Latest / Voices For Suicide Prevention / Healing Behind The Walls: A Conversation with Ohio's Corrections Director

Transcript

Healing Behind The Walls: A Conversation with Ohio's Corrections Director · Voices For Suicide Prevention

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to our October episode of Voices for Suicide Prevention.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: As we like to say, our conversations are real talk, real honest, real life.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Stephanie Booker.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm Scott Light.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: We have a visionary leader joining us today, and not just leading our state, but leading nationally in various roles, and by showing the nation how Ohio does it, how we benchmark, how we establish best practices for all.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: Our guest is the director of ODRC, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, Annette Chambers Smith.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: Director, welcome.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's good to have you here.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: As our listeners will find out, and with several other national titles as well, Stephanie and I were wondering when you sleep, but we'll get to that as we go here.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: Again, we're very fortunate that you, your team, are leading the way in several ways.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: Before we get to all that, could we ask uh maybe a little bit more about your personal story, your 30 years of correctional experience, and what brought you to this work?
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_03: That's kind of interesting.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_03: Um, my mother was a prison nurse.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_03: So she worked at three different institutions, and I can remember taking her to drop her off at work and stuff like that.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_03: And I had said my whole life, there is no way I'm ever working in a prison.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_03: And then uh I was in college and I met the administrative assistant to a warden, and he was trying to hire somebody to work in the records office.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_03: Um, that's like computing time and fast and speedy trial paperwork and stuff like that.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_03: And he's like, you should apply.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, No, I don't want to work in a prison, but he kept after me.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_03: So I thought, well, you know, I'll go in and look around.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_03: So I did apply.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_03: There were 200 people that applied for the job.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_03: This is back when the brass ring that you could get would be like being a civil servant was the best, it was the awesome job everyone wanted.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_03: So I thought, well, there's no way I'll ever get this job, but I wanted to see where he worked.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_03: Well, as it turns out, I was their selected candidate, and they had me go talk to the warden up for my second interview.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_03: And he said, I don't want to hire you because you're overqualified.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_03: And I said, Yeah, I'll give you a year.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_03: And he said, Okay, on that note, I'll hire you.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I mean, that was in 1993, and I'm still in the industry.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_03: When I became director, it was kind of funny for me to go home and say, Hey, mom, you know, I told you I was never gonna work at prisons.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_03: Now I'm actually the director.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_03: So kind of full story.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: What'd she say to that?
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_03: She's proud.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_03: Of course she is.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's great.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_03: Very much.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: That one year turned into a few more years than that.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, going from that records job to a deputy director.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then you stepped back a little bit.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: You went into the private sector for a couple of years before you came back.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Why, why, why, why did you come back?
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: What what changed in those years that you were away that you wanted to come back as director?
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_03: Well, really, I had no desire to come back.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_03: I was living in Florida and enjoying my job in private industry, but Governor DeWine won the election and his transition team started calling me.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_03: And I thought they were calling me to ask me advice, like who should they try to hire?
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_03: So I was like, Well, this person's really good and this person's got skills and don't sleep on this person, you know, kind of thing.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_03: And then finally, one of them said, Yeah, we're not calling you for your advice.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_03: We're calling you because we want you to be the director.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, Oh, I laughed at them.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_03: I never thought about it.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_03: So after a while, I didn't say anything back to him either.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_03: And after a while, one of them, we were on a board together.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_03: He said, You're gonna need to, you know, say yes or no.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, Well, I'm conflicted.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_03: And he said, Well, you better get unconflicted because we got to move on.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_03: So I realized that I've been making like pros and cons lists, and just being real, there are more cons than pros.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_03: But I decided to pray about it because that's what I do usually, and I I hadn't been, and God said, You already know what to do.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_03: He talks to me kind of like that if I haven't been listening fast enough.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_03: And quite frankly, I did.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_03: Like I had a fully formed vision of what things could be and um how I could help that.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_03: And I think I'm just walking in my purpose that God gave me.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_03: And I saw that after my prayers, and I said yes, and then I got interviewed by Governor DeWine, and I love him.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_03: And I think I was even more convinced that this is the right thing to do after having met him and gotten to talk to him about what he wanted to do in the state of Ohio.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, so my husband actually had to pack us up because we didn't have that much time before the administration was gonna start.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_03: So here my poor husband is trying to pack everything, and I have already moved to Ohio.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_03: And he actually packed a trash can.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_03: And I said to him, Why did you pack a full trash can?
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_03: He goes, Well, I mean, I didn't want to mess anything up or get in trouble.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_03: So I just thought I'll pack every single thing in here.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_03: And he truly did.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_03: So he was a trooper.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: So everything came to Ohio, including a little bit of Florida trash.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: I I also have to think uh here's where my mind goes.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: I think of Florida weather versus Ohio weather from let's say December through April.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: That was a con.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_03: How did you rectify that one?
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I honestly I do like the season changes.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_03: But I really prefer the Florida weather.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_03: I I could take a walk at the beach before I went to work.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_03: It was just great.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_03: And I was living where I used to vacation.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_03: But back here, they were all my friends.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_03: And there's nothing like getting your sweaters and boots out, and you know, that changes of the season.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_03: Just when you get sick of any one season Ohio, the next one comes.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_03: Right, right.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_03: So I've always enjoyed that.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: Let's do a little level setting here about the system that you run.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: Can you tick through, director, just some facts and figures, just for our listeners about the scope of your department across Ohio, how big it is, things like that.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I think one thing that's interesting to note is it's not all about prisons.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_03: Um, we do inspect and or fund a lot of community work, like uh CBCFs, community-based correctional facilities, halfway houses.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_03: Um, we inspect jails, we inspect jail construction, um, you know, right standards for certain parts of community correction.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_03: So there's a lot that's going on outside the prisons.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_03: Um, the parole officers work for the department.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_03: We do probation for eight counties, a lot of grant funding for the counties also.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_03: So there's all a large part of our business is outside the prisons.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_03: And then the parole board does also work for the department.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_03: And then you have 28 prisons.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_03: So we have 28 prisons, three of them are private, the rest are public.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_03: Um, right now there's about 45,500 incarcerated people.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_03: That number fluctuates, uh, mostly up.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_03: Um I think in our peak we have 51,000 incarcerated people.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_03: So we've been doing a lot of diversion in Ohio to give people chances to um get off the path to prison.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_03: And that's been working really well in the state, all the parties concerned.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, but we do supervise about 22,000 people on um post-release control and parole.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_03: And let's see, we have almost 12,000 staff, and then we have another 1,500 or so contractors.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_03: Um, 6,000 volunteers come into our prisons.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_03: That's awesome.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_03: I love the volunteers, and I'm so thankful for them.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_03: More than half of our staff are officers, about 6,200 or so are correction officers, and about 600 are parole officers.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_03: So vast majority of our staff are officers.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I don't know.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_03: There's a lot of stuff.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_03: Do you want to know about mental health stats or anything like that?
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: If you've got them ready, which I I bet you do.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_03: I I do.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, about 28% of the people incarcerated are mentally ill, which I think that's a little higher than the general population.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_03: And 65% of them moderate to very high needs for substance abuse programming.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_03: So when you look at it, um we divide our mental health folks into seriously mentally ill and and then a more stable population.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_03: The seriously mentally ill make up about 10% of the um population of people that are mentally ill.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_03: And 10% of our total total population, actually, and then people that are just more stable, that's about 18%.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_03: So 28% of our whole population is mentally ill, some of them very, very sick.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_03: Between the people who have substance abuse problems and the people who are mentally ill, there's a big overlap of a lot of people who have both.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_03: So we try to take care of both of those needs.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and it's an interesting environment to work in with both of those needs.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: So when you were talking about um, you know, about the total population um of about 45,000 um incarcerated people.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: Of that population, um, will they eventually be returned to society, released and returned?
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: 98%.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_03: About 98% of everyone um comes out at some point.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_03: So we have to know that, right?
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_03: We have to make sure that we run a system where the people that are leaving are going to be our neighbors.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_03: That's what we're essentially doing.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_03: We're supporting people uh into getting out the things they need to be the best neighbor possible.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_03: I like to think of prisons as a healing place.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_03: And some people think that's kind of crazy.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_03: I but if you think about it, I just told you how many people are have behavioral health issues, how many people have um substance abuse issues.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_03: Those are things that we recognize as diseases in America and Ohio.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_03: And so if that's the case with so many of the people we have, we essentially are in the business of helping these people heal.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: Not to age all three of us, but we all three have a little gray hair.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm betting that some of us like to cover that, Scott.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: But yes.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm betting that we can all remember back in the day, let's say, when it was, well, lock them up and throw away the key.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: And and so a lot has changed.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: I I I know, Stephanie, I don't know, I I I bet you agree.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: I love hearing it's a healing place.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: And and I also wonder, director, that that 98% number, I think that would surprise a lot of people, just the general public.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_03: I absolutely think people think that no one's coming home.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_03: And I when you get this job and you're doing this work, you have to realize, you know, I went home one day to go to McDonald's, and who did I see but the person that I just used to see in the living unit where I worked, right?
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_03: So really, you're gonna see these people at Walmart, you're gonna see these people wherever you're out and about.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_03: I went to Cleveland and was standing on the corner waiting for the light to change, and three people that knew me came up and said hello, and they were from the prison system.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: What's the number one misconception about the prison system and about those who are incarcerated?
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I've been doing it so long that I really uh had to ask somebody like, what do you think the misconceptions are?
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_03: And they said that everyone's in a cell.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, they're not.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_03: Uh in Ohio, a large percent of the buildings that we have are what we call open bay.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_03: They're essentially large areas with people living in monk beds, not all separated.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_03: And I think they're right about that.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_03: So it's more like a college campus.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_03: They're not all locked down all the time, particularly the lower the security level, the more freedom.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_03: So there are definitely prisons that are like what you imagine from Shawshank Redemption.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_03: But there are also the majority of our prisons, people are up going to school, walking around.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_03: Um, basically, the worse you behave, the more restrictions you get, and the better you behave and the more rehabilitated you are, the more freedom you have.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: And educational opportunities too.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_03: But we do have college in all of our prisons.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_03: Um, that's just something I see education as a necessity, not a privilege.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_03: And I think in the past it's been seen as a privilege.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_03: But realistically, if we want people to think differently, what better way to do that than education?
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_03: So we have vocational programming, we have apprenticeships, we have college, of course, and then you know, A, B, E, G, E D.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, we have the average reading score of people coming into prison is closer to the sixth grade.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_03: So we have a lot of people that we need to start at that point and move forward.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_03: And quite frankly, uh, you're not gonna be real successful if you cannot read.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_03: So there's a lot of people that we're just trying to get there with.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_03: So if you think about it, our teachers do great work.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_03: Um, every single person that they're working with to get a high school equivalency or GED, they already failed in the public school outside the prison.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_03: So our teachers are working with a hundred percent of people who couldn't be fully educated outside the prison, and they do great work.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: I think that one of the things that people don't realize, again, I mean, there's a reason why rehabilitation is before correction.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_03: It is in Ohio, but in most other places.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_03: Some places are still the Department of Correction.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but in Ohio, the prison system started out in the Department of Mental Health and Hygiene.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_03: And it was only 53 or 54 years ago that it was pulled out into its own agency.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_03: So a lot of the people that worked there at first were actually people who had worked uh for mental health before.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_03: Um, in fact, Pickway Correctional Institution was a mental health hospital at one point.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_03: And I can remember going there when I was new, when I first took that first job.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_03: And some of the people there that were correction officers have been working in the mental health hospital and then just moved over when it became a prison.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_03: So the DNA of our department has always been very much about rehabilitation, I think, because of how we started and where we started here.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_03: It's not the case in every state, but that's how what Ohio formed.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then you came on board with um Governor DeWine's administration kind of as a visionary change agent.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: We'll just say that, and established some core values to kind of change, make those changes from the start.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about some of the things that you wanted to make sure that you put into place.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I think take care of our staff, they were transform our offenders.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_03: That's really one of the first things because you know, razor ribbon wire, uh isolation, uh handcuffs, they don't reform people.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_03: People reform people.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_03: Um when you ask people who have left prison who was most instrumental in helping change your life, you probably think they would say teacher or something like that, mental health professional.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_03: Nope.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_03: They say correction officers.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_03: Correction officers spend eight to sixteen hours a day in the living units with these um people who are incarcerated.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_03: That means their demeanor, how they treat people, saying hello in the morning, role modeling behavior, um, that impacts the people that are incarcerated.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_03: And of course, programming.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_03: So any kind of programming that they're getting that helps them with their criminogenic needs, that's gonna help them as well.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_03: But if you don't get to the programming, if you're in the unit laying around, not doing anything, you know, your correction officer can tell you you need to be at school, go to school, just like we do with our kids.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_03: And maybe your correction officer might say, How'd you do on the GED test?
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_03: Or, you know, those kinds of things happen.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_03: So I think we have this viewpoint that correction officers are stormtroopers or something, but they're actually not.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_03: They're people and they interact with the incarcerated people in a professional manner.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_03: And that means some people are getting conversation and that they wouldn't have had before.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe no one ever asked them about how they did after they went to school or whatever.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_03: So we know our staff to be as healthy as possible so that they are able to help transform our offenders.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_03: And that's really the first one.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_03: And the second one is one team, one purpose.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_03: And the team isn't just our staff.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, some people are surprised when I say the incarcerated people are part of the team, but they outnumber us by quite a bit.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_03: I told you the numbers.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_03: Um, if they're not trying to behave, um, we would be in chaos, right?
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_03: So at any given moment, a good number of them are doing exactly what they're supposed to do.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_03: And when they're doing that, um they're on the team, right?
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_03: We have peers, peer counselors, tutors.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_03: Um, some people have been trained to do programming.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_03: We have people that already got their college degrees that are still in the prison.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_03: They may teach something.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_03: So we try to let them mentor and have a reason to get up in the morning and help the others.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_03: Um, the families of the incarcerated people can be on our team.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_03: If it's necessary, we would call a family member and have them help us with the person who's incarcerated, getting them to go in a certain direction.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_03: And of course, them coming to visit is very important.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_03: I told you we have 6,000 volunteers there on the team.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_03: So, really, the team's as big as anybody who's um trying to fulfill our mission, vision, and values.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_03: So that's really important that we all know what we're doing and we're all going in the same direction.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_03: And then civility towards all.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_03: Um, we're not all perfect.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_03: Sometimes we get mad, sometimes we yell.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_03: But the general tone of things should be civility.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, you always hear about Midwestern values here in Ohio.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_03: And quite frankly, I say you have that outside the prison.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_03: Just bring it inside the prison with you and keep acting the same way you always acted.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_03: And then we will have a civil environment, and it's going to be better for everybody, right?
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_03: I don't want to be in an environment where the incarcerated people are um verbally abusive, nor do they want to live in an environment where we're doing that to them.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_03: So we we all try to be civil to each other.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_03: And don't get me wrong, the people that are incarcerated are not choir boys.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_03: Everything's not perfect, right?
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_03: We do have uh problems, but this is what the goal is, this is what the vision is.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_03: And then last one is hope is job one.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_03: And people think the hope is just for the incarcerated people, and it is, but it's also for the family because think about if your person's involved with substance abuse or if they've been living, their behavior health problems haven't been calibrated, they probably haven't been that great of a family member.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_03: We need to establish the connection, the family engagement, so then we'll give their person a chance when they come back out, right?
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_03: So we need the family to have hope.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_03: Most people spend their first nights out of prison with their family.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_03: If we can give the family hope and get them re-engaged with the incarcerated people, there's a chance for that to occur.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_03: And it's very powerful.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_03: And of course, the staff have to have hope.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_03: When I first started working in corrections, um, I actually thought the whole job was like just keep them in the fence and keep everybody alive.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_03: And it is, that's part of the job, but it's not the whole job.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_03: And I didn't really have hope.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_03: I was working in a pre-release center, and that meant we would get about 60 to 100 people in and out every week.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_03: And I would see some of the same people come back a few years later or something.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_03: And I got to thinking to myself, boy, this is swash, rinse, repeat.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_03: What's the point of all this?
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I wish I'd known then what I teach everyone now, which is, you know, two-thirds of the people, more than two-thirds of the people, don't come back.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_03: Um, they come, they get their needs met, and they do not come back, you know.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_03: And I didn't know that back then.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_03: So I start out every new employee class asking them, how many people do you think come back?
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_03: And a lot of times they'll say between 40 and 80%.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of times more toward the 80% end.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, how could you do a job where you fail 80% of the time, right?
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_03: So we need the staff to have hope.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_03: So we might bring back alumni, incarcerated people.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_03: And it's really great for the incarcerated people to see them, but also for our staff, you know, that they they're thriving.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_03: Then, you know, I help make this person successful.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_03: There's no better feeling than that.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_03: So those are the four things we concentrate on in terms of how we want to operate the prison system.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: There are a lot of things.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: We're Stephanie and I are both taking notes here, and a couple, I I want to come back to your volunteers for a second.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: You said 6,000 volunteers.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: Again, I think that's something that the general public would be surprised to know and would maybe motivate others out there who listened to these episodes, going, you know what, I can do that.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe think it's um when I lived in another city, our family dentist, she volunteered her time at a women's facility, women's prison.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: She loved doing that work.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: It really fulfilled many things in her.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: So, what kinds of volunteer opportunities are there?
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_03: Probably the largest cohort of volunteers we have are religious volunteers.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_03: That's mentoring and um fellowshipping and Bible studies and all of the kinds of things you think are associated with that.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_03: And then we have a large number that are um NA, AA, um, those kinds of things.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but we also have people that are just teaching people how to crochet or um the harmony uh choir.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_03: Have you ever heard of that?
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_03: Well, we have three um prisons that have incarcerated person harmony choirs, and the people that are in the harmony choir on the outside come inside, teach them to sing, and then you know, we do concerts and some of them come out.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: So that kind of thing, just interacting with people, you know you're not forgotten.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_03: That's one thing that's very important about the volunteers to the incarcerated people.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_03: And they always say, I'm talking to someone normal, but what they just mean not a staff member, right?
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_03: And it is a different kind of conversation you're gonna have if they're if they're just from the free world, we call it, and not a staff member, right?
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_03: So it's really many different things.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_03: Some teaching financial uh services, um helping do taxes.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, sure just about anything you would want to do, you could probably find a place to do it.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_03: And we welcome the volunteers as teammates, part of our one team, one purpose, helping everybody reform.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: You've already discussed some of the mental health challenges, some of the substance abuse challenges among the incarcerated.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: What about within the organization and corrections officers and the staff members?
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: What about their their mental health?
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_03: I think it might be interesting for some people to know that about a third of our staff suffer from PTSD.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_03: Um, probably about 4,000 of our staff are um from the military.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_03: And then things happen inside of the facilities that are things you would not normally see out and about.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_03: Um, for example, I did see a woman who had committed suicide.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_03: Now I've never seen that out and about, but I did see it in the prison.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_03: So there might be fighting and different things that you see things, or you have to participate in helping to break things up, or even the healthcare issues that people have, you know, that you might have to give somebody CPR.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_03: So there's a lot that goes on inside the prison that can be traumatic.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_03: And there's, of course, people lived a life before they became staff members.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_03: So about 34% of our correction officers particularly have PTSD.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_03: And then the average lifespan of a correction officer is in different studies 59, sometimes 55 to 59 years.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, in the general public, it's in excess of 75 years.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_03: So people that do this work are quite literally giving their lives to help other people put their lives together.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_03: So people don't think about that, you know what I mean?
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_03: They always think about um the movies.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_03: There's probably been more movies made about prisons than just about any other topic.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, probably about a 40% higher suicide rate for correction officers than there are for just free people that are not associated with um prison systems.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_03: When you're talking about stuff like that, you have to take care of your staff.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_03: That's one of our uh very bedrock values.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_03: So um we started the employees support team during this administration, and it was really just about trying to make sure that we had someone to talk to, someone to guide you to other services, trying to make sure that our staff are our whole, not just so they can do their job, but also so they can have a good life.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_03: Everybody has a family and responsibilities outside the prison, and we don't want them to be in this shape.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_03: I'd like to see the 59 years rise, right, to be the same as people who don't work in prison.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_03: So many different things we started doing to try to uh get the health care, mental health care for the staff uh up to scratch.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_03: I think that we have done a lot with stigma.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_03: Um we never used to talk about it before.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_03: Now people are saying that they need help.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_03: Um when you're providing all those services to the incarcerated people, if you you know what can happen, right, if you're getting treatment and you start to have faith in that if you've never seen it before and you start to see up close and personal the difference it makes for the incarcerated people, you know that it works.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and then you might want to uh pursue that for yourself.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_03: But really, this is hard work, and people don't really think about that.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_03: They think long throw them away, lock them up, and they forget that there's people there supervising them and trying to keep everybody safe.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: What can we do in terms of your partners in the nonprofit world here at OSPF?
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: And again, we have listenership from other organizations, and what can we do to partner with you?
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's on that volunteer level or some other things, maybe it's bringing in advocacy.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: We talk about breaking stigmas all the time in mental health and suicide prevention.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, how can we help?
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: How can the nonprofit world help?
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_03: I think that we do have some really good partnerships, and of course, we could always take on more, but um we're trying to get man therapy right now.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know if you've heard of that before.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_03: Um, thinking about probably 70% of our staff are male.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_03: So it's kind of important that we make sure that we're trying to figure out how to drive the men toward help because the women are a little bit more willing, I think.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_03: So anything, um, like like there was a nonprofit that came and they were talking about we'd had a traumatic event, and they were they just take people out into the woods to camp.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_03: And uh yeah, so we did that, uh, offered that to some of our staff.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_03: So that's the kind of thing.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_03: And then, you know, like I said, we do have pearl officers and um they work on task force, so it's not all just supervision of our pearlies, but they assist the federal task force and the local task force, and they're involved in shooting.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_03: So we have someone that came to us and was like helping us with our first responder, um, you know, witnessing of firearms use out in the world.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_03: You that's not something you're expecting to do if you're not a police officer, you're not expecting to see that.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_03: So if you're out there and you've heard anything I said that you think, I could help with that, or uh, that's in my swing pattern, we would love for you to contact us because we're always trying to figure out how to interact and make our one team bigger.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: Stephanie, you could break some news about man therapy.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: When I heard man therapy, um, obviously the music to my ears, because uh that's one of the programs here in Ohio that we lead through the Ohio Suicide Prevention Foundation.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, we um we as uh several people on our staff came and participated in kind of a listening session among the corrections officers as well as the incarcerated people and a lot of talking about mental wellness, breaking stigmas, talking about suicide prevention.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: What did you learn as the director of the department during those discussions?
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_03: I gotta say, I've been there since 1993, so I wasn't really having a lot of revelations other than a couple things.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_03: One, I thought to myself, you know, the incarcerated people, we pretty much we've got them covered.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_03: We have a huge mental health staff, we refer people to mental health when we need to like they've got a lot of care.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_03: Um, however, the staff, you know, we kind of were like, well, you have insurance, you have e employee support through EAP and things like that, and that's just not going to be enough.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_03: And in the past, like I said, the staff don't really talk about that.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_03: But during the listening session, they were just very forthcoming.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_03: And that is when I was like, we need man therapy right now.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_03: Um, because I think some of them really don't express that they would use the resources that we point them at.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_03: But I do think that they would use the self-service of man therapy, and I think it's tailored toward their sort of culture.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm very excited to get that.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_03: But I I think what I learned was there's even more need than I thought.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_03: And we've been doing a lot, and we've got them to the point where they are talking about it, which is great, and where some of them are seeking services, but now we just need to get more people connected to the services they need.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_03: But I really Really appreciate the staff at Chilakothi Correctional Institution for being so forthcoming, for giving us so much information, and that's a good jumping off point for us to do what we're going to do next.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: So we have some things to talk about with the director, Stephanie, after this podcast when it comes to demand therapy.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_01: So we've got some stuff to follow up on.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: That's really great.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: Let's tee up something that we mentioned at the very beginning, and that is really your national footprint here.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: In 2024, you led a national group to identify 16 determinants of post-release success, aiming to help prisons better prepare incarcerated people for that successful integration back to their respective communities.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: We don't we hopefully you're not thinking, oh boy, I've got to memorize all 16 here, but give us the broad strokes of what you found out and kind of that national discussion on this very topic.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_03: The discussion started because during COVID the courts shut down.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_03: And because the courts were shut down, people were not recidivating back into prison.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_03: And that's the moment that I was like, okay, recidivism has never been a great measure.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_03: It's not calculated the same nationally.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_03: And now we have the court shut down.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_03: So that's artificially suppressing it.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_03: What else is there out there?
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_03: What how can we do our work better?
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_03: Or something I was always wondering.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_03: So I mentioned that at a meeting of people who do the same work that I do with the directors of the country.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_03: And they were like, okay, Big Mouth, you're going to have to run the committee, right?
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_03: So there was probably about eight to ten states that work together with our research partners and our directors.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_03: And um what we did was we had our research staff do uh like a review of everything that's out there.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_03: What does the science tell us in terms of the research, what works?
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_03: And then we said, okay, well, how can we begin to measure and be accountable for what works and point ourselves at that instead of just recidivism?
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_03: So things there are things like educational access and quality, healthcare access and quality, neighborhood and the built environment, social and community context, and economic stability.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_03: Those are, and to make that more simple, the the more educated you are, the less likely you are to return to prison, right?
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_03: If your healthcare, including your behavioral health care, is taken care of, you're stable, you're less likely to return to prison.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_03: So we know these things, and it's 20 years worth of data says the same thing.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_03: Now we just have to operationalize it.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_03: So what we started looking at are how can we count these things and how can we do it in a way that might be transportable across state lines so we can see who might have a best practice and you know duplicate that.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_03: So we started uh looking at, for example, regarding employment, how many people have a job within the first quarter of leaving prison, how many people have a job within the first year of leaving prison, um, what types of employment are gonna be most readily accessible to our people?
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I can tell you that I want to make decisions that I don't have to wait five years to figure out if it worked or not.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_03: So when you only measure yourself with recidivism, you make a change and you're not gonna know really if it had an impact for quite some time.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_03: But when you're tracking these other variables, you'll know pretty quickly if it's working or not.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_03: So one of the things we looked at was employment.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_03: And I there was a program, uh, barbering and cosmetology, right?
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_03: And I thought these programs have been around since 1993 and before.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_03: Do we really need these?
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_03: They're not part of Ohio's in-demand jobs.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_03: Shouldn't we point these resources at Ohio's in-demand jobs?
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_03: And what we found out was that you're more likely to get a job if you're a cosmetologist or a barber and you get employed faster and you make more money.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_03: Now, I don't know if they're working in their field, but I can tell you they get employed faster, they make more money.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_03: So, of course, we're going to keep those programs.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_03: So that's another thing that's good about this, these determinants is you can look and see if this is effective and are we keeping it?
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_03: As a director, I'm very pleased by that.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_03: But anyway, we now know 35.5% of the people who leave prison get a job in the first quarter.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_03: However, 50 point some odd percent have a job within the first year.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_03: So essentially, we don't gain on it very much after that first quarter.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_03: And we release 18,000 people a year.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_03: And I believe that's the workforce Ohio needs.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_03: They're trained, uh, we've vocationally, educationally, uh, soft skills, working together, teamwork, all that kind of stuff.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_03: They're ready.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_03: So we need to capture as much of that as we can.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_03: Um, we need our batting average, getting these people employed to be as high as possible.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_03: That's what the Lieutenant Governor Tressel would say.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_03: So we're working on that.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_03: But if you don't never know what the number was, you can't impact it.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_03: If you don't know what programs are making the best success, you can't impact impact it.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_03: So those are things that we look at.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_03: And then, of course, educational attainment.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_03: How many people are in school, how many people are achieving the education, maximizing that is another, those are several different factors we can track because all of the science tells you the more educated you get, you know, these people aren't coming back and they're getting jobs.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_03: You know, employment is definitely a keystone to like being able to be successful.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, those are things we track as well as health care.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_03: If you are on psychotropic medication and that stabilizes you and makes you employable, but when you leave, you don't have access to the insurance you need, you're gonna be destabilized quite quickly.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_03: So we made a partnership with um the Department of Medicaid, and we actually apply for their Medicaid for those who are eligible before they leave.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_03: And uh OSU did a study about whether this is effective or not and determined that it is indeed effective, that there's a 14.4% um lowering of recidivism based upon having this continuity.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_03: Uh that's pretty big.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_03: That's a big swing.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_03: So keeping people it's kind of logical anyway, keeping people attached to their medication makes them less likely to decompensate and fail.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_03: Shocker.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_03: You know, so that's how we are doing that uh here.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_03: So there's just really factors that you would look at.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_03: How many people are housed, right?
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_03: I did not know.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_03: We had no idea.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_03: And we were able to determine at least for the two-thirds of the population who leave that are on supervision, 80% of them are housed.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_03: And that's not institutionally housed, that's housed.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_03: That's awesome.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_03: We didn't know how what the number was going to be.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_03: We how do you move a number, improve a number, you don't even want to know what it is.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_03: And then for the other third of people who live in prison, we don't we don't have a way to get that yet.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_03: We'll probably do some kind of survey or something because the parole officers, of course, document what's going on with their caseload, so we know whether they're housed or not.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_03: But now we need to figure out how to get that information for the people that aren't uh not on supervision.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_03: So these are the kinds of things that we now know and we can move these uh figures.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_03: And also, I think if you're employed by the department, knowing how you yourself, as a teacher with a GED class, are changing things, um, that just gives you all kinds of like, let's get up and go to work, you know what I mean?
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_03: You know that you have an impact.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_01: There are all kinds of light bulb moments in this episode.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_01: Seriously, with all the data that you're leaning into, director, you know, it goes back to that adage.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_01: You you can't manage what you don't track.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_01: You're tracking a lot, which is really great.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_03: Some of the information's hard to get.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_03: So of course we start conversations about that.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_03: Um the legislature did pass a uh a bill about getting uh birth certificates and social security cards and all of those things, which we are doing.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so getting that stood up is a big deal because when you get out, how are you gonna get to work if you don't have those documents, right?
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_03: How are you gonna even cash the check we give you on your way out the door uh without being swept up into the uh money, the cash lender type stuff, you know?
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_03: These things are difference makers in terms when you leave.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_03: So um one thing we like to do is re-entry simulations.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_03: So we take people that don't work in this industry at all, put them through what is essentially all the things you have to do when you leave prison in order to get up and running.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_03: And I've had people say things like, Oh my gosh, I'm a social worker, I've been doing XYZ or telling people to do this for years, and now I see that it's nearly impossible.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_03: So we like to do those simulations for people so they can have these light bulb moments and kind of adjust what they're doing to work with our folks.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_03: Um, because it's easy to say, well, just go over here and uh, you know, take this class.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_03: Well, okay, they don't have any transportation.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_03: That class is nowhere near a bus line.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_03: You know, these are all things that they don't think about when they're making these referrals.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_03: But when you get put through the re-entry simulation and have to buy a bus ticket and get to the class, then you're thinking, oh, light bulb, right?
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_03: So it's just doing work a little differently to tilt things toward the things that science and research say work.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: So as we start to wrap up our discussion today, we really want to know about your mental health and wellness journey with everything that you have on your plate and everything that you are doing to help the incarcerated, to help the staff.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: How do you take care of your mental wellness and practice self-care?
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I'm a little bit more do as I do, do as I say, not as I do.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_03: Unfortunately, um I can't have this idea like um I'll take care of that later.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_03: Or like self-care is a pesky nuisance.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_03: It's stopping me from getting things done that I want to get done, sort of.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_03: And um, the whole time I've been director, I've been running a hundred miles an hour because I feel like this is a precious time and this never be able to make more impact than I can as Governor DeWine's director.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_03: And we're doing all the great things, right?
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_03: I wasn't sleeping, I was going through menopause.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_03: My mother uh had to move here and be taken care of.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_03: I'm the guardian of some of my siblings, and you know, just a lot going on personally and professionally, and I just hit the wall and uh ended up really ended up in the hospital.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_03: And at that point, I was like, okay, this is really too much.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_03: And so I started trying to actually take care of myself, probably maybe for the first time ever.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_03: And what I had to do was take care of sleep hygiene.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_03: I was probably only sleeping three or four hours a night.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_03: Oh boy.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_03: For most of my life, actually.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_03: And uh now I'm up to like five or six, which doesn't sound like much to most people, but it's way more than I was sleeping.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_03: I'm trying, I'm on my way to eight.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not even sure how that's possible, but I'll keep going.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_03: But I I set some boundaries around work where I do not let anyone schedule a meeting with me before nine.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_03: Now I can choose to do that, but like say my assistant cannot.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_03: And because I I need time to answer my emails and do the other stuff, right?
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_03: If I'm in meetings every minute.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_03: So I come in and I can spend those time before nine o'clock doing the things I need to get done.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_03: And then you I wasn't even getting lunch.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so blocking out some time in the middle of the day to eat, and then the last boundary I put in place at work was you can't schedule a meeting to start with me after 4 p.m.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_03: unless I say so again.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_03: So this keeps things in a framework where I have time in the beginning of the day, the end of the day, in the middle of the day to do all those things that no one thinks take any time.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so I don't have to take all as much home with me, right?
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I think I used to paint and swim and do all kinds of things.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_03: And when I became director, I started pushing healthcare for everybody else and left mine flapping in the breeze.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, boundaries, sleep hygiene, and um, I did seek the help of professionals, and I'm not ashamed to say that.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_03: So I talk about that with my staff now because I want them to do the same.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_03: And now I model it, I don't just talk about it.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_01: I remember hearing, and this is very recent, I heard um OSU president Ted Carter, who, you know, before he got into academia, he was a fighter pilot and long distinguished career in the military, but he says that he calls good sleep a weapons grade advantage, and he really leans into that.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_03: You know, he's so right, because you're just like running through molasses if you haven't slept enough.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_03: Your body doesn't have enough time to heal itself.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_03: Um, it's funny because I lost a significant amount of weight and people keep saying, Oh, how did you do that?
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, Yeah, I slept.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_03: Isn't that crazy?
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_03: The body's recovering.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, right.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, right.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_00: Taking care of yourself mentally and physically is so important.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, it could be something other than just go to bed early.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_03: So I well, 9:30, I don't deal with any um television and stuff like that anymore.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_03: And then I have a ritual and I say it's very important to wash your face.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_03: Now I don't wear makeup, but still you're it's self-care, right?
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_03: It's that little moment to that you get for yourself, and um that's part of the ritual of me going to sleep, whatever.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_03: And then um I try to be asleep by between 10 and 11.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_03: I was staying awake till like two in the morning, reading, researching, and like, come on now.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_03: Like, when are you gonna sleep?
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_03: And I found out also that you know, I needed hormone replacement therapy.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_03: So I was waking up in the middle of the night only because of that.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_03: So sometimes you might need to uh really start to try to sleep and then figure out that, hey, you need some help doing that.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and in my case, menopause was not my friend.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_03: And I need I absolutely needed hormone replacement therapy, which was then I got to sleep through the night, right?
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_03: If you wake up at three in the morning, are you gonna go back to sleep or are you gonna do stuff?
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_03: Well, in my case, it's do stuff because I can't just imagine laying in bed.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_03: So if I woke up at like four, I'd just be up for the rest of the day.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_03: And now I sleep because I'm not having those disruptions due to hormonal changes at night.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_03: So it's not all just about trying to lay down.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_03: It's about you might have other issues you need to work on, you know, physically.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_03: So all that together has really been a one-year journey for me.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_03: And it's been great.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, first of all, we really appreciate you being open and talking about the the challenges that you've had and how you've been able to work through those.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_00: So we really appreciate you being open about that.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_00: And thank you so much for joining us today, Director Annette Chambers Smith, and your dedicated public service.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_00: We are really very proud to call you one of our partners here at the Ohio Suicide Prevention Foundation.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_00: And to you art listeners, thank you as well.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_00: When you listen to our episodes, you break stigmas, break barriers, and you care about mental health and saving lives.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: This is Voices for Suicide Prevention, brought to you by the Ohio Suicide Prevention Foundation.