Into the Fold: the Mental Health Podcast

In our What Happened to You? series, we are looking at trauma, at both the individual and community level. COVID-19 has been a generational trauma, affecting children, families, communities, and whole societies. Health care workers have been among the most deeply impacted. For this episode we’re looking at the traumatic impact of COVID on health care workers, through the lens of a concept known as...

It’s hard to miss the multitude of public conversations about personal trauma taking place these days. Once a very privately held concern, discussing Discussing personal trauma and its long-term impact has become markedly less stigmatized. Increasingly, public discussion is considered empowering, humanizing, and helpful to others with similar experiences. In the second of our series of podcasts ad...

it has been two months since the horrific mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Tragedies like Uvalde are always a chance to revisit what we mean by “safety,” and where mental health fits in to that. And lest we forget, the worst of the COVID pandemic may be over for most kids, but that can't erase the more than 10.5 million children worldwide who have lost one or both parents...

In the summer of 2022 the Hogg Foundation teamed up with the Bullock Museum of Texas to contribute to their summer of programming on mental health. In June of 2022, Hogg Foundation executive director Dr. Octavio N. Martinez, Jr., and Dr. Bill Bush, Texas A&M professor of history and author of Circuit Riders for Mental Health: The Hogg Foundation and Twentieth Century Texas, were the featured g...

As we close Minority Mental Health Awareness Month, we take a look at one of the most vital domains for the exploration of lived mental health experience: art. Our guest is Velta Brenya, a recent graduate from The University of Texas at Austin, and her unique project: The Double Diversity Digital Art Gallery. Velta created the Double Diversity Digital Art Gallery to highlight the experiences of Bl...

One of the biggest disparities affecting people of color in the United States concerns maternal mental health. In 2022, WorkingGroup512, based in East Austin, received a $5,000 grant from the Hogg Foundation for its maternal mental health project. The project provides holistic support and healing to a focus cohort of Black mothers and primary caregivers, ages 16 to 65, caring for at least one chil...

This is Part 2 of our month-long conversation on the attack on LGBTQ+ rights and its impact on mental health in Texas. The LGBTQ+ community in Texas is getting it from all sides; not just efforts to ban or sharply curtail gender affirming care, but bans on trans youth participation in sports, book bans, and just the general climate of fear-mongering that cast a shadow over Pride Month this year. J...

June is Pride Month. We recognize the contributions lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/queer plus individuals have made to society--and the continued urgency of their struggle. The LGBTQ+ community has had to fight for acceptance, inclusion, and civil rights in a society that has historically shunned their very existence. The LGBTQ+ community continues to face many obstacles to their i...

May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. We’re taking this time of cultural recognition to look at connections between this community and the Hogg Foundation’s core concerns for mental health and health equity. In Episode 132 of Into the Fold, we speak with three representatives from the Asian Americans Attaining Awareness (AAAA) initiative to explore Asian American mental health...

April 22 is Earth Day. It is an opportunity to assess the current health of our physical environment and explore ways to protect and improve it. As young people increasingly express concern about the impacts of climate change, Earth Day is also a natural opportunity to explore the connection between climate anxiety and mental health. In this episode of Into the Fold, we speak with two passionate c...

The month of March is Women’s History Month. For this milestone 130th episode of our podcast, we put the spotlight on a remarkable woman who we recently lost: Sarah Weddington, who made an enormous contribution to history as a successful litigator in the landmark Roe V. Wade case, and who passed away last December. She appeared in a 1970's episode of The Human Condition, the radio series produced...

In this episode of Into the Fold, we explore how today’s toxic political climate may be impacting mental health programs in schools, as described in a recent NBC news article entitled, “Parents protesting ‘critical race theory’ identify a new target: Mental health programs”. We are joined by Donna Black, president of the Social Emotional Learning Alliance for Texas (SEL4TX) to discuss an education...

In observance of Black History Month 2022, we once again reach back into the Hogg Foundation's archive of episodes of the Human Condition, the radio program that the foundation produced from 1971 to 1983. These rare conversations cover a multitude of subjects against a backdrop of rapid social change--and new developments in mental health. This episode features a revealing conversation with Roy Wi...

The Hogg Foundation recently celebrated the 10th year of the Policy Academy and Policy Fellows initiative, a cornerstone initiative, which is still going strong. Hogg Policy Fellows have gone on to positions of leadership at all levels, and their collective expertise has changed mental health policy in Texas for the better. Later this month the Hogg Foundation will be releasing a report titled, "H...

As we have explored in numerous episodes, COVID-19 has been a pandemic of inequality. For as long as the pandemic has been a mainstay in our lives, the podcast has tried to bring the Hogg Foundation’s equity lens to bear on our discussions of the pandemic’s blighting effects on mental health and well-being. We continue this equity focus with Episode 126, which looks at vaccine access for the curre...

Drawing from insights shared at this year’s Young Minds Matter conference, this episode of Into the Fold calls attention to the connection between healing and justice as it relates to youth mental health and well-being. Focusing on the power and agency of young people, as opposed to their vulnerability, our guest Dr. Nia West-Bey, Senior Policy Analyst at The Center for Law and Social Policy (CLAS...

In some ways, “social determinants” is just another way of saying something that should be obvious: that mental health and well-being is radically tied to place. The histories of places, and how physical space is configured, by whom and for whom, is something that has profound ramifications for mental health and well-being. In particular, access to the outdoors is a key social determinant of menta...

According to the World Health Organization, nearly a billion people worldwide have experienced some form of mental illness. This includes an estimated 5% of adults who experience depression, one in seven 10-19-year-olds who have experienced a mental health condition, and suicide being the fourth leading cause of death for young people aged 15-29 years. And people with severe mental disorders such...

The LGBTQIA community has made some tremendous strides in the 21st century. Not only are gay people able to legally marry in the U.S. and many other Western nations, but transgender and nonbinary people have become increasingly visible and accepted among a growing swath of the public. Guides to proper pronoun usage have become increasingly commonplace, while transgender people also model forms of...

Historically, the mental health system, and the conversation surrounding it, has given more value to the expert opinions of providers and clinicians than the experiences of those living with mental health conditions. Today, elevating the visibility of mental health consumers is now commonplace for mental health organizations, institutions, and leaders who recognize the many advantages of giving me...

The teaching of history, like so much else in the present day, has become a political hot button—and The University of Texas at Austin hasn’t been spared. Over the last several months the campus has been roiled by controversies over the names of buildings, the placement of statues, and even the venerable “Eyes of Texas” song. And a largely ginned up controversy over “critical race theory” has been...

The impact of COVID on children isn't limited to those of school age. For babies who are just beginning to experience the world amid the upheaval of the pandemic, the success that First3Years, a Hogg Foundation grantee, has had in pivoting its operations is a game-changer. The organization works to support the social and emotional development of infants and toddlers through a combination of traini...

A recent Lancet study estimates that up to 1.5 million children worldwide have lost at least one primary or secondary caregiver as a result of the pandemic. Indeed, orphanhood and grief are an essential part of the story of this pandemic, one whose impact is just beginning to be understood. In this episode we explore the connection between caregiver death and children’s mental health with Laura Ol...

There is mounting evidence that people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) are experiencing more severe COVID-19 outcomes than the general population. In many ways, vaccination is a golden opportunity to address longstanding issues of equity and injustice. Our guest, Dr. Kara Ayers, PhD, is here to help us explore just how true that is for people with disabilities. Dr. Ayers is...

At the close of the first session of the Texas legislature to take place during the time of COVID, which had an enormous agenda to cover at breakneck speed, one thing is abundantly clear: meaningful engagement with public policy is challenging work. On this episode of the podcast, we sit down with three people dedicated to amplifying the voices of youth and young adults to advance mental health po...