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Can+Did, a TN Voices Podcast
Can+Did, a TN Voices Podcast
Dr. William Dennis
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Rikki Harris sits down with Dr. William Dennis, the award winning, Chief Medical Officer for Advanced Correctional Healthcare to talk about his journey from emergency medicine in the Navy to now overseeing healthcare services for jails in 18 states.
Dr. Dennis discusses his past mental health struggles with PTSD and his more recent efforts to approach healing in new ways.
Disclaimer: Dr. Dennis is not a client or employee of TN Voices. His statements do not represent the opinion or ideas of TNV. The information shared in this conversation is NOT medical advice.
I'm excited. I've been excited to have this conversation ever since I met you. Uh you have an infectious personality. I'm sure you've been told that.
SPEAKER_01Yes. My wife says that a lot. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Well, that's good. I'm glad. I'm glad. Yeah. You do. You just kind of drew me in, but you have a lot of joy. You have a different type of joy.
SPEAKER_01Positive all the time. I'm always an optimist.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. I definitely picked up on the optimism, but the but the depth of the joy went beyond just a smile to me. Thank you. Yes. And probably once I heard your story, the dots connected. So that's why I'm excited for our audience to hear about you today. I'll do like the broad stroke intro of Dr. Bill Dennis. But then I want you to dive like through some of the details because part of this podcast is to tell your own story of your own journey with your own, you know, unique challenges and how you navigated to inspire others and help them come up with uh ways to craft their journey. Right. But also there's layers of you know leadership. And obviously, coming from a mental health organization, we want to hear more about what you do in terms of mental health and addiction. And so you have a very diverse background. You're you're a medical doctor, you were a Navy lieutenant. Yes. And now you're the chief medical officer for a company called Advanced Correctional Health.
SPEAKER_01Correct.
SPEAKER_00Tell us what is advanced correctional health.
SPEAKER_01Advanced Correctional Health Care, we are the largest provider of uh uh medical services and jails throughout the United States. We're in 18 states right now. We have about 270 jails, so 270 counties in the United States that we're responsible for uh we supply the physicians or nurse practitioners, we can uh do the uh mental health treatment, we have nursing care, we have dental care, we can kind of offer the whole package. We we're in in some counties that may have only have one inmate to counties that have up to 1,500 inmates, and so we do the whole uh gamut of health care. Some counties just need a nurse and a doctor one day, one hour a month. To some, we have full-time physicians working 40 hours a week and 24-7 mental health care and nursing. So it just varies depending on what the counties need. And the reason I chose this company to work for a lot of the big uh correctional health care groups, they're very financially driven and they want to save money and they'll cut costs any way they can, thinking maybe that the prisoners or inmates don't deserve the proper health care. Our company has no formulary, we don't have any utilization management. We tell the doctors when I hire them and interview them to treat the inmates just like they were your family members, and we don't cut any corners or anything like that. So if someone comes in on a medication and they're compliant with it and it costs $5,000 a month, the county, we order it and just give them the care that they need, just like it was any family member, because we don't see that there should be a difference between an inmate and those of us who are luckily not incarcerated in the care, the type of care that we give.
SPEAKER_00Wow. That is one of the things that I picked up on when I when I met with you prior to our conversation today was just how much compassion you all had for the people you serve and the way that you view them and see them. And I I certainly want to want to get into some of that. I would love to know. So tell me a little bit about your Navy career. You were a lieutenant in the Navy.
SPEAKER_01I was a lieutenant commander. I did uh counting my reserve time about 17 years in the Navy. They paid uh, I was on a health profession scholarship, so they paid for my medical school and undergrad, so I didn't have any school loans. And I knew I had a commitment uh to them. I wanted to go to the Naval Academy and be a pilot. And uh my junior year of high school, my eyes kind of went bad, so I knew I couldn't fly planes anymore. So the person I was talking to said, What are you gonna do if you can't be a pilot? And I said, I guess I'll be a doctor.
SPEAKER_00So oh wow, okay. Well, yeah, those are the options. Right.
SPEAKER_01So right out of high school, I went to a six-year combined program. We were the first, it's University of Missouri, Kansas City. It's a six-year combined program where the normal medical doctor route is you go to four years of undergrad, then maybe a master's, and then four years of medical school, where ours is you go right out of high school into med school and undergrad. So at the same time when you're uh would be a freshman in college, you're also enrolled in medical school courses. So you're taking English and sociology and psychology, just like for the get your bachelor's, but at the same time, you're doing biochemistry and organic chemistry. So it's an advanced program where you go year-round for six years, so it cuts uh about two years of time off. But what people don't realize is we went to school six days a week, including Saturdays and evening evening classes, and we took 24 to 30 credit hours a semester instead of the normal 15.
SPEAKER_00Wow. Wow. So you don't shy away from hard things.
SPEAKER_01No, I never have.
SPEAKER_00You uh your journey in the Navy took you to the Middle East, yes.
SPEAKER_01I was deployed there in 2002 to Bahrain, and this was uh kind of a critical access team after the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000. They wanted a team on standby to uh it would it comprising myself as an emergency physician, a uh ER trauma nurse, an anesthesiologist, a general trauma surgeon, and an orthopedic surgeon. And we were on call 24 hours a day with our satellite phones just to be taken anywhere it takes us to do that. And so that was my first deployment that I did. So I was basically based out of Bahrain, and during that time I reviewed some records for the uh uh prisoners that we took in from the Taliban. So that was kind of my first foray into correctional medicine was dealing with some of the Taliban who were incarcerated.
SPEAKER_00Wow. Wow. So you all were there for emergency response and you could just be be deployed at any time. Correct.
SPEAKER_01It was just wherever it took us, and then I also worked at this time, but this was right before we were getting ready to go into Iraq, so I helped uh prepare kind of the staging ground for the medical response because we knew we were probably going to be going into Iraq. Afghanistan was our only uh front at that time, so I did a lot of the preparation with the head of the fifth fleet, uh Admiral Keating, and just setting up what the medical would look like and doing all that over in the Middle East. So I was involved in the preparation of that. And here I was only 25 years old, just fresh out of residency and had this big responsibility, but that's the military for you. They throw you into big jobs and just kind of have you go at it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Did you feel prepared?
SPEAKER_01I did not feel prepared, but my training and medical education got me through it. I trained, we were the second oldest emergency medicine residency in the country at uh in Kansas City at Truman Medical Center, and it was founded by Dr. Kendall McNabney, and he was a surgery resident who went to Vietnam and ended up doing a bunch of tours in Vietnam. And when he got back from Vietnam, he said there needs to be an emergency medicine specialty started because he saw a need for it. So we were the second oldest program started because emergency medicine is a relatively new specialty, it's only been around since the early 70s, and a lot of people don't know that. We were the second program after Cincinnati to be founded. And so he was an army surgeon, and I luckily got to work with him, and he was just incredible. So he gave us all the tools that we needed kind of to be prepared. And so the Navy allowed me to do a civilian residency. And after I finished that, they ended up sending me to Naval Medical Center, Portsmouth, Virginia, which is the largest healthcare facility, military treatment facility in the world. And we trained emergency medicine resident surgeons. It had every residency there. It was a teaching hospital. So here I was fresh out of residency, and they put me in charge of training all the new Navy ER doctors who would then go on a deploy and do many, many things.
SPEAKER_00Wow. Why the why the military service?
SPEAKER_01My whole family, from that I can remember, goes back through the military. My dad was in the Air Force in Vietnam. My mom signed up during Vietnam. She was a nurse. And so my mom and dad met after he did his tour over in Vietnam down in uh Texas, where he was stationed. And my mom was director of the nursing down there in Del Rio, Texas. So my mom and dad were both military, and then my grandparents they served in World War II. We just have a long history in our family of military service. So it was never a thought in my mind that I wouldn't join the military. It was just what I was going to do in which branch.
SPEAKER_00Interesting. You did you feel inspired by what they had done?
SPEAKER_01I did. My my mom and dad were probably two of my biggest idols. I grew up very fortunate. I know a lot of people have had rough backgrounds, especially working in corrections now, where people had abusive parents or relationships when they were children, but I was very fortunate. I had very loving parents and grew up in a great stable family where faith was very important. It was a big Catholic family, and our faith and just what my parents instilled in me was that don't ever give up on anything. And if you start something, you're going to finish it and see everything through to the end. So both my parents inspired me to be where I am today.
SPEAKER_00Lots of resilience.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's incredible. So I want to go back to the service during the time you were stationed in the Middle East and what that looked like for you after you came home. I mean, did that involve like some of a toll on your health?
SPEAKER_01It did when I got back. I myself had a mental breakdown. I was going through a tough strain. My ex-wife at the time was moving away, and we were going to be separated. And I went through a mental health breakdown where it began with, oh, he's got depression, it's generalized anxiety disorder, it's PTSD. It was kind of as you read nowadays, where all these veterans come back and they get a multitude of diagnoses thrown at them and then different kinds of medications and just trying to deal with what it is. But when I think back on it now and through counseling and care, I think it was mainly complex PTSD with depression and anxiety, but I dealt with my own mental health and I've been dealing with it since 2004.
SPEAKER_00Wow. Wow. So kind of walk us through the beginning of that journey. You said you had sort of like a mental breakdown when you returned. What did that look like? And how what kind of care did you seek out?
SPEAKER_01Right. I can't yeah, I was I remember I was just driving back from uh Pittsburgh and got back and it was in June. And I got back to the house. I was by myself, and I had two German shepherds at the time, and I got back to the house, and I I thought I was seeing things. I just knew I wasn't in my right mind, and I was actively suicidal at the time. And I thought this is I'm gonna end it today. I didn't write a note or anything like that, but I remember sitting on a chair in our uh living room and drinking a bottle of vodka, just trying to erase all the pain and stuff that was going through my head and all the thoughts. And my two dogs, I had a gun there loaded, and my two dogs came up to me and stopped me from doing it. So I know that was God doing that, but I decided, okay, this is not the answer to anything. I'm still needed in this world. So I had a friend who was a psychiatry resident at the time in training at Naval Medical Center Portsmouth, and I called her up and I kind of told her what was going on. And she said, I want you to see me first thing in the morning. This was a Sunday, so Monday morning I saw her, and uh she's like, We need to get you on some meds, and that's kind of where I first started getting medicated for what it was. And I went through probably five months of just tons of different medications trying to figure out what could stabilize me or make me better. And luckily, I was in the Navy at the time, so I had support from my commanding officer and all the support I needed. And the guys in the military were my greatest asset. Like everyone says, I was in a fraternity in college, but the biggest fraternity I was in was the military, some of the best friends of life, and they helped me get through that time.
SPEAKER_00So wow, yeah.
SPEAKER_01So you had a you had a built-in community of support, which sounds like it was critical to your it really was because I know a lot of people who go through a lot of the stuff I'm going through, they feel like they don't have any support. Whereas with me, I had all the guys in the emergency department, the guys I was deployed with, I had everyone backing me. So I felt like I had a good support system and knew if I needed that help, I could just reach out. It was only a phone call away, and people were there instantly to help me out.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I can only imagine may maybe you can paint this picture a little more for us, but the value of a community that shared experiences. So some of the things you went through, I would imagine some of the guys around you that were your military peers, Navy peers had those same experiences. So they understood at a different level what you're experiencing.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. They they had been through it, but even back then in 2003, 2004, there what we weren't seeing much of the PTSD yet from Afghanistan or Iraq, but working in the emergency department, we had an on-call 24-hour-a-day psychiatrist that would deal with whatever came in through the ER. So I would see these people coming back from whatever deployment it may have been, and with all these mental issues. So here I was working, going through it myself, but seeing it in other forms. And when I think back now, we were all going through the same thing, but I really didn't know what it was at that time that I was seeing. I was just thinking, wow, there's a lot of guys or good girls here with mental health issues. I wonder what's going on. But now when I think back, we are all going through a lot of the same thing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. And when you think about your entrance into mental health care and your journey through mental health care treatment, what do you think about it now when you look back as a medical provider?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, when I look back on it, I always tried not to be the doctor to myself or my own physician. That's always hard to do because you know something's not right. And as a doctor, you want to fix it because you all you don't want to reach out for help. Even back then, that time it was hard for physicians to reach out for help because you were worried about the boards doing something with your license or saying you're not a fit provider. And so it was always hard because when you went to see your psychiatrist or therapist, you always wanted to be careful about what you told them because you're always afraid they're going to pull your livelihood out from under you. Absolutely. And nowadays, looking back, we see, especially in emergency medicine physicians, which have some of the highest suicide rates in all the professionals, is I think it's because we deal with it every day and we're afraid we don't take care of ourselves, and we're seeing trauma day in, day out on people on the worst day of their lives. And after a while, it just takes a toll on you. But back then there there really wasn't much for helping physicians out because you were worried, like I said, being reported to the board. But I had such the support around me in the Navy that I was lucky that it happened to me while I was on active duty and being at a major treatment facility that I had some of the best doctors that have ever been around to help me get through it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. What led you then to this uh now role in serving inmates and and can really caring for them from a physical and mental health standpoint, probably some addiction service standpoint as well.
SPEAKER_01Yes, I uh a little about me. I was born and raised Catholic, but after my deployment to the Middle East, I came back. And when I think back about it, I was I was angry at God at that time. And so I called myself an atheist. I was like, here I'm a scientist. I was reading books from Richard Dawkins, other prominent atheists are out there, just how to discredit God and why there was no God. And and then I went through that for about 15 years as an atheist. And my wife now, who I met, was a devout Christian. And in 2018, we were living up in Montana, and for Christmas, my wife had just moved away from her hometown. She had never lived anywhere else. And for Christmas, she wanted me to go to church with her. And I told her, no, I'm just gonna go to the bar and have a drink. We lived in an old mining town in Montana where the bars were open 24 hours a day. So I thought, I'll go have a drink. Honey, I'll come pick you up after church because I can't do this. And I saw her have tears in her eyes, and it's the first time I saw her really cry. And I said, No, I'll go to church with you. So I went to the church fresh life in Butte, Montana, and just had a calling from God there where it just completely turned everything around. I I was not expecting it, but from that day on, I became a member in that church, was baptized a year later, and Montana only has one uh Department of Corrections prison, whereas a lot of states have multiple prisons because of the population. But Montana's got one prison and it's in Deer Lodge, Montana. We lived about 25 minutes from there, and our church was allowed to go in and do ministry in the prison. And so I said, this is my calling to go do this. So I went to the prison in Montana and was just uh bringing the word of God to those guys, and I found a calling for the guys that were incarcerated. I was working with the death row inmates to guys that were maybe only had a year sentence, but I realized this is my true calling is to work with the these guys who've been incarcerated because a lot of us could have been incarcerated for things, but maybe just weren't caught for it, and these guys were unfortunate. And then as I got deeper into their lives, I realized the amount of abuse that a lot of these guys had taken, or the broken families, or maybe not having two parents growing up, or any parents at all. I just found, wow, this is my callings. I was still working as an emergency room physician. And then we moved to Arizona and right during COVID, and a job came up that my wife was working as an ER nurse, and he said, My uh significant other is a nurse practitioner in the prison system in Arizona. And I said, I would love to be in corrections medicine. I didn't even really think of it as a career choice. So in Arizona in 2020, I became uh the director of the Arizona Department of Corrections, the intake center in Phoenix, Arizona, and I just absolutely loved it. I was really burning out with emergency medicine and thinking maybe medicine's not for me. Most emergency physicians now are burning out in five or six years, if not longer. And I've been doing it for 20. So I was like, well, I gave it a good run. So I switched my career to correctional medicine, and I just found a passion for it. And I found I that the guys were so thankful, even if you just told them, hey, there it's just a muscle strain, or no matter what it was, whether it was diagnosing a serious condition or just being that person that they could talk to and feel like they could open up to. But I was like, this is still my calling. And then one of our neighbors who was also an ER doctor, one day said, Hey, I've got the little jail in St. Genevieve, Missouri, and I think you'd be a great doc for it. And so come to find out that was advanced correctional health care, I hadn't even really heard of them. So I took over as the doc for advanced correctional health care in one uh medium-sized jail in Missouri. And that led to me taking on seven jails. And then about a year later, it came up. I prayed one night to God. I said, I need a change from emergency medicine because I was still doing emergency medicine full-time and corrections on the side. And the next day, uh, my current practitioner services manager sent an email out and said, I think you'd be a good role for chief medical officer. It was literally the next day after I prayed about it the night before. And so I reached out to her and said, What do you think? I'd like to throw my name in the hat. And she said you'd be a great fit. So here we are. I ended up interviewing for the position and I've been as chief medical officer in advanced correctional health care for about a year and a half now.
SPEAKER_00That's incredible. That's incredible. And and clearly from your own story, but also from your service story. You have learned a lot about trauma. Yes. Trauma just in general. What have you learned that's been the most surprising or interesting thing about trauma?
SPEAKER_01I think trauma comes both physically and mentally. And it's not just when I think of trauma before, even in myself, I thought of it as more as a physical thing, like car accidents or gunshot victims. But I realized I think trauma just is it's even more serious as the mental trauma a lot of people go through. And I think the thing that surprises me is all of us deal with traumatic events, but our brains process that in a different manner. And it's just how we all decide to deal with that trauma is how we can move ourselves through. But I think the biggest thing to me was trauma is not just physical, it can also be mental.
SPEAKER_00And that was a new journey for you then in your own right.
SPEAKER_01We have a huge mental health department. And our uh chief behavioral officer, Dr. Melissa Caldwell, I just absolutely love working with her. She's got such a passion to help these inmates out. And I see with our company that we think of mental health as important as just the regular medical care. And so we have a mental health first aid, and I just I'm all bought in because you can't be siloed. The mental health practitioners need to work with the general medical doctors too, because it's a whole body you need to treat instead of just one specific area. And I think if you can get people mentally okay with what's going on, then the physical stuff will come thereafter. So I've quickly learned that mental health care is by far the most important part of health care there is.
SPEAKER_00Interesting. What would you say is the biggest misconception that the public has about health care in the jails?
SPEAKER_01I think a lot of people think, oh, all these healthcare providers, they're just they're the worst of the worst. Because it used to be where if you couldn't get a job as a physician or a nurse, you would go work in a jail or a prison because they just thought, oh, these guys don't need good health care. And what I find is people who are drawn to correctional health care like serving those underserved communities. And now we're getting some of the best of the best physicians and nurses and dentists and mental health providers in the correctional environment because I don't know exactly what the stats are, but the recidivism for people who go to jail or prison, they end up going back. The rates are anywhere from 70 to 90 percent, depending on what you read. And I'm like, what's going on there? And before it was mainly just medical doctors and not really mental health care. But now in 2025, it's sad to say with there being such a lack of mental health care. The jails and the prisons have become kind of mental health care wards, we're finding, and it's sad that there's certain people that are incarcerated just because they have mental health issues. Of course, they may have done something wrong, like trespassing or something like that, or something more serious, but we have found that the mental health care is the biggest need right now in the system. And I've I've certainly realized that if we can help these guys when they're incarcerated, maybe it will keep them from coming back into jails. And the number one cause of death in jails and prisons is suicide. And with our company, we have we do everything we can to get those suicide rates down. And it's usually after a court case or within the first seven days of the being incarcerated that they'll attempt suicide. And with our company, we have found ways through uh qualified mental health professionals and good mental health care that we have some of the lowest suicide rates in the jails that we're in throughout the country. So I've quickly realized that through our mental health program, we are saving lives every day. And just one life saved is worth it to me. If if you can save one person, then we're doing something right.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. You're in 18 states?
SPEAKER_01Yes, 18 states.
SPEAKER_00And not in Tennessee.
SPEAKER_01Not in Tennessee.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, your headquarters are here. Yes, in Franklin. Yes. But you're not in the serving in the jails here. But you personally are on a nonprofit board that's helping people in jail. Tell me about that.
SPEAKER_01Yes, our our advanced correctional health care through Men of Valor. I don't know if people are familiar with that. It's a program, it's a Christian-based program that's based out of Antioch. It started here, and there's one in Knoxville, Tennessee. It's a program that sends in counselors and uh and uh I'm trying to think like pastors and that into the jails, into the prisons to work with these guys and to make sure they have a good strong Christian background. And then they apply to go to Men of Valor, which gives these guys right when they get out of prison, they get to go, they get housing, they give them a job, they make sure they have a good Christian background and they have counseling. When I first started, when we got involved with them in May, they didn't really believe in medicine. A lot of the guys just thought they just needed Jesus and the Bible and that would get them through. And our company went in and was like, hey, we can also give these guys medical care as well. So we presented to the board, uh, our owner and myself a plan where we I would personally be their physician and help these guys out and be on call 24-7. So when they do get out of prison, that if they needed medications or if they just had anything going on where I would see them. And I told them I personally wanted to be involved with this and I wanted to personally be their doctor. So I'm the physician for Meta Valor in Antioch and Knoxville, Tennessee. I do a visit every other week to Antioch, Tennessee, to Mena Valor, and then once a month in Knoxville. They're looking to expand now into a bunch of other states and getting grants, but the reason I really love working with Men of Alor is the recidivism rate is about 10% compared to 80% with guys that go through this program. And so actually, just last week I became a mentor. I wanted to give them more of my time. So I'm volunteering now. I just took on a uh mentee last week, and it's been incredible already just seeing how that's changing me and how I can just reach out and be a friend to someone and just be a phone call away in case they're going through issues. Because a lot of these guys had nothing, and they they went to prison because a lot of them were homeless, and they're like, I'd rather be in prison and have a roof over my head and meals than, and that's actually what's with my mentee was he was like, I'd much rather than being on the streets, be in prison and get three meals a day in that. And so, and a lot of them have addiction issues and they struggle with that. But through Men of Valor, it's it's just one of the most amazing organizations that I've seen, and what they're doing with these guys that have been incarcerated, it's just incredible. It's changing lives. It it's teaching a lot of them to be fathers, how to be just a man, how to live daily life and how to maintain a job and just their the big Christian, the way they strive through Christ and just getting them through their tough times has been phenomenal. I've only been with them since May, but it has changed my life for the better. And I hope to say it's changing these guys' lives too.
SPEAKER_00That's incredible. Yeah. I'm I'm sure they're very grateful for you. Yes, I hope so. And the work that you're doing. Um, it's interesting. So Tennessee Voices pr provide some trainings to uh typically women that are incarcerated for parenting training, and we we see the same thing where they're they're very engaged, they're grateful for anyone to come in and provide some services but care. And um, I I want to talk a little bit about, I mean, there's a couple of things I want to dive into, but the first one I want to talk about is just this aspect of spiritual and mental being part of the same system. Like I know there's been some controversy around what what needs to be, you know, should it be all spiritually driven? Should the healing be all spiritually driven? Or should the healing be all focused on mental health care? And I I happen to believe there's got to be both to make this thing work. Sounds like you're saying the same thing. Tell me what you've seen in terms of, for instance, men of valor, helping them understand how the health care works alongside the spiritual care.
SPEAKER_01Right. I the way I look at it is uh Christ gave us medicine and physicians, and we can use that, but I think you need to have a good spiritual base. And for me, that's Christianity, and that's what men of valor preaches too. I think having a good spiritual base needs to go along with the science, with the medicine too, because it's hard to do one without the other. And like I said, when I first got to Menavalor, they thought it should just all be spiritual through Christ, the healing. And I wanted to show them that not all doctors just throw meds at people and not all of us are aligned with big pharma, and there's got to be alternatives and you got to think of ways, but it it's the same thing with mental health care and the spiritual aspect. I feel if you have a good spiritual background and good faith, and I believe faith in Christ is what can get people through a lot of stuff. And if you have that, the spiritual background and good medicine to go with that, it can be very healing and therapeutic for people.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. One of the things you and I talked about was advancements in medicine and perhaps innovation, and we talked about some of the some of the uh natural or plant-based options in medicine. While we say innovation, it's sort of funny because innovation means something new. And perhaps some of the medicines and plant-based medicines we're going to talk about have been around for centuries and they're not new, but they may be new to our Western ideas of how to treat mental health. And we're we're certainly exploring some conversations around a specific plant-based medicine called Ibigaine. You and I talked about that, but you shared a lot with me around your thoughts on this as well. And I'd love to just kind of hear from you where are you all in exploring some of these ideas.
SPEAKER_01Yes, I've uh just looking at psychedelics in general, which ibigaine is and kind of with psilocybin or mushrooms as people call them, and then Ibigaine, which comes from an African root shrub, and all of these substances have been used for thousands of years, we're finding. However, in the United States, we're limited on using these drugs because they're a scheduled one uh drug per the DEA. So, what that means is they have no medical use, no use whatsoever. So the studies are very limited. But with my military background and just reading on Ibigain, the study that came out of Stanford with the 30 Special Forces guys, and the traumatic brain injury and how this drug from hearing people who've had addictions, whether it be methamphetamine, alcohol, opioids, which is huge now, and the traumatic brain injury, PTSD, any mental health issue, these people are coming back transformed to where they're almost healed from one dose of a medicine, which you can get from a plant. It's nothing chemically derived. I mean, the results have been astounding, and it's to the point now where I'm pushing for it to get it out there. We need to do more bigger clinical trials with this, and it sounds like we're on that path now in 2026 to get it out there to do it. But for instance, with me with psychedelics, one of the uh drugs that helped me a lot, even though it's not natural plant-based, was ketamine. I've been through two rounds of ketamine treatment and just that psychedelic experience with me at what they call neuroplasticity or reshaping the brain. I've seen it work in myself, and I I was I was like, how can a drug do that to the brain? And what they're finding with the ibogaine is that the they've done studies, the one that came out of Stanford on guys who had the traumatic brain injury, and their scans they had pre-the treatment showed the injured areas in the brain, and then months later they come back and those injured areas are rehealed. And what drug do we know of? I don't know of anything that can reheal the brain and put those neurons and all the neurochemicals and transmitters back together. But just the fact that all these guys, and for instance, the Sean Ryan podcast, one of the most interesting ones I watched with him is when his wife interviewed him after he did his ibogaine experience, it transformed his life. And I don't know of any drug that can take people from addiction away from that addiction. And with ibogaine, it's curing people of their addictions, it's curing them of their mental illness, their traumatic brain injury. And it almost sounds too good to be true. But every person I talk to who has done it or in the research that I've done in it, it's been life-changing for them, just transformative with one dose. Sometimes it takes two, but it's just incredible that a plant that's been used in Africa and ritual ceremonies for thousands of years can be this healing. So I'm real excited to see where it's gonna come to because a lot of guys that are incarcerated have the mental health issues, the traumatic brain injuries, and addiction is one of the biggest things we see now. As everyone knows, with the fentanyl and opioid crisis that's going on, it's killing so many people. And I'm like, here's a treatment where a one-time dose done under proper medical supervision is curing people of addictions. And I I'm an addiction specialist as well, and so we have Suboxone, we have certain things to help with the cravings, but it's almost you're putting someone on another narcotic to treat a disease, whereas here we could use a natural plant and cure these people. So I saw it Ibigain as something that hopefully it will get out there. We can get the studies going where we can bring it to the incarcerated individuals who are suffering with addictions, and a lot of them are still doing drugs in jail if they can get it with the contraband coming in. But if you can take someone who has a serious addiction or mental health issue and treat it with a plant-based substance, I'm like, why not? Let's do this. I mean, it's very exciting to me that this is this could be one of the biggest things I think in medicine in years, if it comes to be true with the studies and just from the people I've talked to with it, it's been transformative for them.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. As a doctor, tell me what you would say to those who have concerns. Because I think the biggest concern out there around even exploring psychedelic assisted treatment or specifically ibogaine, what they say is one, we don't have enough studies. So, so our studies are limited. We don't have double-blind studies. You know, we have we have to do more. And two, there's some obvious known adverse experiences uh with these drugs, particularly with ibogaine. There's the heart failure concern, right? And there are folks who are really concerned about us looking deeper at this, that we might be doing more harm than good because we don't know exactly. What would you, as a medical doctor, say about those concerns that people have?
SPEAKER_01I think all those concerns are valid, and the prolonging the uh QT interval for in the hearts and causing arrhythmias is definitely an issue with the ibogaine. But it's like with any drug that we have out there, the proper studies need to be allowed, and with it being a Schedule I drug, they're not even allowed to be done. Whereas I'm hoping with the right to try and with this new uh political uh administration that they'll allow us to do the proper double blinded studies and to get the ibogaine out there so we can see what the real side effects of the drug are, because all we have are not many numbers. As you know, the Stanford study was only 30 individuals. But if we can get the proper trials done and just be allowed to get it off of the scheduled one so we can do the trials in a properly monitored medical system where you have the cardiologists, the doctors there to monitor you, the IVs in place, I think getting the proper studies done are important because I think the concerns, like you said, are very valid on the side effects of it and what's the negatives of it, because there's got to be something that's negative about it too. But until we get the proper studies done, we won't know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. And what do you think about this idea of even exploring psychedelics as a medical professional? I mean, we know we we know what we do today in medicine and we know how we do mental health care with therapeutic treatments and uh medication management. It seems to me like we've been doing that same thing for a long time, but our data keeps telling us that people are more uh, well, they're ill. Yes. They're they're getting more and more an anxiety, depression, and mental health diagnosis than they have before.
SPEAKER_01Yep. And and I I've looked into this too. For instance, I was on Prozac and SSRI for 21 years, and I and I've talked to other people who have been on it. I think there's a lot of negatives with these meds in the Wall Street Journal article that came out about the combat cocktail that all these veterans have been put on all these different psychiatric medications and they're supposed to help you, but in reality, people are still suicidal, and we're still seeing the veteran suicide rate being so high, even though they're supposed to be properly treated on these medications. I think we need to look back into are the SSRIs as good as the studies have shown, or can there be harm in being on these drugs for long term? For instance, with myself, I felt like being on the Prozac, I was just in this middle valley. There were no peaks or highs or lows to myself. I I personally didn't feel like I got excitement and things that used to get me make me happy. I just felt like I was blasé, so to speak. And this year, after three times trying over 20 years to come off the SSRIs, I was finally able to get off the Prozac and I've been off it for four months. And I can tell you personally, this is the best I have felt in 21 years is being off the medications. I found that when I was medicated and it was by my psychiatrist or the VA or whatever it was, the meds just dull you and they make you not the person that you really are. And I knew personally one of the big reasons I wanted to come off the SSRIs is I was going to go do Ibigain myself down in Mexico, and you need to be off SSRIs before they'll allow you to do Ibigain. So I had a goal to get off of it, but I weaned myself off of it slowly and just myself being an N of one, I have found that I feel joy again. I'm less depressed. I don't have those negative thoughts as much. And I'm wondering how many people out there, because nowadays, if you go to a doctor or a psychiatrist, it seems like the American way is let's give you a pill to fix this. There's a pill for everything. And I'm not like that. I think we need to get to the basis of why you do need a medication. If you're a hypertensive or diabetic, of course you need meds. But I think a lot of the mental health in the United States and even in other countries is let's just throw meds at it and see what works. Whereas I don't think that's necessarily the answer.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I was just thinking about the person who might be listening to this and thinking, okay, there was an event or a situation that led me to the choice of taking a recommended medication because I was in perhaps a crisis or in my lowest of low. And we're also kind of starting to explore whether being on an SSRI long term is a good idea. It's what you and I are talking about right now. And I think that the researchers are looking at this too. So what about the person who's thinking I am struggling and that is my option today? Should I should I consider that still a good place to start in helping myself? Or are there other ways to address their need for intervention?
SPEAKER_01I think there needs to be more counseling made available and like cognitive behavioral therapy and these different psychotherapies that are available before we just go starting people on medications, because even as uh Kennedy has said, that as being head of the health and human services, the hardest drug he ever tried to come off of were the SSRIs. And I can personally say after I got out of the military, the VA had me on a lot of meds, and it was every time I had uh either a grieving over something or just felt a little down, it was like, here, let's add another medication. So, like you're saying, someone going through maybe the loss of a loved one or just maybe lost their job or just an intermittent episode of depression. I don't think medication should be the first choice. I think you need to get to the root cause of the matter and see, hey, is there ways we can deal with this mentally first, maybe through counseling or different therapies that we have? I do think for some people they're helpful, but I just think in the United States, the way it is, a lot of people think, well, if I go to my doctor and I don't get a medication, I'm not being treated appropriately. And we're even seeing that with this. SRI use now, as you said, Ricky, is every it seems like most a lot of the population have been on them or they've been prescribed them just because of maybe a one-time issue they're going through mentally. And I think we need to have better mental health care out there to see, hey, how can we help you deal with this with not automatically throwing a drug at them? And that's why I think Ibigaine is so incredible, is it's treating people with PTSD, depression, uh, anxiety disorder, addiction, all these mental health issues. I would hold off on taking the drugs unless, of course, I made my own personal decision that, hey, I want to try these medications the doctor gave me to see if I'm being better. But I would tell people to look at the negatives and the positives of it, to do their own research and to decide if this is something they want to go on. Because, as I said, getting off these drugs once you start them can be very, very difficult.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And just to be clear for our listeners, this isn't medical advice. This is someone's journey. This is someone's own understanding of, you know, your own experience in choosing to use uh an SSRI, choosing to explore other ways of coping, choosing to uh embrace treatment through therapy in different ways, and then now treating people as a medical doctor. Um I would say too, one of the I I hear two things, and I'd wonder how you in your individual experience might respond to this. One, I do believe in therapy. That's kind of my background and training as marriage and family therapy. I think it's incredibly helpful for people to have someone to guide them through processing through trauma and these kind of techniques such as EMDR, eye movement desensitization, reprocessing. These are great for traumatic experiences and can be fairly uh efficient. I mean, you can get through within six or eight sessions sometimes with EMDR, some of the trauma, depending on how severe. But people tell me two things. One, I really want to do therapy. I can't find anyone with an opening. I'm on a waiting list. There, it's too hard to access. Perhaps people don't have coverage. Coverage isn't always fair when you have private insurance. So you can get a lot of physical health stuff covered that perhaps you can't in mental health care. So therapy. That's one thing is access. And then this the other side of it is people who are fearful to enter the process because they don't want to reopen all of those wounds per se.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00How how would you how would you help encourage that person?
SPEAKER_01I think exactly what you said. EMDR is amazing and these different therapies that are out there that have been very successful without pharmacology or psychopharmacology. I think the uh the people are right, even for myself, I I'm 100% disabled vet, and I still, after a year and a half, cannot find a counselor that will take me because of access, and here I am a physician and in the medical field. And I still myself cannot find a counselor to get in for therapy. And so that is very demoralizing. And so I can only understand here I am, I know the system and how it works, and yet I can't find someone to get into. But I would tell people to look for those sources out there to get the proper counseling and therapy before I would start on a medication again. I would try therapy, is what I would recommend to people to get to the root cause, the EMDR, exactly, like you said, which has been very successful for people. And there's a lot of other things out there besides just throwing medications at them.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I've heard some neuroscientists who are researching mental health and particularly the rates of mental health and the projecting in terms of how quickly the rate is rising, where we will be in the next 10 years, if it continues on the path that we're on, which we don't have reason to think otherwise at this point. But I've heard some say that with mental health diagnosis, including dementia, this is a particular neuroscientist um out of Stanford that said this, including dementia, about half of the population in the next 10 years will have a mental health diagnosis.
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_00Do you think that's true?
SPEAKER_01I do think it's true. And especially just the trends I'm seeing and from hearing out there, especially in the incarcerated individuals, which I take care of, the mental health, it has risen exponentially. I mean, more than I would have ever thought. And so just in our jails, just in seeing the amount of mental health issues that are there, I do think in 10 years, 50% of the people will have some kind of mental health diagnosis or other. And I think we need to find a way to help treat that. And I think Ibigaine could be the answer to a lot of this or these other psychedelic treatments. But first we need to get the research and the proper studies done to show that it is safe, that it is effective, that it's not just a small number of people it's helping. But I agree with you, Ricky. I think in 10 years, I think it could even be greater than 50%.
SPEAKER_00Which says to me then in 10 years, we have one of two options as an industry and in behavioral health. We either begin to explore what gets us to healing faster and more efficiently and more effectively, or we keep trying to recruit people to be therapists and physicians to continue to treat this stuff. What approach would you take if you could wave a wand?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I don't think what we're doing right now is working. Obviously, if this many people are having it and we supposedly have the best meds available, I think we've got to find other choices out there because I don't think the SSRI or the antipsychotics or whatever it may be is the answer. I think we have to find new ways, whether that be therapy, EMDR with the psychedelics, I think there needs to be an answer out there for it because the road we're going on, like you said, 50% of people in 10 years, what we're doing now is not working. So I would like to see a big change and just the access to mental health care needs to be better, as you said, because with certain insurance companies or people who don't have insurance, getting that mental health care is difficult. And there's still that stigma, I think, in a lot of people, where I'm tough enough, I can't have a mental health disorder. I just need to tough it out. And for people out there that are going through that, they need to realize there is help for them and that they can get help because I think there is a bad stigma for people to say, oh, I have a mental health disorder, I must not be good enough, or I'm defunct, or whatever they want to think about it. Just realizing that having a mental health disorder is no different than having hypertension or diabetes or cancer. It can be treated. But I think we as professionals need to find better ways to treat the mental health.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I feel like there are so many people stuck in this place of wanting something different and better for their own mental health care, but not knowing how to get that. And we as an industry, I think are kind of in a moment where you can access perhaps some of these innovative treatments that include psychedelic assisted therapies through clinical trials, but not really access them in the US outside of that. And so if we are to engage in FDA clinical trials, you talked earlier about neuroplasticity in the brain. Something that I would love to talk about is the uh, and I know this is you're gonna connect to this because you told me some things about yourself, but the creativity, the process of using creativity, whether that's through music or art or whatever that is, but creativity actually can have a neuroplastic sort of effect in the brain. And you talked about music a little bit with me. Tell me about music as part of your journey, what what you're what you do with that and why music to me, I've always been in love with music.
SPEAKER_01I I've liked it since I was a kid. My parents had the old uh record player and eight track when I was a kid and their albums, and I just have always loved music. And uh it's funny that I moved to Franklin in Nashville, being the music capital of the world. That was one of the big reasons we moved here too, was for music. I find that if I'm in a bad place, whether it be rock music, Christian contemporary worship music, whatever it is, or Mozart or classical music, whatever that is, it changes my state of mind sometimes. It will maybe I'll have a memory of something good when I heard that song last, or it takes me back. But I've never found myself depressed after listening to music. I always find it's a little up up, it's uplifting to me. The music is. And you said the neuroplasticity, and I've read some studies where I know with music therapy it has helped a lot of people, and just listening to different types of music, I think, can take your mind away from whatever that worry you may have or whatever thoughts are going through your mind. And music has been transformative for me, and just it's it's changed the way I out I think of things, and a lot of songwriters and stuff will have a certain instance for the reason they wrote that song or what that song may mean to them. And I find it has helped me tremendously, the artistic, the creative side. And I know some people find that painting or different arts like that help them a lot to get their thoughts out. So it can be any art to me, whether that's opera or painting or the the fine arts. I think just finding what you like and what can get you out of a bad state of mind, go with it if it's something that helps, because it's not a pill you're taking. There's really not nothing bad that's going to come from listening to music that I know of yet. I and so I think music therapy and just the arts can be very healing for people.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I have a thing I say to myself, like if I get stressed or I find myself in like that parasympathetic nervous system is all out of whack, I'll just say, what's free to me right now? Go outside, take a walk, breathe, do some, you know, Pilates or like there's so many things. And I get myself to the point where I think I feel like, oh, it has to be a more formal self-care plan, but it really doesn't have to be extremely formal. There's so much at our fingertips that we can do to help ourselves. What other things do you do to help just self-care?
SPEAKER_01I I think exercise is important, like you said, just getting out in nature, getting sunlight on, because so many of us are stuck on our phones and social media and just I think a lot and I think a lot of the mental health care has to do with that. When we were younger, we were outside playing all the time. We didn't have social media or the or be able to on our phones 24 hours a day, seven days a week, whatever that may be for you, whether that's getting out in the sunshine or watching a rainstorm come in or exercise or hiking or music or whatever that is. I think that is real important for me, I find just sometimes sitting out on my porch with just out of the being out in the elements can help me, whether that's just watching a rainstorm come through or being in the sun, anything that can help you, your mental state of mind, like you said, when you get stressed out, whether you do Pilates or just outside, or if it's music, find what's something that can give you that relief and go with it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking about that in context of the work you do in the Jills, and thinking a little bit about, I was connecting some dots around the folks that you're treating. What's a percentage of them that would you say are parents?
SPEAKER_01That's a great I don't know exactly what that number is, but a lot of them.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I mean, I would think let's just say 50-50, right? Perhaps. I was thinking a little bit about a a deeper subject, something I hear a lot when people talk about prisoners and and inmates. Uh, they talk a lot about evil. They say things uh let's take a mass shooting, for instance. I'll hear people talk about that's just pure evil, that someone could do that. I'm sure you've had some conversations and how how you navigate conversations with people who are wanting to know is this to do with mental health or is this some evil thing that a person is committing these heinous crimes? And I don't have an answer. I mean, that's a really hard I don't have a way of teasing that out. Right. But how does that show up in your world? Do those questions come with the work that you do?
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah. I I I get asked by some of my own colleagues and friends that are physicians, like, why would you want to work with the incarcerated population? And the way I look at it is if I can make and change one life, I've done good. I I I look at if it saves one life or it gets one person back on track. And the way I go into it is when I am in jails or prisons and I were seeing these guys, I did not want to know what they were there for because I did not want that pre-biased in my brain to be like, oh, how could he do something like that? And so the way I got around it is I I did not want to know what they were in jail for, whether it maybe they were smoking a joint in a state that they couldn't do that or they were mass murderers or rapists. I I just treated them all as individuals and they had a clean slate with me. And I just it is a hard question. Is it evil? What is it? Is it a mental health issue? I think it's a mixture of both because there is really no right answer to that. Because some of the stuff we see now with all the mass shootings going on on almost a daily basis, somewhere, it's there's something that's not that's that's gone awry. And I think we need to get to try to find out why that is happening because it is evil, and some of these people do have mental health issues, but there are some that probably don't have mental health issues that are doing that too. But I think until we get more studies and can figure out what's going on, I don't really know the right answer to that.
SPEAKER_00It's a it's such a hard one. It's a conversation I've had many times over. And the hardest part is if we want to destigmatize some of these struggles so that people do reach out for help, we can't at the same time say that, oh, perhaps anyone with a mental health issue is vulnerable to heinous crimes. I mean, that we've got to be careful there. Right. Because 99.9% of people with a diagnosis of mental illness are not gonna be committing crimes. I mean, I'm I'm saying that statistic. I don't know that to be absolutely true, but in my experience and 20 years working with folks, it's two different things. Yeah. But it's very hard to explain to someone how is it separate? How is it two separate things that someone can all because they they say, well, you if you look into this person perhaps committed a really horrible crime, they have trauma. They typically have trauma. Well, a lot of people do, yeah. And and they're they're not out there committing crimes. And so how do we help people understand? And I think using the term, well, it's evil, has been the way we've explained, you know, some of it. But but I'm with you. I I long for more studies, more understanding of how people get to the point. Um, obviously we understand suicide, but we don't so much understand homicide.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00And we don't understand.
SPEAKER_01Like yeah, like what is it that drives them to the point that they want to take a life or cause this incredible amount of harm to someone else? I yeah, I don't know what that answer is. Because like you said, it it's another way I think mental health gets stigmatized is oh, I got diagnosed with a mental health it uh diagnosis. Are they gonna think I'm gonna be a mass murderer or what what's gonna go on there? And like you said, there's a majority of the people who do have mental illness, they do not go on to do heinous crimes or mass shootings or commit any crimes whatsoever. So I just think more research needs to be done into that to see if there are patterns. Is it childhood trauma? Is it other stressors that are causing that?
SPEAKER_00But yeah, we don't want people to get to the point of avoiding you mentioned it in the beginning of just saying that I was kind of scared as a medical doctor, right, to talk about some of my own struggles because what if they think I'm not fit for my role?
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00And and that's scary to get to the point where people aren't able to flesh out some of their own needs.
SPEAKER_01Exactly.
SPEAKER_00For fear.
SPEAKER_01Right. Yeah, because I know there's times, even nowadays, if I'm meeting with my uh psychiatrist and they say, How's your week going? And there's veterans all the time. I I worked with a uh therapist who gave up her license because she didn't want to be a mandated reporter for suicidality, because a lot of the doctors, if you say, Oh, I'm suicidal, they want to lock you up, they want to put you into a psych facility. And a lot of veterans every day have suicidal thoughts. It doesn't mean they're gonna act on it, but they're afraid that if they tell their physician or their therapist that, that something negative is gonna happen to them. And I I don't know what the answer is to that because yes, suicide is a big problem, but just because you have a suicide thought doesn't mean you're gonna act on it. And there's certain physicians out there that think, oh my gosh, he said he's suicidal. I got to get him a committed hold, or I've got to force treatment on them. And I think a lot of people are still scared about that. For instance, I was with my own mental health. Are they gonna take my medical license away and take my livelihood away from me just because I sought help for my own mental illness? And I think the stigma just destigmatizing mental illness and knowing it is okay to say I have a mental illness and it's okay to get help for that is the appropriate thing to do, because I still think the stigma when you say I have a mental illness, people think, oh, that person's crazy or I don't want to be friends with them or anything. But I think if you really got down to it and you had everyone had a real uh I think a lot of people would see they do struggle with mental earth.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. A couple of the things we've explored as being contributing factors. I think one, I mean, we have lost connection to each other. You talked about that peer, that community that that kind of supported you and helped you. I often think that's part of the problem in our society to today. I do think we we threw a lot out to destigmatize mental health and maybe we gave a language around it that is um too accessible and not actionable. So students today use a lot of words that I don't think maybe always fit the conversation like trauma or even suicidality at times. But I think that we didn't teach our children how important community was. And then those that went through COVID had to experience this isolation, which maybe perhaps I further addicted them to their social media and their phone and all the things. So then community really got stripped away. And I worry that in treatment, when we say you need community, you need people, you need supports, our children don't really know what that looks like.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. It's too many. I think the video games and the Facebook and the social media, whatever that may be, Instagram, too many they don't have friends outside of what they see on social media, so they think their friends are on social media. And I I I see it in my own family. You may have certain family members who are this political party, and then they're de-friending people because of something said on social media, which is crazy. It's like we can all still be friends and have different viewpoints, but so many people think, oh, well, they don't have the same mindset as me. I can't be friends with them because they're not like me. And too many people try to get their. I think kids nowadays try to get their uh feedback from social media, and who knows what whose that's coming from? It's just a person on another side of a phone typing, whatever we've gotten away from saying sorry or just being around, like you said, the community of people to help us out. And I think families are struggling with that too, with social media nowadays. And as you said, with COVID, I mean, the isolation, I don't think that was good for anyone. With and we're seeing that now with test scores and kids who went through that. It's it's really bearing out that if I think it's gonna show it was pretty harmful.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, I I agree. It's it's interesting. And you know, we you and I are of generations, but there are generations coming up behind us that have a very different experience. So when we try to say to the next generation, this is how you do it, I think it's like you don't understand. Right. You don't understand us. So why would you tell us these things? Right. Um, so I think more more research is really gonna be important here. Yes. So the professionals can begin to guide sort of where we go with some of this. I I'll end with um uh kind of capping the point on psychedelic assisted treatment that I think the professional, the professionalism of this approach is gonna be critical to this mission too, because I think what we have to be careful about is letting people in on information about. The potential effect, positive impact of these treatments, but not understanding that this all needs to be supervised, this needs to be studied, these need to be, these need to be done in medical centered trials. Yes. That we can't just be out there.
SPEAKER_01You can't just be a recreational. I'm going to go find this drug and try it myself on my own. I think you need to have the therapists that are there to guide you through it. You need to have the medical professionals there with you doing it. I think it all needs to be medically guided. But like you said, the first way to do that is through the proper clinical trials and research to show what is the benefits to it, what are the risks to this and outweigh the risk or the benefits so people have they can make an educated choice on knowing that, hey, this trial was done with thousands of people and it showed that it helped this many, or this was the number needed to treat to help one person. We need to know those numbers and studies. But yes, I think I I don't recommend anyone going out and trying to find mushrooms or Ibigaine or anything on the black market and doing themselves that all needs to be done in a controlled medical setting with the right people around and having the proper guidance and all that stuff too, because I'm sure there can be harm from that if you just tried it recreationally or tried it on your own, because I would not recommend anyone doing that until we can get the proper studies done and it's done in the right medical supervised situation.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I agree. You could probably do more harm than good to yourself, but to this whole effort to explore this area if we if we don't do it very carefully and everyone, you know, waits for those trial opportunities.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00Um, okay, I want to I want to finish up on leadership because you're a chief medical officer, you're supervising medical professionals who are serving the inmates in the jail. What's next for advanced correctional health care?
SPEAKER_01We're looking to get into prisons now. We've just been in jails right now, but prisons are a total different beast. And uh the big thing with us is we hope to be on the leading edge of the psychedelic treatments and hopefully be able to bring it into the jails in the prisons after the studies are done and to get it going. We're always looking at ways we can help veterans. Uh, there's an unbelievably high amount of veterans who are incarcerated or homeless or are going through mental health issues. So to me, being a veteran and a disabled vet, I want to do whatever I can to help those veterans out first. But I think with advanced correctional health care and our leadership and owners, they lead by example. And what I just said, I try to lead by positivity. The owners of our company do that too. From our founder, Dr. Johnson, he's always positive. He's always looking whatever he can to be the best medical care for these inmates that we can. So I just hope that we can push the boundaries. And when these studies do get out there, we know when the addiction rates and the mental health and the traumatic brain injuries and prisons and jails, that if it is Ibigaine or psilocybin or the psychedelics or whatever, we find out that we can be one on the forefront of that and get it into our jails and prisoners and hopefully cure these people and treat them appropriately.
SPEAKER_00I mean, I have to imagine that's a pretty wild thing to hear someone from correctional health say they want to bring psychedelic assisted treatments if they prove to be effective to treat. But also you're you're thinking differently than traditional providers are today. And I I can only imagine you're thinking that way because the passion you have to see people healed. And if you're not seeing that now, then what? Yes, then what's next? And I think that's admirable to take that approach um and compassionate to take an approach to say, I'd like to see this better. I'd like to see people heal faster, I'd like to see an opportunity for people to maybe get treatment that is effective.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. And some of these guys and gals that are incarcerated, they feel like they're just lost and they they have no hope for them. And if the Ibigaine or the psychedelics prove to be that treatment or whether it's a new drug, I want us to be on the forefront of that and to be able to offer that hope and that treatment for someone. If there's something out there and it is the Ibigaine, then let's get it out there to people and let's cure these people. I I just I know what we're doing now is not working it with the way medicine's going. Like you said, 50% of people in 10 years are going to have a mental illness that that rate, it's only going to get worse. We have to do something different, but let's get the studies out there and be open-minded enough to realize, hey, we may not have been trained with this stuff, but if it can really cure and help someone and save a life, let's do it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. And just to make sure our listeners know this too, you all aren't operators, you're not jail operators. You go into the jails to provide the the healthcare component of their services. So um it's such a unique position you have because you work independently from the jail. So you can you can choose to be innovative in your approaches or to want to to research new methods and modalities, and you're accountable to you know your your owners on that piece. And they seem to be very um interested and invested in helping people find pathways to healing and as quickly as possible. Yes. Yeah, I think that's wonderful. This has been so interesting. Yes, thank you. You've lived a very interesting life. Yes, I really appreciate it. I've really learned a lot.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00Um, so thanks for coming.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, Ricky.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.