Speaker 1: Election Headquarters.
Speaker 2: Your long economic nice mare will very soon be over.
Speaker 1: It's going to be over. Fifty five cars be Talkstation
Speaker 1: eight oh five, the thirty five kr CD talk station.
Speaker 1: Every Friday Eve, God bless the American veterans and thanks again.
Speaker 1: Already made it a CVG last night for the return
Speaker 1: of the Honor Flight folks. More than twenty five hundred
Speaker 1: people showed up to celebrate and salute the American veterans,
Speaker 1: most notably the eighty Vietnam veterans who did not get
Speaker 1: much of a welcome when they came home after serving
Speaker 1: their country. And someone who knows all about this, my
Speaker 1: next guest, Alison Feening. Allison is a dedicated mental health
Speaker 1: professional with over a decade of experience in the field
Speaker 1: of mental health. She founded in twenty seventeen this wonderful organization,
Speaker 1: Pinpoint Behavioral Health Solutions, which you can find online at
Speaker 1: PINPOINTBHS dot BHS dot com, where she and her team
Speaker 1: specialized in providing essentral support support to first responders and
Speaker 1: military communities. Licensed to practice in Ohio, Kentucky, and Florida.
Speaker 1: Nominated for awards and award winning, she is acknowledged as
Speaker 1: a wonderful professional in the field of mental health. It
Speaker 1: is a pleasure to have you on the program, and
Speaker 1: thanks for what you're doing for the American veteran. Alison Feening, Well.
Speaker 2: Good morning, Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: You know, if I'd read your entire resume, we wouldn't
Speaker 1: have any time to talk about what you're doing for
Speaker 1: the American veterans. Let's just cut to the Chase PENPOINTBHS
Speaker 1: dot com. You offer all kinds of mental health services
Speaker 1: at your.
Speaker 2: Organization, Yeah, we certainly do. We are the largest mental
Speaker 2: health outpatient private practice in Ohio for first responders, emergency workers, military,
Speaker 2: active and veterans and their family members.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And I see that you do individual counseling, but
Speaker 1: also couples as well. I expose of someone struggling with
Speaker 1: mental health, that's certainly could have a profound impact on
Speaker 1: a relationship.
Speaker 2: It absolutely does. I mean, if you think of any
Speaker 2: of our stress and current economic strains that we have
Speaker 2: and groceries and how that can just strain our day
Speaker 2: to day operations in our home, and then think of
Speaker 2: the stress of going on deployment and or the amount
Speaker 2: of stress that our first responders and military have experienced,
Speaker 2: and we know a key opponent of any type of
Speaker 2: change is including all of the family and any of
Speaker 2: their support people, and so that's really important. So we
Speaker 2: do counseling outpatient, individual counseling. We have done couples and families.
Speaker 2: We have several locations. We also have equine E M
Speaker 2: d R, the only ones in the area to do
Speaker 2: equine EMDR, which is freaking amazing.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm glad you brought that up yourself, because that
Speaker 1: was gonna be the next question because I am not
Speaker 1: familiar with equine E M d R. And I why
Speaker 1: did you explain that? Because equine of course we're talking
Speaker 1: about horses here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so EMBR. Yeah, so people don't know. Em DR
Speaker 2: is one of the only three evidence based treatments for PTSD.
Speaker 2: It could also be done on lots of other things.
Speaker 2: And E MDR scenes for eye movement, desensitization and reprocessing.
Speaker 2: It's weird, but it's but it's incredible. I have we
Speaker 2: have four clinicians and our practice trained in it. And
Speaker 2: then additionally our clinicians Sabrina Menry, she runs our equine
Speaker 2: program out in Claremont County. We have a farm with
Speaker 2: three horses and some days they can act or outy
Speaker 2: because if anyone who knows courses knows they have bold
Speaker 2: personalities too. And Sabrina does a great job in incorporating
Speaker 2: the equine EMDR. She is fully licensed and trained and
Speaker 2: that trained and doing that. And so EMDR uses what's
Speaker 2: called bilateral stimulation to go back and forth in the
Speaker 2: hemispheres of the brain to change how an event has
Speaker 2: an impacted you. We don't delete the memory, it just
Speaker 2: reprocess it so it no longer disturbs you or distrusses you.
Speaker 2: So if you think of let's say you're in a
Speaker 2: car accident or something bad in your life has happened,
Speaker 2: and anytime you think of it, you get really emotional
Speaker 2: or you shake, or you have these maladaptive symptoms. Doing
Speaker 2: EMDR on its own can help alleviate and eliminate some
Speaker 2: of that. Additionally, doing e fine. Is this the whole
Speaker 2: nother ballgame that it's just it's so fascinating in the
Speaker 2: science and the research behind it. And they're doing that
Speaker 2: a lot with veterans, and there's different organizations doing it
Speaker 2: for free with thats and there's it's wonderful.
Speaker 1: So is it a form and forgive me for boiling
Speaker 1: it down to something I think that I'm going to
Speaker 1: try to make it relatable to at.
Speaker 2: Least my understanding.
Speaker 1: Is it like a form of a meditation in a
Speaker 1: sense that you know you have a traumatic event. I'm
Speaker 1: thinking of these guys who went around kicking doors in
Speaker 1: and Fallujah, were always under constant threat of death and
Speaker 1: they had to get up every single day and do
Speaker 1: that same thing over and over again multiple times. That's
Speaker 1: going to put you on edge. That is going to
Speaker 1: put you at a high level level of adrenaline for
Speaker 1: a long, long period of time, and once you're taking
Speaker 1: out of that environment, it's like you can't shut it off.
Speaker 1: That's one of the problems you struggle with post traumatic stress.
Speaker 1: So again, if you're struggling with that anxiety, the emotion,
Speaker 1: the adrenaline, the memories of all that, is it attempt
Speaker 1: to like sort of free your mind of the thoughts
Speaker 1: and put you in a better place like meditation does it.
Speaker 2: It's not meditation. Mindfullness based exercises and meditation work is
Speaker 2: more of a coping skill or preventive method, right. This
Speaker 2: is actively reprocessing those memories to change how they're stored.
Speaker 2: In the brain, so that when you think of having
Speaker 2: to Let's say you're a police officer and you were
Speaker 2: overseas and you think of that situation overseas, and now
Speaker 2: you go on a call and it's very similar situation. Right,
Speaker 2: You're no longer having the same reaction, and you can
Speaker 2: focus and not get tunnel vision and not have your
Speaker 2: heart rate up. You know, you're still going to be
Speaker 2: heart right up because you're doing some stuff that causes stress. Right,
Speaker 2: You're no longer going to be associated with the past memories.
Speaker 1: Huh. So retraining the brain to reprocess or process in
Speaker 1: a different way, all right, And then to the fundamental point,
Speaker 1: cutting to the chase. How do the horses help accomplish that?
Speaker 2: So the horses provide a different therapeutic art in opponent
Speaker 2: to helping the person ground themselves. There is a form
Speaker 2: of rhythmic writing, so if you are a horse person
Speaker 2: out there, even just riding a horse can be very therapeutic,
Speaker 2: and so we incorporate both. A lot of what we
Speaker 2: do is groundwork. They're not normally riding our legal purposes
Speaker 2: people and some people don't like horses, which is fine too,
Speaker 2: and so sometimes it's just brushing, and you can actually
Speaker 2: do this with your pet at home. You have your
Speaker 2: pet and pets, you know, especially dogs, if they're on
Speaker 2: your lap and you're just going back and forth with
Speaker 2: petting them and you're just back and forth with your hands.
Speaker 2: That is very similar to the same type of thing
Speaker 2: that we can do with horses. So horses just bring
Speaker 2: a totally different element. We're outside, which most of our
Speaker 2: veterans and responders don't really like being indoors in an office,
Speaker 2: they can you know, move around, we can eviilize the horse,
Speaker 2: and then if somebody doesn't want the horse, we also
Speaker 2: have those typical standard as well.
Speaker 1: Fantastic and being a lifelong dog owner, I certainly understand
Speaker 1: how the calming effect that a loving animal can have
Speaker 1: on your mental state, because you know, it certainly works
Speaker 1: that way with me. Alison. Now moving over to something
Speaker 1: I have to ask. I thought, it's an interesting way
Speaker 1: of phrasing it. I think I get it. But what's
Speaker 1: neck up? Check up?
Speaker 2: Great question, thank you. So let me go back a
Speaker 2: little a little bit on why we are here in
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen. If you happen to remember a retired Assistant
Speaker 2: Chief Ship Terry died by suicide. Yes, and when that occurred,
Speaker 2: we had actually several suicides in our area of first responders.
Speaker 2: And then you already know most folks know the rate
Speaker 2: of death by suicide for our veterans. And at that point,
Speaker 2: my husband's a fireman, and we were like, what do
Speaker 2: we do? He spiraled and so we created this business. Well,
Speaker 2: when we started looking at the suicide rates between our
Speaker 2: veterans and our first responders, we identified why aren't what's
Speaker 2: going on beforehand? Why are we only stopping them believe
Speaker 2: when it's happening, And so my team and myself we
Speaker 2: do these things called neckup checkups. There are annual mental
Speaker 2: health wellness check ins with a mental health professional that
Speaker 2: we have with our departments to help just hey, what's
Speaker 2: going on. I'm actually in the current process of trademarking it.
Speaker 2: It's been a very long process to trademark. If you've
Speaker 2: ever trademarked something, it's expensive. And what we have found
Speaker 2: is in our state and currently in Ohio, there's no
Speaker 2: set standard for the medical professions to have annual mental
Speaker 2: health checks. Like when you have a child, you go
Speaker 2: to your annual wellness check. Well, there's nothing for mental
Speaker 2: health in different states. The state of Massachusetts just created
Speaker 2: a wall in April that it is required or it
Speaker 2: is approved, that the insurance companies cover annual mental health checks,
Speaker 2: which is freaking awesome.
Speaker 1: It is so current.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really fascinating. I talked to the Attorney general
Speaker 2: out there to get the information, and I wanted to
Speaker 2: create a law here in Ohio, but time time is
Speaker 2: not always on my side. So what we do is
Speaker 2: every year the individuals we work with have an opportunity
Speaker 2: to meet with us, with one of our team members
Speaker 2: to check in to help prevent any stressors they're going on,
Speaker 2: talk about any resources they may need, linked them to stuff,
Speaker 2: and we've actually seen it prevent suicide.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: That's incredible.
Speaker 1: That is absolutely incredible, because, you know, identifying folks that
Speaker 1: are struggling with suicidal ideation that usually is either going
Speaker 1: to come from the person struggling with it if they're
Speaker 1: honest enough to admit it to a family member, or
Speaker 1: a family member notices that they're having some challenges and
Speaker 1: sort of brings it to the attention of someone who
Speaker 1: can help out, like maybe one of the Veteran Services
Speaker 1: commissioned or in the case of you, would be pinpoint
Speaker 1: BHS dot com.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the veterans are commission in their crisis line is awesome,
Speaker 2: and then we provide crisis services for our current apartment.
Speaker 2: So anyone who contracts with us, we do provide that
Speaker 2: as a service because we know sometimes for our special
Speaker 2: populations like our veterans and our military, calling a nine
Speaker 2: eight A or the National Stupide Hotline, they don't always
Speaker 2: get it. And so everyone on our team is either
Speaker 2: some form, shape, way, shape or form connected with either
Speaker 2: military or first responder. And that's very important to me
Speaker 2: because I want them to understand we get it to
Speaker 2: some capacity. I'm never going to completely understand if you
Speaker 2: were over in Iraq. I'm never going to completely understand
Speaker 2: if you are in a use of for situation, but
Speaker 2: we at least can understand to a.
Speaker 1: Degree, indeed well, the whole idea of an annual mental
Speaker 1: health checkup. I guess I I wish it was more
Speaker 1: readily available or more embraced by the medical community generally speaking,
Speaker 1: because it would go along way to help destigmatize the
Speaker 1: whole idea of getting mental health services. I mean, we
Speaker 1: see the numbers increasing, and I think the statistical increase
Speaker 1: in people saying or acknowledging they have mental health issues
Speaker 1: has been brought about largely because we are now embracing
Speaker 1: and accepting the concept of seeking some help when we
Speaker 1: need it. You know, it's like, okay, it's okay to
Speaker 1: get some help. It's not like the old days when
Speaker 1: oh my god, you're seeing a shrink kind of thing.
Speaker 2: Right. Yeah, we've definitely gone to this separate side of
Speaker 2: the pendulum. We've swung all the way to the other side,
Speaker 2: which can be a good and a not so good
Speaker 2: thing in our folks, because the loads out now on
Speaker 2: the mental health field is there's not enough of us,
Speaker 2: and there's definitely not enough of.
Speaker 1: Us to serve this right to serve others.
Speaker 2: Right, So we're actively I'm actively networking. I have a
Speaker 2: global networking organization that we connect with the responder therapists
Speaker 2: and military therapists all over the all over the world
Speaker 2: to help link and resource and connect and like what's
Speaker 2: going on in this part of the country. You know,
Speaker 2: there's free services, there's free sessions, there's free there's funders,
Speaker 2: there's different things that people just don't know where to go.
Speaker 2: And so a lot of what I do is that
Speaker 2: a lot of that legwork from underneath the table of
Speaker 2: trying to get people connected.
Speaker 1: Indeed, and I note that you do offer telehealth, which
Speaker 1: is a great thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in twenty twenty. Before twenty twenty oh High was
Speaker 2: what's called a parody state where it didn't approve the
Speaker 2: insurance wouldn't approve telehealth for any type of provider medical
Speaker 2: in the medical field. And so after twenty twenty in
Speaker 2: COVID hit which is probably a good thing, that telehealth
Speaker 2: is an option for any type of mental health professional
Speaker 2: in the state. And then we have opportunity to provide
Speaker 2: services in seven states with Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Florida, Virginia, Arizona,
Speaker 2: and Texas.
Speaker 1: Wow. And again it's PINPOINTBHS dot com for all the information.
Speaker 1: You are a hip, a compliant, This is all confidential communications.
Speaker 1: You're healing. Indeed, it's important.
Speaker 2: Yes, we wouldn't be where we're at if people didn't
Speaker 2: trust us. So we just want to thank everyone that
Speaker 2: believes and trust. I mean that's and we think those
Speaker 2: that are serving the serving those that serve.
Speaker 1: Us well, it is a beautiful concept. I can't thank
Speaker 1: you enough for helping out the first responders and most
Speaker 1: notably my veteran friends out there who again statistically much
Speaker 1: higher rate of suicides. We get a handle on that,
Speaker 1: and I can't thank you enough, Alison Feening and your
Speaker 1: team at PINPOINTBHS dot com for all you do. I'll
Speaker 1: recommend my veteran then first responder friends at the extent
Speaker 1: they need some assistance, head on over to the site,
Speaker 1: check it out, and enjoy the benefits of these wonderful services. Allison,
Speaker 1: God bless you keep up the great work.
Speaker 2: Thank you, God bless everyone.
Speaker 1: It's been a real pleasure having you on the program.
Speaker 1: It's eight nineteen. We'll have iHeart Media aviation expert Jay
Speaker 1: Rattliffe at the bottom of the hour. Always enjoy those conversations.
Speaker 1: I hope you do. Stick around right here at fifty
Speaker 1: five KRCD Talk Station fifty five KRC dot Com, Cincinnati,