Could We Ever…Destigmatize Mental Health Concerns?

[Ricardo] We’re recording? Okay. Welcome to Could We Ever, part the…. (mumbles) Okay.

[Danyelle] Welcome to Could We Ever, part of the UT Dallas CometCast network. Could we ever shines a light on our experts and asks them to tackle questions

[Ricardo] Could We Ever shines a light on our experts and asks the to tackle questions you never knew you need answered.

[Danyelle] From science to art and more.

[Michael B. Jordan] You know I wanted to be in this lonely place as long as I could in order to kind of capture the essence of what Eric, you know, Stephens was, what Killmonger was, so when when we wrapped the film, you know, I’m like, in my mind is like okay cool go back to you know regular life, get back to LA, be cool but it was a little tough for me at first to kind of like…

[Oprah Winfrey] It was hard just to lay him down and be done with it.

[Michael] Yeah.

[Oprah] Did it take you a while?

[Michael] It took me, I mean I don’t really know exactly, when I came out of it but you know I went to therapy, you know, I started talking to people, I started unpacking a little bit. [Ricardo] That clip was actor Michael B Jordan, who played super hero villain Killmonger, talking with Oprah for her Super Soul Sunday series. He discussed turning to therapy to get out of the lonely mindset he developed while shooting “Black Panther.” Today, we’re talking about mental health.

[Danyelle] Today we’re talking with Dr. Kimberly Burdine from the Student Counseling Center about several different mental health topics. She’s going to help us answer the question, “Could we ever destigmatize mental health concerns?” Hi Dr. Burdine, thanks for being here with us today.

[Dr. Burdine] Happy to be here.

[Danyelle] I’m Danyelle, and this is Ricardo.

[Ricardo] I’m Ricardo

[Dr. Burdine] Ok, really nice to meet y’all.

[Danyelle] Dr. Burdine, what do you do here at UT Dallas

[Dr. Burdine] I am an assistant director in the Student Counseling Center. I am a licensed psychologist as well by trade, but I am the director of our community engagement initiatives, which include outreach and mental health promotion, liaisonship, which is our partnerships with different folks, different departments, on campus, our referral services, and then also our diversity and equity initiatives.

[Danyelle] And what do you do directly with students

[Dr. Burdine] So because I am a psychologist on staff as well I do all of the counseling services and we offer individual group and couples counseling, and then we also have psychiatry services on staff or for students. In addition to the direct services that we offer, we also have a training program and so I also serve as our interim training director so this is a little bit indirect but within the mental health profession it’s considered a direct service because I train folks and supervise folks that are doing mental health direct service and so that’s a part of how I interact with students and then I do a lot of mental health promotion, so going out into classrooms, to different student orgs, to give people information about mental health and so it could be something really specific like a stress management presentation or it could be just general information about mental health or about the Counseling Center services. We also partner with faculty and staff on campus so another indirect form of what we do, but we make sure that faculty and staff have information about the Counseling Center so that they can refer students because oftentimes we are not the first point of contact. It’s very rare, although it does happen, that some students, they come to campus, they are familiar with mental health services, and so they come straight to us. More often times it’s that students interact with a faculty or they interact with other students, right? Like their peers. And so a big part of what we do is make sure that faculty and staff and other students are kind of trained in what we call gatekeeper training, so making sure that people have tools that they need to assess especially you know for high-risk situations like suicidality and those sorts of things we want to make sure that people are able to do a little bit of assessment for that and then just in general that they know enough about our services to feel comfortable in referring students to us.

[Ricardo] How do you get into all this?

[Dr. Burdine] How did I get into it personally?

[Ricardo] Yes, yes.

[Dr. Burdine] Oh, I love that question. So, I actually have a unique story. Um, like I didn’t grow up wanting to be a mental health professional, wanting to be a psychologist. My undergrad is actually in math – random fun fact – and so I could connect to a lot of the students here.

[Danyelle] Yeah (inaudible)

[Dr. Burdine] So I am, I’m at home in that regard, with you know being a first-gen, like, college student, college grad, I had a really limited perspective on what you could do. Like, I like math. What, what am I gonna do with that? And so I was like, I’ll be a math teacher. And so I was a high school math teacher for a very short while and what I enjoyed– I enjoyed teaching, but I didn’t necessarily enjoy teaching math because nobody likes math. Well, not nobody…

[Danyelle] Cause math is hard.

[Dr. Burdine] …because obviously.

[Ricardo] I like math. Okay, okay, but math what I did just love was interacting with students and we, we would have this, what I called “family time” now again. This is like high school math, so imagine your geometry teacher like, “hey we’re gonna put all the desks in a circle and I just want to know how your life is, like how are things?” Like, I literally was doing this so I was a therapist before I knew I was a therapist. And, um, so I realized that I wanted to stay in education, but really wanted to get away from the math part, and so I got a master’s degree in school counseling and I was a high school counselor at my old high school, which was really cool.

[Danyelle] Oh, that’s nice.

[Dr. Burdine] Yeah. From there and I just have always, I’ve had a lot of opportunity. I’m also a Gates Millennium scholar and so I had an opportunity to have up through PhD paid for. I’m doing that because I’m a nerd, which I use affectionately. Hopefully that’s not offensive to anyone. [Danyelle and Ricardo laugh and mumble in background]

[Danyelle] #keepUTDnerdy. We’re all about that here.

[Dr. Burdine] Yes, yes. And so being in university counseling is a direct tie to my teaching background because I do believe that I’m a a teacher at heart and that’s why I do a lot of the mental health promotion in the workshops and things like this that involve like educating folks and getting people connected to mental health resources.

[Danyelle] How important do you think education, like what you’re doing or even in other forms, can help to end the negative stigma against mental health?

[Dr. Burdine] Yeah, I think a lot of stigma or even if we just think about myths, um, related to anything, oftentimes come from miseducation or somebody tells a part of a story without some context. People then make assumptions and then we can kind of pass that down like generationally. You know, one experience that you know maybe your, a grandparent had, right? Related to mental health is going to, if they tell that story to their child and then, you know, your parents then are telling that to you. So I do think that education is really important. I feel like if people are informed they make you know healthy choices. Um, and I think most often times when people aren’t making healthy choices it can be connected to a lack of information, a lack of resources. So I think education is huge in terms of destigmatizing mental health.

[Ricardo] And what do you mean when, when you say education? You mean like talking about mental health and, and what way? what do you mean by that?

[Dr. Burdine] Yeah, so I think that’s a really good point because a lot of times some of what can create stigma is the way that we talk about mental health concerns, right? And so, um, I think that it’s really important to encourage people to be vocal about their mental health, both the things that we do that we’re really proud of, that contribute to, um, mental health, and then also the things that we do that we really struggle with that contribute to, that can contribute to some of the mental health concerns that we might have. So I do think it’s important to think about how we’re talking about mental health because sometimes, though people are getting an education that’s a bad education or one that is contributing to a lot of the mental health concerns indirectly because if people don’t feel like they can access care or don’t feel like they can talk about mental health to people in their lives or that’s gonna be perceived as weak or a host of other kinds of myths related to mental health and that indirectly is going to keep people from treatment and potentially make the mental health concerns worse because people aren’t getting access to the help that they need.

[Ricardo] We asked Dr. Burdine to talk more about the myths surrounding mental health and mental health concerns.

[Dr. Burdine] Most often times when I think about myths I think that they come through- they can come through generational kinds of messages. I think that’s a big one. And so I kind of alluded this to this before when I was saying that you know like whatever, let’s say, like, my grandmother maybe heard about doctors and psychiatrists and those sorts of things and especially if there was misinformation or kind of somebody, a lot of times, especially within communities with identities that are historically marginalized, people had really harmful, and have continued to have, really harmful experiences when they engage with any kind of health service and so there’s always that threat and so I think oftentimes out of protection, you know, people can discourage people from going outside of kind of the traditions, right? Going outside of the family or going outside of kind of spiritual or 80 religious kind of context to get that kind of emotional, you know, psychological spiritual help and so I think in that way there’s a lot of myths. You know so 0 for example, if you go and talk to a counselor- go, go to the Counseling Center for example, or seek treatment, then you’re are, you know, you’re, you’re being, you’re disrespecting your family, right? Like you know you represent a family and so and you go out and you get care then that means that something’s then wrong with us, right? Or that you’re communicating that and, um, I certainly, again, if we look at the historical context in a way that people can be mistreated and there’s a lot of disparity, um health disparity, in certain populations, um, I certainly can understand the protectiveness or the skepticism, um, but I think those kinds of things contribute to stigma and really create barriers for people getting access. I also think that there’s a lot of different stereotypes or different tropes. I think as a person who identifies as black, I think that there’s a lot of tropes and stereotypes specifically about expression of anger, for example, right? Like, and I think that those kinds of things, you know, that misunderstanding about, or just lack of information about like, for example, irritability can be a sign and symptom of anxiety or depression, right? But if there’s a stereotype of, you know, kind of black folks being angry or you know somebody might not see that as a sign, um, and might just associate that with like, oh well, that’s just how people are. And so I think, yeah, just a lack of information about symptoms and, you know, kind of couple that with some of the stereotypes.

[Danyelle] So you mentioned that certain populations of people who are more…. you didn’t say oppressed, what was the word you used?

[Dr. Burdine] Marginalized? But oppressed….

[Danyelle] Marginalized. Oppressed, too.

[Dr. Burdine] Yeah.

[Danyelle] Its all the same. [all chuckle]

[Danyelle] How do we see mental health concerns crop up in those pockets of people because you’re saying they they may have a some sort of barrier to getting the help whether it’s access or these stigmas and ideas they hold but also are they more susceptible to mental health concerns than other populations?

[Dr. Burdine] Um, I want to be really careful and sensitive because, again, I mean, we’re talking about mental health stigma but then I think that there’s a lot of, again, the stereotypes and those sorts of things that can contribute to you know oppression and marginalization. I don’t think that any one group is more kind of susceptible to any particular health concern. I think that some of the experiences that people encounter related to being oppressed, being marginalized, kind of being pushed to being othered or pushed to the margins of society, can certainly create a sense of isolation, can certainly, you know, especially if people are encountering violence and hate related to that associated with their identity, um, then I think in that way, specifically when we think about trauma, I think that there are people who, and in certain groups and populations, that we just know are more you know, more likely to be exposed to life-threatening situations and events or who are more likely to be the targets of violence and I think in that way then I definitely think in terms of trauma and mental health concerns related to that and the effects of trauma certainly there’s pockets of people that are experiencing more of that but it’s not necessarily like this inherent, like, because I am black I am more likely to be depressed. I’m more likely to experience racism, which can lead to and contribute to a variety of mental health concerns.

[Danyelle] And thank you for making that point because the word susceptible was loaded and I’m sorry about that.

[Dr. Burdine] No, I mean I think it’s important and I think it’s a fair question I think that people would wonder that especially in terms of how, um, people can be portrayed in the media I think that that’s a really important question so I’m glad you asked it I’m glad that, again, because I’m always looking for teachable moments I’m glad that you asked it in that way so there’s more room to, to clarify and, um, provide insight.

[Danyelle] Hey friends. Looking back, I know I could have phrased that question a little better. But I’m really glad Dr. Burdine patiently and kindly explained this very complex issue to me. We wanted to learn more about barriers to accessing mental health resources and here’s what Dr. Burdine had to say.

[Dr. Burdine] So I think I was mentioning before about kind of, for, for past generations there are, and even now there are still even as mental health professionals I think that we have a lot of work to do especially within different. different communities. We historically have pathologized a lot of things that we know now are just not concerns.

[Ricardo] Quick interruption here. The definition of “pathologize” is to view or characterize as medically or psychologically abnormal. Back to Dr. Burdine.

[Dr. Burdine] When I think about identity, or even as back, as far back as like, you know, we used two pathologize, you know, people who were enslaved wanting to not be enslaved. Like, we, you know, that was pathologized. Or we said, like, that’s about – Something’s wrong with you. You want to no longer be enslaved. Right? And so I do think that those kinds of things in you know people have those kinds of histories and so that can make people fear, you know, accessing care because not every mental health professional, unfortunately, is affirming, and is well-versed in, you know, cultural identity-based stress and traumas. And then I think related to that, I think that there are just still really limited resources. Right now on campus, you know, our mental health services are at no additional cost to students and so I think that that, um, that is great because students can come in and there’s no additional expense. But in the broad community mental health care can be extremely expensive for people and if we go back to, you know, the people who are in the population who might be experiencing more stress due to, you know, thinking about socioeconomic status and just not having access to certain things or, you know, just having more stress because maybe you have, you know, three jobs. Those sorts of things. Then asking people then to kind of pay out-of-pocket for something that is already stigmatized in their mind. There aren’t positive messages about it. and then you want them to go spend some money, um and, and even, you know, in terms of a copay you know from somebody who’s you know privileged there’s still a $30 copay. I do think that we can, if – whatever we can do to provide, you know, free services to people, or low-cost services, and they’re certainly, you know, in the community there are low-cost or no-cost services, sliding-scale services, but I think finances, um, are, are can be barriers. Again, there’s very few kind of 24-hour, you know, care facilities that aren’t, you know, kind of urgent or, you know, emergency, and so I think as much as we do a good job and we do have access and \ we on campus are really fortunate because we have a 24-hour crisis line so\people can always have access to, to a counselor.

[Danyelle] So the way that we speak about \ physical health is like get your body moving, eat some vegetables, drink your water.

[Dr. Burdine] Right.

[Danyelle] Should we be doing similar stuff for mental health?

[Dr. Burdine] Yes, absolutely. So I think a big way that we, you know, destigmatize mental health is doing more of that. Linking to, one, the ways that people are already engaging in things that promote, you know, mental health and wellness. And then also, yeah, creating a link between some of the ways that we think about our physical health. But I think right now we, we very specifically, and kind of it’,s it’s kind of embedded in our day-to-day that we every day we do things associated with our physical health like you name, like we eat, we eat veggies, we, you know, drink our water, we move our bodies, in whatever ways that we can. And those things are promoted. We’re expected to do them. They’re just kind of a part of a part of our day-to-day I do think it’d be really important for people to think about their mental health. A lot of the things we’re already doing, we just don’t associate it with mental health because of some of the stigma. Right? But when I think about mental health I think about – I break it down into three. There’s certainly more but I think about our thoughts. Right? So our cognitive health, our emotions and our behavior. And certainly we can also think about spirituality and a lot of other things, too, but in those three cases I bet each of you could tell me at least one thing that you do every day that you think is a healthy behavior or something that you do to promote healthy behaviors. Right? You probably do things every day to make sure that you have healthy thoughts right if you catch yourself in a negative thought cycle there’s probably times where you’re like “Up, no.” Or you might say, you know what, I’m not, in terms of my emotions, I’m noticing that I’m a little irritable or I’m a little sad. Maybe I’ll call my favorite person. Right? Or I’ll watch a funny YouTube video. And so, again, we’re already doing these things but I think one of the differences that we can make is to really connect them to mental health. Right? And I think when we do that then we remind ourselves like oh, no, this – is I’m doing this really intentionally so I do think if we think about some of these things day to day and kind of embed them in and be a little bit more intentional then my hope would be that also people wouldn’t feel shame around actually engaging in some of these things that we refer to as like guilty pleasures or all these things. It’s like why do we have to feel guilty about pleasure?

[Ricardo] So what would you say to a college student? What would be some tips that you would give them to take care of their mental health.

[Dr. Burdine] I think one of the things that I would just remind folks is that it doesn’t have to be, you know,this huge expensive, like, you know, because sometimes we’re like oh you know, I’m really stressed, I need to like, I want to go on a vacation, like, I need to go to, you know, I need to go on a cruise, or I need, and certainly if you can, you know for those things then please, we need to be doing that. But it can also be little things. One of the things that I used to love to do is just like wear my Chucks. And I would tell people if you see me wearing my Chucks then that’s, that’s a little bit of self-care for me. So things that people do already, again, coming back to that like if you wear your favorite outfit, again, that’s something that you already possess and probably doesn’t require you to – You don’t have to take off work. You don’t have to miss class for that. Those sorts of things I think can be really helpful. Listening to, you know, your favorite music and making sure that you do that for five minutes on your walk, you know to and from class. Those sorts of things I think can be really helpful.

[Danyelle] Dr. Burdine shared one thing college students need to be especially wary of.

[Dr. Burdine] Oftentimes if we’re not, you know, doing the best job of taking care of ourselves and we feel really stressed and certainly some of the culture can be like kind of cramming for things, right? and so you might go on this like you go for days and all you’ve done is go to class you study and then, and then that’s it eventually you’re gonna hit a wall and then what do we do? We crash and we do nothing and we go on a Netflix binge for like three days. Right? And sometimes we’re gonna be able to do that but what could be actually more helpful is to kind of embed your mental health or your, your Netflix break. You know, just taking an hour every day and giving yourself that break can avoid the crash that might actually put you in, you know, at risk of maybe like not attending class or, you know, not being able to do your assignments because you’ve kind of burnt yourself out and then you don’t have the energy that you need.

[Ricardo] One thing that we heard Dr. Burdine say in a previous conversation is that mental health is everything and that there are different levels of mental health concerns. We asked her to explain that.

[Dr. Burdine] Oftentimes, you know, people, when we think about mental health, people are oftentimes thinking about mental health conditions or, um, and also really severe mental health conditions. Right? And so that’s why a lot of people don’t connect to mental health because they’re like, no that’s not me. I don’t – You know, people probably have in mind, maybe, maybe a family member or a loved one who, you know, maybe struggles with addiction. Right? And so they’ve seen this, you know, what can be a very severe, you know, mental health concern. But mental health is everything. Right? It’s the things that we do, you know, kind of, that are good and, again, if we come back to that link between physical health and the way we think about that, like, we don’t assume that, you know, because somebody went to the doctor that they have like a severe medical concern. Right? We might just assume like, oh, probably just doing the checkup or there’s things that we do kind of annually and there’s different levels of health concerns and I think in the same way, there’s different levels of mental health concerns. And coming to you know see a therapist, for example, doesn’t have to mean that there are, that, that we’re- that a person is on the more severe end of that or is, you know, experiencing, you know, a mental health concern that we might connect with, again, some of those images that we see, again, coming back to stigma I think some of the images that we can see portrayed in movies and those sorts of things can also contribute to, you know, people thinking like “Oh mental health isn’t for me because it’s those other things.”

[Ricardo] And some of it could be preventive, too. You know what I mean?

[Dr. Burdine] Yes. Absolutely that’s a big part of when I think about mental health promotion and the work that we do ideally we’re doing some preventative things. Right? And so if people, you know, kind of get in that day to day practice than they are are more likely to prevent, maybe, a situation getting worse or, you know, even starting to begin with.

[Danyelle] You’ve mentioned the media a couple of times and I know when we had like our pre chat you mentioned that it was really important to you that the way that we spoke about mental health in this chat. How important do you think the dialogue around mental health is? Because, like you’re saying, a lot of times when people hear mental health as a buzz word they think severe mental health concerns.

[Dr. Burdine] I think that this is, you know, it is as simple as listening to people. Especially when I think about interpersonal violence in trauma, believing people. Right? So if, if people talk about having had an experience of sexual assaults or, and I also loop in interpersonal violence, experiences of racism, for example ,or having been, you know, something like, you know, having been misgendered. Like, all of these things really are contributing to people’s mental health and wellness one way or the other and so I think that being able to listen to people, believe them, validate people’s experiences and being transparent about your stuff

[Danyelle] Dr. Burdine also had some tips to share regarding social media and everyday interactions.

[Dr. Burdine] thinking about kind of the kinds of things you’re posting or how you’re engaging in the comment section, you know. These sorts of things matter and being more thoughtful and intentional about what it means when you sit in a room with someone and I always I mean I think about even, I think about, like my smile, is something really simple but, like, that’s an intervention to me like not everybody has access to like, a smile, every day or eye contact that’s, that’s really meaningful. So I think that there’s a lot that we can do that contributes to, you know, people’s mental health, especially we go back to that very basic kind of definition or way to think about it being connected to like our thoughts or our behavior or our emotion.

[Ricardo] So. [laugh] Could we ever destigmatize mental health concerns?

[Dr. Burdine] I absolutely think that that that we can and it certainly is my, you know, passion. It may be a lifetime of work I think. I think there are families, right, where you know it’s not stigmatized and people talk about it freely and people are not shamed around, you know, having a mental health concern. So, I do think it’s possible like I mentioned before I do think you’re talking about culture shift. And so I think it is a long game. Is that a phrase? So I do think that it is something, especially the kind of culture shift like for me when I think about, like, my goal would be that every student who graduates from UT Dallas would receive some sort of nugget related to mental health whether it is just now they have a definition of mental health and they never had that before or they were really curious about what anxiety is. Right? Or if they needed you know counseling, for example, I want everybody – Like that would be success for me, and that would represent culture shift.

[Ricardo] Okay guys, there you have it. Dr. Burton also wanted to take the opportunity to plug all the awesome offerings of the Student Counseling Center here on campus, like group therapy.

[Dr. Burdine] So I, I do think that if everyone has some sort of touch point and relationship to mental health and, and all that, I do think that we shift the culture and I think shifting the culture would mean that mental health concerns are destigmatized. If people, you know, feel good about talking about it, feel like they can access care, feel like they can self-reflect and be able to identify concerns and then feel like they had the resources that they needed to make changes. One of the things that I just absolutely love as a mental health professional is group therapy. Now I know a lot of times want to talk to people about that they’re like again like we just had this whole conversation about stigma and you want me to come in and talk to a group of people about? So I know it can be, you know, pretty scary for people and it’s certainly not, you know, if people have experienced trauma or a recent loss, you know, those sorts of things, yeah, that is not necessarily appropriate. But one of the things I’m really passionate about is connection and relationships and I think a lot of our, a lot of problems can be tied to a sense of connection and disconnection, whether it’s like from systems, from people. And so I absolutely love group therapy because it allows for some in, in the moment connection and then support around when you feel disconnected. Like wouldn’t you love to have, like, a mental health professional in the room when you’re having, like, these deep arguments with the people in your life, you know. Wouldn’t it be great to have somebody to be like “You know what I’m seeing is…” or “Have you thought about it like this…” And creating a sense of safety and I think that that’s one of the things that group therapy does.

[Ricardo] We hope you guys enjoyed this conversation as much as we did. And for real, thank you for being here and doing this podcast with us.

[Danyelle] Yes, thank you so much.

[Dr. Burdine] Thank you all so much for, for the opportunity and for, for the platform and really appreciate being able to get information out that hopefully contributes to destigmatizing mental health concerns.

[Danyelle] Yes! The Student Counseling Center also has workshops that address a variety of concerns including depression, anxiety, interpersonal violence, and sexual assault, and several identity-based groups such as graduate students, black and Latinx students, international student,s trans and non-binary students. Literally, there’s something there for everyone. For more information you can check out utdallas.edu/counseling or visit the UT Dallas Student Counseling Center on Facebook or Instagram.

[Ricardo] The UT Dallas CometCast is a podcast network brought to you 0:30:28.800,0:30:31.860 by the UTD Office of Communications.

[Danyelle] A special thanks to Senior Lecturer Roxanne Minnish for our music. Be sure to follow the University on social media and check out “Could We Ever…” and our other shows at utdallas.edu/cometcast. So, listen out for us next time.