We ask mental health professionals to sit beside trauma, addiction, despair, and suicide -- and then train them as if they shouldn't be touched by it. Sarah Buino has spent her career challenging that fiction. In this episode, we dig into what it really means to be a wounded healer, and why clinician healing is not optional.
What if the most important measure of mental health is not symptom relief but whether someone is living the life they want? Dr. Mark Salzer of Temple University joins me to explore community inclusion, participation, and what the disability rights movement has been getting right that mental health has been missing.
Gambling addiction can remain invisible while consuming every part of a person's internal life. Saul Malek joins me to take us inside the hidden world of sports betting addiction -- the secrecy, chasing, shame, and suicidal despair -- and into the recovery that helped him find his way back and his voice as a prevention speaker.
Dr. Virna Little, co-founder of Zero Overdose, joins me to make the case that overdose safety planning belongs alongside suicide safety planning as a standard of care. We dig into joint safety planning, high-risk periods, and how healthcare systems and first responders can lead this life-saving shift.
The veterans most at risk for suicide are often the ones you least expect: no visible injury, no combat deployment, no outward signs of struggle. Air Force veteran Alicia Scovill joins me to unpack imposter syndrome, failed adaptation, and unfulfilled mission, and what it really means to show up for those who served.
We ask mental health professionals to sit beside trauma, addiction, despair, and suicide -- and then train them as if they shouldn't be touched by it. Sarah Buino has spent her career challenging that fiction. In this episode, we dig into what it really means to be a wounded healer, and why clinician healing is not optional.
What if the most important measure of mental health is not symptom relief but whether someone is living the life they want? Dr. Mark Salzer of Temple University joins me to explore community inclusion, participation, and what the disability rights movement has been getting right that mental health has been missing.
Gambling addiction can remain invisible while consuming every part of a person's internal life. Saul Malek joins me to take us inside the hidden world of sports betting addiction -- the secrecy, chasing, shame, and suicidal despair -- and into the recovery that helped him find his way back and his voice as a prevention speaker.
Dr. Virna Little, co-founder of Zero Overdose, joins me to make the case that overdose safety planning belongs alongside suicide safety planning as a standard of care. We dig into joint safety planning, high-risk periods, and how healthcare systems and first responders can lead this life-saving shift.
The veterans most at risk for suicide are often the ones you least expect: no visible injury, no combat deployment, no outward signs of struggle. Air Force veteran Alicia Scovill joins me to unpack imposter syndrome, failed adaptation, and unfulfilled mission, and what it really means to show up for those who served.
After 22 years inside Apple, John Brown learned the hard way: the body always wins. In this conversation, we explore high-performance addiction, identity tied to achievement, and why building multiple "baskets" of self-worth, not just career success, is the real key to sustainable ambition and mental health.
A simple text - no agenda, no questions, just "thinking of you" - can be the lifeline someone never knew they needed. I speak with suicide attempt survivor Brandon Wilcox to break down the science and humanity of caring contacts, and why showing up imperfectly is always better than not showing up at all.
One training isn't enough to change mental health culture. You need a tipping point. Dr. Sally Spencer-Thomas and workplace wellness expert Laura Putnam reveal how "well-being multipliers", empowered team leaders, create ripple effects that transform organizations from the middle out, team by team, person by person.
After losing her father to suicide, Julia Hassell set out to understand a question many of us quietly carry: why do some wounds never fully heal?
What she discovered changed everything.
In this conversation, Julia shares how trauma lives in the body, not just the mind, and why traditional approaches like talk therapy can sometimes leave people feeling stuck. She introduces brainspotting, a powerful, body-based method that helps process trauma beyond words, and explores how healing often requires integrating neuroscience, somatic work, and spirituality.
Many men struggle silently with grief, loneliness, identity loss, and moral injury. Social expectations often teach men to stay strong, stay productive, and stay quiet about pain.
In this episode of Hope Illuminated, I speak with meaning-centered psychotherapist and logotherapist Baruch HaLevi (“Dr. B”) about how men’s groups help men transform suffering into purpose, connection, and resilience.
Drawing from Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy, lived experience with suicide loss, and years of guiding men’s peer groups, Dr. B explains how meaning helps men move through life’s darkest chapters.
In today’s polarized social and political climate, leadership has become not only emotionally demanding but, in some cases, physically and psychologically dangerous. From targeted violence against corporate leaders to escalating threats toward public officials, judges, election workers, and lawmakers, leaders are operating under unprecedented scrutiny, hostility, and fear.
In this episode of Hope Illuminated, I join Jeff Gorter, Vice President of Clinical Crisis Response at R3 Continuum, to explore what it truly means to lead under assault and how organizations can respond with clarity, compassion, and coordinated care when crises unfold in real time.
This conversation weaves together stories, science, and strategy to illuminate how threat and violence ripple beyond individuals to impact the mental health of entire organizations and communities.
What if the warning signs of suicide were present but invisible to everyone around us?
In this powerful and deeply human episode of Hope Illuminated, Dr. Sally Spencer-Thomas sits down with fellow sister-on-a-mission Kim Burditt Bartlett, MSW to explore the groundbreaking findings of the Black Box Project — a first-of-its-kind initiative using donated digital devices to better understand behavioral patterns preceding suicide.
This conversation weaves together lived experience, science, and strategy. Kim brings the voice of a sibling loss survivor, a trauma-informed social worker, and a national leader translating cutting-edge research into actionable suicide prevention.
Drawing from the 2025 Black Box Project White Paper released by Stop Soldier Suicide, this episode explores what phone data revealed that traditional prevention methods often miss and what that means for prevention, intervention, and postvention across veterans, workplaces, and communities.
In this special year-in-review episode, I reflect on a year of global travel, impact, and learning across workplace mental health, suicide prevention, clinical training, and lived-experience storytelling. Recorded for both Headspace for the Workplace and Hope Illuminated, this episode weaves together impact metrics, tools developed, global conferences, leadership lessons, partnerships, and deeply personal reflections on burnout, aging, grief, purpose, and hope.
We tell athletes to “shake it off,” “tough it out,” and “get back in the game.”
But what happens when the injury is inside the brain, quiet, cumulative, and deadly?
In this episode of Hope Illuminated, Dr. John Gaal shares the devastating story of losing his 24-year-old son to suicide and the painful discovery afterward that his son’s brain showed hallmark signs of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE).
That grief became a catalyst for John’s work at the intersection of repetitive head trauma, depression, pain, opioids, identity loss, and suicide risk, especially among athletes.
This conversation brings together heart and science to ask a question our culture often avoids:
How many deaths are we calling “mental health problems” when they may also involve brain injuries we never diagnosed?
What happens when a child loses someone to suicide — and the adults around them are silent because they don’t know what to say? In this episode, we explore that question through art, science, and story.
Australian author and illustrator Ryan Abramowitz joins Hope Illuminated to share how he transformed his own loss — the suicide of his father — into the award-winning picture book Elegy for an Elephant. Through watercolor, poetry, and animal allegory, Ryan helps children step into grief without being swallowed by it.
In this powerful and deeply compassionate episode, Dr. Sally Spencer-Thomas talks with Monica Kramer McConkey, one of the nation’s leading voices on rural and agricultural mental health, about the silent crisis facing farm families across America.
Monica brings both clinical expertise and lived experience—she grew up on a farm in northwestern Minnesota and has spent over 30 years supporting agricultural communities through depression, addiction, and suicide loss. Together, Sally and Monica explore the intersection of isolation, economic pressure, and cultural stoicism—and how resilience, connection, and tailored interventions are changing lives across rural America.
Listeners will gain insight into how we can bridge the urban-rural divide in mental health, build suicide-safe communities, and sow hope where it’s needed most.
Ever wondered how to partner with AI tools without losing the human element, or how to integrate mental health skills into daily workflows? This episode delivers.
A former NFL Tampa Bay Buccaneer who once battled the silent pressure of “lonely at the top,” Alex Willis now helps construction leaders build safety cultures where both bodies and minds are protected. Alex shares his personal turning point -- how experiencing depression and isolation during his NFL years shaped his mission to protect what matters most: people.
In this episode of Hope Illuminated, Alex and I explore how AI-powered tools -- used wisely, not as a replacement for human care -- can spark more effective conversations when mental health concerns arise at work.
