitation types of skills. There are some kind of paracounselling skills. Basically, active listening is a huge sort of range of skills and micro skills, motivational interviewing techniques, and nothing too clinical. Right. But these are all skills and strategies that we can use to relate to each other that aren't that hard to learn. And that's the beauty of it, really, is that the first thing I teach students is just how to ask for consent before just jumping into advice. When somebody comes to you with a concern, is it practicing saying, are you looking for advice? Or do you just want to vent? Or how can I support you with this? Instead of assuming? And that makes such a big difference. It's part of our culture now. It's almost a joke, sort of, hey, how would you like me to show up for you right now? And it's kind of said with this little smirk, because we know we're doing it on purpose, but it also is so effective and everybody appreciates it so much that it just creates safety and trust in the environment anyway, just the intention of the communication. Yeah. So going on from that, what they end up doing most of the time are share support specialists, is what we call them, because it's not a state licensure or state certification, like peer support specialist certification, specifically for UT. But they have peer communities. We call them shared communities. We don't call them peer support groups because there's still a little bit more of a mental health clinical lean to that. And what we're really hoping to create is just spaces to be yourself and kind of a mess and know that you can still support other people and show up and see each other fully. Right. So those are every week we've got different topics that the students pick. They proposed during their class. To me, I don't ever say no unless they're two people trying to do the, you know, two groups trying to do the same topic, but they range, so they're related to identity, culture and mental health experiences or wellness goals or social struggles, that kind of thing. So like, for example, anxiety. The tea is capitalized. They drink hot tea, talk about anxiety. They don't have to have a diagnosis, but it's a bunch of. Generally, I think, apparently, because I'm never there, stressed out students who just want to be around other people and sort of vent and have that be okay. Shylong horn society is another one for students who are shy or socially anxious. They don't need a social anxiety diagnosis, right, but they are in some way struggling to communicate or connect with people, and so they have a space for that. But we also have had spaces for students with ADHD where you can sort of unmask and play with fidgets and color and practice things that they individually struggle with. I, as a person with ADHD, understand this part, but, like, not talking over people, and they practice that in their space, whatever they want to do, the people who show up to them can kind of shape where the direction of those meetings go as well. So it's not just the students who are facilitating it that have all the power in the room. So we're really focused on making non hierarchical peer support environments where everybody feels like they have something meaningful to contribute, which is important. So that's a big piece. That's like one of the main things that the students spend their time on. But we also have what we're calling share circles, which are basically very basic story circles or talking circles. Indigenous cultures have practiced many varieties of circles across time and space and history. And so the version that we do, obviously, is, doesn't have a specific cultural route, but it is a turn based kind of around a theme. Student organizations, classrooms, other communities will request our students to go out to their space during their meeting time. And so we bring a peer support experience to them. Basically give them everybody a moment to speak, to be heard. Everybody practices listening, and the students who are facilitating it craft questions for each one of those circles based on whatever the person who requested it wants their students to talk about or feels like they need space to open up about or get real about and things like that. And we've done lots of those. That's probably the share experience that more people have had on campus, is when we come to them and do share circles, which has been really cool. Yeah, we've played around with having individual peer support. It's not something that I feel like is as needed anymore. There are more options for virtual therapy and both inside and outside of CMHC with some contracts that they've created, so it's just not as utilized. So we're not really doing that as much. But we have a request form on our website in case somebody wants to meet with any of the students, and all of our students have bios on our website, interest areas, spoken languages, in case someone wants to meet with somebody who speaks their native language, just to have that home experience, that feeling, safety and comfort. But yeah. And then, you know, we're out on campus tabling. We'll do collaborative events. We had Cher circles at the Blanton in a series last year with three different topics and a student tour guide who picked artwork to reflect upon as part of that experience with this sort of circle structure, which was really cool. And we've had a couple of adventure trips with rec sports. So we integrated this peer support and circle activities and reflection activities into their weekend backpacking adventure trips, which went really well. So we're gonna keep doing those too. Yeah. [00:16:51] Speaker C: Okay. And do you have any sense of the number of students that you have reached in any given semester, maybe, or even overall? [00:17:05] Speaker B: You know, it's an interesting question because we still see shared communities as confidential spaces and we have interest forms and we track the number of people who come. We're starting to try to track still anonymously the difference between who is returning, who is new, etcetera. That's tricky to. To do, though, without taking down personal information. I know that we've served with shared circles, at least 1000 at this point. We've been to classrooms of 50 people and break into smaller circles for those. And that's sort of the way that we can handle larger groups is just bring more students to facilitate with shared communities. That's hard to say. Yeah, we track week by week. They all have, and we've had anywhere from ten to 16 each semester. They change each semester. And this past semester, all of them had regular attendance of at least several, like the size of a therapy group, basically. So. And then they rotate in and out because we also don't require people to go every time. So having the flexibility is important because that mean if you sign up for group therapy, then you have to go every time. And we wanted to make it easier for people to be there or not if they had other things come up. I wish I could give you a better number, but. Yeah. [00:18:25] Speaker C: Okay. And one thing that I'm also curious about is, I guess, how demographically representative the share support specialists. Yeah, the share support specialists are. [00:18:38] Speaker B: Yeah. See, and it's funny because it's not like we can really, especially now, say we want to represent all racial and cultural identities roughly proportionate to the population at UT. But I do say we are looking for people with a wide range of lived experiences, identities, past struggles, stuff like that might list some things could be related to culture, identity, gender identity, et cetera. So that's probably a reason why we have an over representation of. Of students from less represented identities at UT, for example, I mean, each cohort has been used to be 30, and it's about 20 now because I have capacity as a human being that is limited. And. Yeah, you know, but of the. I want to say the two last cohorts we had, I think I worked it out. It was like 11% black students, for example. The percentage at UT is, like four. Yeah. And then we have a pretty high proportion of pre health students. And I think we're. The biggest kind of racial ethnic group that we have is south asian, at least has been in the past. And so, you know, it's interesting to see definitely more women than men. Few non binary folks. Just depends on the year. [00:20:02] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:20:03] Speaker B: But people who are interested in building community that is authentic, that is non hierarchical, it tends to be a pretty overlapping group of people. Yeah, I think that's a bit. And I think the last two cohorts ended up being roughly 50% queer. [00:20:21] Speaker C: Okay. [00:20:21] Speaker B: And this generation is more open to being open about that, too, but I don't think that's an accident. [00:20:27] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:20:28] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:20:29] Speaker C: And so I'm just curious about your own lived experience. However much you feel comfortable glossing for our listeners, that kind of, you know, put you on the trajectory that you've been on. [00:20:43] Speaker B: Yeah. Gosh. I'll try to keep this brief. I mean, I'm from Chicago originally, the suburbs, grew up lower middle class, eventually ended up somewhere around middle class. [00:20:54] Speaker C: Terrific city, right? [00:20:55] Speaker B: Beautiful city. I lived in the suburbs, though. It was an extremely white, kind of dull, no offense to the area and anybody who lives in Plainfield suburb, and it wasn't very inspiring. [00:21:06] Speaker C: Right. [00:21:06] Speaker B: I got to college, and then I met my people. So I have that. I share that experience with a lot of my students, obviously, like, knowing that this is. This can't be all there is, and then being inspired by and learning from, like, all of the different people and all their experiences that you get to meet while in college. But I was queer since. I mean, I came out as bisexual and then lesbian and then pansexual and then trans. So I've just been an evolving door of coming out reveals with my family, which has been, you know, more or less not great. My father's side of the family no longer talks to me. So, I mean, that rejection has impacted me in a lot of ways, and some of them very good, because I have very strong beliefs about letting people make decisions for their lives that they feel are the best for them and not placing judgment on those decisions, because we're all where we're at for reasons. And I think being kind is the most important thing. And letting people have autonomy and develop self understanding, that's their own. And then what else? I have anxiety and adhd. So I talk about that openly with my students. I think it's important for them to see me teaching a class, running a program with diagnosed mental health disorders and still doing it really well. And in some ways, I think it makes me more understanding of and flexible with the students. So my course requirements are, I mean, they're written down, there are deadlines, but they know that they can come to me if they're going through something and let me know I need another couple days and then I'm not going to turn them away. That's huge. So, I mean, ways that I've felt like people haven't understood me or haven't been flexible enough or haven't been compassionate enough or extended curiosity, I try to do that with all of my students and modeling that for them, too, at the same time. But, yeah, I'm married to a trans woman who's a therapist. So we have great conversations, actually, all the time. We engage in extremely healthy conflict. And that's not sarcastic. It's actually just so, so healthy. It's gross. And we met at UT. She was an academic advisor. And, yeah, I have. I also had almost forgot about this entire chapter, but when I went to graduate school the first time, right out of underground at, I developed anorexia. So when I started in a master's program, it was a college student affairs program, and I was only there for a semester. I got straight a's and lost 50 pounds. It was a scary, dark place in my life, and it was out of state at Penn State. And then I ended up making the decision that I needed to go home. And so I sort of floundered around and worked places that sucked for a few years and figured out what else I wanted to do with my life, and I knew I wanted it to be something that would be related to mental health in some way. So I ended up going to graduate school thinking I'd do the certificate in eating disorder counseling, and I didn't do that, but that's because I discovered academic advising, which at the time was magical to me. It was so collaborative, at least the way that my supervisors did it. It was very, where do you want to go? How can I help you get there? And it wasn't just, here are the classes you need to take. So that sort of perspective on how to work with students definitely translated over quite a bit to everything else I've done. At Ut. Yeah, I'm fine now, obviously, right? Yeah. [00:24:19] Speaker C: I would love to know about the feedback and response that the program has gotten or you yourself and any anecdotes that kind of testify to the impact that you want to have on students. [00:24:35] Speaker B: Sure. Well, one thing I trained to be an instructor of mental health first aid, it's the full eight hour, three year certification course so that I could train my students. And then myself and other colleagues on campus realized, oh, I could do this for staff and faculty too. So I've started doing some of those. Last summer, I think I certified about 150 staff on campus, which, you know, it's a large campus, we can always do more. But that was something I hadn't anticipated being able to offer. And hearing back from those staff, random emails, I bump into them on the sidewalk and they'll say, hey, I use this skill from mental health first aid training. I talked to a student who was contemplating suicide and I knew what to do and that felt really good. And so that it's not, it's not perfect training, right? No eight hour course on how to support people and mental health is going to be perfect, but it's nice to hear that feedback from them. And we get man, share circles probably have the most data on students feelings or experiences or feedback on that, and it's been overwhelmingly positive. We have like 98% of students consistently since we've been doing these, feel more connected to the people in their community. After doing the circle, which is amazing things like share communities, when we take feedback from them, we always ask for qualitative tell us about your experience. And those have all been so lovely and personal and speak a lot to the effort that the students put in. And this is a thing I look forward to every week. And it's a place where I feel like I can let go. This is my respite. This is my safe place. This is my home on campus. I didn't think I'd find my community and how I have. And then I think the most compelling and meaningful feedback to me has been from the shared support specialists themselves and the community that we've built. I've said so many times that I feel the most safe in a room of my own students than anywhere else in my life. I can let go and be myself and know that we're doing something that means a lot to all of us, which is not what I expected when I got this job. I thought, this is a cool opportunity. What a neat thing. I get to build a program, right? I had some good people thoughts about why this was important, but it didn't really hit me until it was real what an impact that this could make on the people who are learning these skills and how they could apply them. Everywhere I hear about students saying, I can talk to my dad about my mental health, or we actually have healthy conversations in my home now with my family. And that wasn't the intention of the program, but that's huge. And I just. Anecdote last week received a very late giant card with a bunch of very chunky paragraphs from students who'd graduated from the program and from UT. And, you know, one of my favorite comments was, I've learned how to be myself by your example. Essentially, one girl said, you give great hugs. I could melt and heal in them all day. And I as a man, feel like creating that level of safety and trust that I can have this student who is female say that my hugs feel safe and healing to her. That's big for me. We're always trying to heal masculinity, right? But that means a lot. Just, they love each other. I mean, I get. I have reflection assignments that I need to just look at for some sort of study because what they write in these reflections about their experiences is just, this has changed my life. This has been a transformative experience. I feel like we've done something really meaningful on campus. This has been the best thing I've ever done in college. And a few people have said in my life, that's a lot. And I have a wall full of other cards from students talking about how being in this program impacted them personally and their relationships and lives. And, you know, that is the best, honestly. And they know that they're doing something that's theirs. So in everything that happens in their share community isn't because of me, it's because they came up with it and I can consult with them, but mostly it's them. And seeing that something they come up with is actually impacting people is huge. I think that does a lot for self efficacy, self confidence and a sense of purpose, all of that. [00:28:56] Speaker C: Have there been things that you have found yourself needing to. To troubleshoot frequently while you've been managing the program? [00:29:05] Speaker B: Just my own capacity. Right. As a single human being, I had no idea how much work it would be because I've never been the only person in charge of anything before in my life. So, self compassion, obviously, I learn the thing I've had to figure out the most is just how to make it all manageable and still accessible, and not by reducing the number of students so far, right. For example, that they are overwhelmed with work because I don't want to put pressure on them. This is supposed to be, this is supposed to benefit them too, right? They're not just creating a space and it's not for them. So, yeah, I mean, I think we've been pretty successful. It's just taken a few, you know, a couple years. So we're just about to start our third full year of the program. So overall, I've kind of been surprised at how smooth most of it's been. The important stuff, we haven't had any issues in shared communities. We've gotten really great feedback from everyone. Really. One negative survey response was like, this person showed up late. I'm like, well, that happens. That's the worst we've ever heard. I'm astounded, actually, but I think it says a lot about the level of care and intention that I think both I and definitely the students have put into it. So troubleshooting has just been, how do I rest and not work overtime all of the time? And that's important too, because I have to model that for them. If I'm overwhelmed and overburdened, I know that is going to in some way place some burden on them for like, well, are you okay? I want them to be able to come to me and not feel like they're going to stress me out. So that's been a lot of self work, really, than program adaptation. [00:30:46] Speaker C: We are almost at the beginning of the fall semester, so if there's anything that you would like to plug, either regarding the program or just anything that's upcoming that you would want, particularly student listeners to be aware of, now's your opportunity. [00:31:05] Speaker B: Thank you. Yeah. One of the new things I'm trying to do with the program is equipping more people on campus, more students in particular, with some of the skills that I've been training the shared support specialists in, most specifically how to facilitate share circles. So I would love to work with more populations of students, and we're going to be training a lot of student leaders in disability student organizations and related to disability cultural center, et cetera, with how to do this. But that's something I would love to do. It's a capacity building experience. This would be a three hour training. I would love more students to just have this tool to help each other connect better on their terms. And it's not just us coming into your space and facilitating this for you, because that does make a difference. Right. And yeah, knowing that they've improved their community on their terms. That's powerful and really cool that I offer mental health first aid trainings for groups. And I would love to do more groups of students or faculty or staff. And we, of course, have our new fall 2024 share communities, which will be posted on our website. Ooh. I mean, probably in the next couple of hours, actually. So there are a lot of them, and we have interest forms. And so the thing I always tell students is to fill out an interest form for anything that sounds remotely like you might find your people there. It's just an introduction. It's not a commitment. And that's how my students can follow up with you. [00:32:25] Speaker C: Where on the web can people go? [00:32:27] Speaker B: So if you go to healthyhorns utexas.edu Lwc we are under the Longhorn Wellness center, so healthyhorns utexas.edu Lwc share or you can follow healthyhorns on Instagram or Facebook Tumblr. And so there are overarching social media, online presence were connected to the counseling and Mental health center and university health Services, but also separate in the Longhorn Wellness center. [00:33:00] Speaker C: All right, well, Adrian, best of luck with everything. We're so glad that you could take the time to talk to us, of course. And yeah, much for a hog foundation audience to relate to and sink its teeth into. And to any students who are listening, please get activated on any of the issues that Adrian brought up. [00:33:31] Speaker B: Can I add one little thing? [00:33:33] Speaker C: Of course. [00:33:33] Speaker B: You do not have to be struggling so hard that you can't function to show up to a shared community. I think everybody who's been through something ever, which is most people, has a lot to offer other people. And the power of sharing your wisdom with someone and seeing that impact creates really meaningful relationships and makes you just realize your worth. I mean, everybody has it, but it's hard to see until you can see how your existence makes a difference to somebody else just by virtue of being yourself. [00:34:06] Speaker C: All right. [00:34:06] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:34:07] Speaker C: Well, Adrian, thanks so much. [00:34:09] Speaker B: Of course. Thank you. [00:34:11] Speaker A: Before we close, an important announcement. We're excited to announce that the Texas Grants Resource center, or TGRC, is now a part of the Hagg foundation for Mental health. It's a reunion of sorts. Once known as the Regional Foundation Library, it was started back in 1962 as a cooperating collection in the foundation center's national network of regional libraries. Its purpose, then and now, is to serve as a bridge between the grant seeking and the grant making communities, providing information, training and technical assistance for both nonprofit organizations and individuals. It was in 2007 that the regional foundation library was renamed the Texas Grants Resource center and moved off site. It is now coming back to Hog and we are excited for the future. I'd also like to give a shout out to our two newest employees, Amy Lohr, director of TGRC and Javieria Khan, who also works for TGRC. Welcome to the team both of you. And that does it for this episode. We're so glad that you could join us. Technical assistance provided by Kate Rooney, Daryl Wiggins and Anna Harris. Thanks as always to the support of the Hogg foundation without which this podcast could not be possible. Just as taking care of ourselves helps us to support others, so it is as well that by supporting others we bolster our own mental health. Please subscribe to us. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Taking us out now is Anna's good fives by our good friend Anna Harris. Thanks for joining us.

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Episode 100: Black Lives Matter

In this milestone 100th episode of Into the Fold, we dive into the topic of racism and historical trauma with a panel of experts....

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November 26, 2019 00:28:50
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Episode 89: Indigenous Mental Health

For many indigenous Americans, Thanksgiving is not just problematic -- it commemorates genocide, dispossession, forced removal, and cultural erasure. This emotional gauntlet has mental...

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May 25, 2021 00:47:40
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Episode 115: Fear of Going Outside: A Podcaster on Asian identity, Mental Health and Belonging

The month of May happens to be both Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, and Mental Health Month. The current period has been...

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