Bonus Episode: COVID Impact on Mental Health

Tyler Podcast Episode 6, Transcript

Our Tyler Technologies podcast explores a wide range of complex, timely, and important issues facing communities and the public sector. Expect approachable tech talk mixed with insights from subject matter experts and a bit of fun. Host and Content Marketing Director Jeff Harrell – and other guest hosts – highlights the people, places, and technology making a difference. Give us listen today and subscribe.

Episode Summary

Dr. Kevin Gilliland joins the podcast in a discussion of mental health.

Transcript

Dr. Kevin Gilliland: Worry always fills in with bad data. We always make up a worst case scenario, when we worry now we don't sit and think, gosh, you know what? I bet I'm going to get a promotion that's going to cover all my... We don't worry like that. And so our fear is we'll be homeless or something else catastrophic. And so fear gets us too far into the future.

Jeff Harrell: From Tyler Technologies. It's the Tyler Tech Podcast where we explore issues facing communities today and do so in a way that's both interesting and entertaining. I'm your host, Jeff Harrell, my promise to you is to help break through the clutter and provide great information in a format that's super easy to consume, and maybe just maybe we'll have a little bit of fun along the way.

Well, there's no question, local government has been dealing with lots of important issues lately. The issue we're diving into today is the impact of the coronavirus and social distancing on our mental health. Because as a community, we have all felt the impact. We wanted to dive into some of the why behind the impact and also understand the role technology has played in helping us connect during a time when we are physically a part. Now restrictions are starting to be lifted, which gives us hope, but also gives us some worry. As government leaders and community leaders, teachers, and educators start to navigate these waters we wanted to bring in an expert to give us some insight, and I cannot think of a more perfect person to help us than Dr. Kevin Gilliland. Kevin is a clinical psychologist and has spent his career helping people. You're going to love this insightful practical conversation. Here's my interview with Dr. Kevin Gilliland.

Dr. Kevin Gilliland, hey, we are so thankful that you're here with us today. Tell us about yourself and your company, Innovation 360

About Dr. Gilliland

Dr. Kevin Gilliland: Jeff. It's good to be with you. Clinical psychologist by training, I work at a place here in Dallas called Innovation 360, and we do outpatient, mental health, alcohol and drug counseling, do a lot with families, a lot with young adults, a lot with career folks. And just help people navigate some of the difficult things in life from kind of situational things like we're all in right now to things that we've maybe wrestled with all our life and are trying to sort through in a better way.

Jeff Harrell: Well, the country is going through so much right now. We're focused on this episode on COVID-19, how has it impacted mental health?

Dr. Kevin Gilliland: We've never seen anything like it. It has really taxed our mental health in ways that have surprised us and that's mainly because we just didn't realize how much other people and our routine actually helped us function well. We tend to think, I'm really disciplined. Well, actually I had a routine that helped me be really disciplined and that has surprised us. And even for people that don't have a high relational need, we've been surprised at how much we actually really needed when it all got pushed to almost zero.

Jeff Harrell: Yeah. We were around for 9/11 and that certainly had a huge impact, but this certainly feels different. Doesn't it?

Dr. Kevin Gilliland: Yeah, but what's so different is that we were still able to interact with people, we still had some routine. Even though it had this emotional, psychological weight to it, we could still connect with people. We could still step into the things that help us manage stressful events. Some of it was regional, I do quite a bit of work up in New York and if you were in that area, it was a very different experience than the rest of the country. This is one of those things that the rest of is the entire world. No one, literally no one, is immune from the impact of this virus, whether it's from a health standpoint or from an economic standpoint, that is probably the most unique thing.

Jeff Harrell: Have you seen people struggle now that perhaps didn't struggle before?

Dr. Kevin Gilliland: If you struggled before you're at risk of it getting a little bit worse, but also interesting enough, some of the people that have struggled before and have been to see a counselor or read something or learned and sort of overcame that, they had something to go back to. Oh, I remember when I went through this when my mom died or when all the kids left the house, my spouse and I had to navigate and this was really helpful for me. So some people have been able to go back to those things and are doing a little better but there's a whole new group, and it is a significant group, that have never felt like this before. Some of it is because they've lost that ability to be with coworkers or to be around friends or worship. I mean, everything has been taken. And so there's a reason. We've always had terms like cabin fever, because if you just stay in a cabin, I don't care who you are, at some point you're going to start to get kind of itchy, like I'm not doing okay. And where we notice that most commonly is in our sleep. Sleep and our energy level, those two things are like, okay, what's wrong with me? Well, constant daily stress and not those things in life that really are good medicine for us.

Help With Anxiety

Jeff Harrell: If someone feels anxious during this time, what should they do?

Dr. Kevin Gilliland: If you heard Jeff and I say anxiety, and your reaction was, I'm not anxious. I don't have anxiety. I've quit asking people if they're anxious or have anxiety because everybody says, no. I jokingly say it's like peer pressure. You're like, oh, I think that was peer pressure. We all have this knee jerk direction. No, whereas I love kids today talk about FOMO. Hey, are you afraid of... And it's like, we all embrace. Oh yes, I have that. If you ask people, if they worry a lot, I haven't talked to anybody that doesn't say yes, I'm worrying a lot. And so part of it is what does it mean to have significant worry? Well, it reaches a point where it starts to interfere in the things in our life that we love or that we need, like our sleep or our energy level or even though I'm sitting here having dinner with my spouse, my mind is a million miles away, or I can't quit thinking about, or I'm jumping ahead three months or six months and it's really disrupting me.

We hate that feeling. In fact, we just want to get away from it, which is why we've increased our consumption of alcohol and food and we're binging. We'll binge food, alcohol, TV. And you go, yeah, what's that about? Well, it's about this constant feeling of worry is really agitating to us. And when we study anxiety, humans hate that feeling. We will run from it like it's scalding water. Whereas if our mood is down, we don't like it, we know something's wrong but we'll tolerate it a little bit better.

Jeff Harrell: Yeah. Thanks for clarifying anxiety versus worry. I've also heard people say that they feel scared during this time. Is that the same thing as worry?

Dr. Kevin Gilliland: Yeah. It's in the same ballpark and that typically has to do with uncertainty. We humans, we don't realize it, but our minds are just gifted at making sense out of things. We're a pattern making machine. I mean, that's what we do. We look to manage control and navigate. Well, part of that piece is it's unpredictable and it's uncontrollable, that's uncertainty, and that is really agitating to us. And so if we're not careful, we'll start to fill in the gaps, and there are a lot of gaps with this, everything we know about this virus or even about the economy or my job or my spouse's job, or how to homeschool kids because I wasn't an education major. And when we have gaps, we'll fill it in and worry, always fills in with bad data. We always make up a worst case scenario.

When we worry now we don't sit and think, gosh, you know what? I bet I'm going to get a promotion. That's going to cover all my... We don't worry like that. And so our fear is we'll be homeless or something else catastrophic. And so that's where fear gets us too far into the future, and that's what worry does is it sort of pushes us into a place where our mind doesn't do well because it's missing data.

Dealing With Worry and Fear

Jeff Harrell: Are there any practical things people can do to deal with both worry and fear?

Dr. Kevin Gilliland: Yeah. I work with a physician that I really enjoyed, Tim Church, does a lot of work on nutrition and fitness and wellness. He and I were had an interview not too long ago and I was talking about as hard as this is, especially for employed professional sort of people that are in their careers is that we set goals. It is really hard to set a goal that's I want to have the best day I can possibly have today. I want to navigate it well, I want to make sure I get enough sleep. I want to eat something healthy. I want to be physically active. You and I have known each other for a while, you're like, it is hard to set that as a goal, it feels so low. But you go, no, no, we have to set goals that are today. Tim, he kind of chuckled and he goes, I love that, win the day. Just win the day. And this has been probably two weeks, three weeks and that's become my mantra. I mean, I love that summary of, I just am focused on winning today. I want to kind of be productive and get some things done, but what have I done to take care of myself physically and mentally? If I do some of those things, it actually helps build my immune system. That's one of our most pressing issues right now.

Social Distancing and Its Future Impacts

Jeff Harrell: We're entering into this new normal, whatever that might look like, social distancing, working from home, maybe no longer shaking hands, hugs, things like that. How do you see this impacting society as we move forward?

Dr. Kevin Gilliland: We've learned some things from other viruses like SARS and swine flu. And with this one, it's got a couple things about it that are unique. The sheltering in place isn't getting rid of it, nor is it curing it. It's trying to give us a chance to get our medical system prepared and try to move forward for the next 10 to 12 months until we get a vaccine or better treatment once we get it and faster testing to know if I've been exposed. But we're going to have to social distance and wash our hands for the next 10 to 12 months and if I know that's what I have to do, okay. I can kind of start to navigate that direction. But if you call me and go, hey, you want to go for a run? I'm like, ah, I don't like running, but okay. And you go, yeah, we're just going to go for a short little run and we get about two or three miles in and I'm like, hey, I feel like this is a short little run. You're like, oh no, I'm doing 10 miles today. Oh my gosh.

So there's a piece of it that if I know how to prepare myself, we actually do better. But the piece we've got to really, really pay attention to is that distancing, while it is the right thing to do with the virus that's contagious, it has a significant negative impact on literally our DNA. And that is, we are very relational at our core and sometimes the treatment is pretty significant but we have to do it. I was just talking with a group of clinicians the other day about cancer treatment. I'm like, look, chemotherapy and radiation, it's a big swing and you go, why would we poison the whole body like that and we're actually impacting some good things. Well, because it's a really serious illness and we have to do it but we have to really be mindful that we're balancing a number of things. So this new normal has to be mindful that too much relational disconnection is really bad for us physically and psychologically.

Jeff Harrell: I'll be back with my interview with Dr. Kevin Gilliland in just a moment.

If you're looking for more great content on a variety of topics, I highly recommend the Tyler Tech Resource Center. You'll find blog articles, on demand webinars, success stories, and more just go to TylerTech.com and click on resources at the top of the page. I think you'll find the content there extremely relevant and extremely helpful. Now, back to my conversation with Dr. Kevin Gilliland.

Technology During This Time

Jeff Harrell: If this pandemic had happened, say, 20 years ago, we would not have the same technology that has brought us together during this time. How do you think technology has helped us during this crisis?

Dr. Kevin Gilliland: I'm not in my 20s anymore or the 30s, all that to say, I do love technology and I'm doing better at it. I have been on FaceTime and Zoom more in the past two months than I have my lifetime, and we've all gotten more comfortable with it and I think that is really good. Now, we dislike it now because it's become the main thing. It shouldn't be the main thing but I think when we get back to the main thing, which is being together, I think we'll use and have a technology resource that's just going to have, I think, a really positive impact on our life. Because we've been forced to learn it overnight and I think it's going to really enhance both work and personal family. I really do.

I think it's fair to say if we didn't have it, that the number of those infected as well as deaths, I don't know if it's 5 or 10 times greater, but it would be significant. Because, again, what we all feel is this disruption and removal of those things that are just vital to us and what's vital to us is being with others and doing what we love doing and pursuing. You're starting to see it now, which is, we're trying to adhere to the medical advice, but we're really pushing to get back at those things in life that are so important to us. And if we didn't have the ability to see and interact in a way that's closer to the real thing, we would've pushed out far sooner and this would have spread much quicker and the consequences would've been more significant.

When you look at some studies on the difference between texting and email versus phone call versus face to face, we see decreases in cortisol and increase in oxytocin, which is that feel good chemical when it's face to face. We get a little bit of that when it's on the phone, we don't get any of it in text and email. And so you go, what we're getting with seeing the visual and the hearing is we are getting closer to the real thing and I honestly think it has helped sustain and probably prevented a more severe mental health consequence, honestly. So it's been huge.

Jeff Harrell: Well, it's great to hear what a positive impact technology has had. We're not sure when we're going to get back together physically, but what advice do you have for government leaders and for school administrators once that does start to happen?

Dr. Kevin Gilliland: You know what's really fascinating is when we study it, when we finally get to be back together, it's really awkward. We can have these lingering, avoided behaviors and that even though we desire, we've got all this noise about what ifs and what ifs. Worry is contagious and we can start to act in irrational ways. We see it, right? The great toilet paper heist of 2020. And so I would say step in cautiously, try not to assign a right and wrong to what you are doing. You may have some risk factors I don't know about. You might live with somebody and that's why you're being really cautious. I have a client she started to be like, oh, you got nothing to worry about. Why are you so cautious? Well, her father had a organ transplant six months ago. So she's helping the family out and you're like, oh, we never know what might be a legitimate risk factor, what might be worry and anxiety, and it doesn't really matter. We've got to be respectful of wherever you're at. And honestly, Jeff, I've never had an event or an incident where I've worked with people that has such a broad response to it. It doesn't matter your age, your occupation, either you or a family member or a close friend has been impacted and so just be mindful of that and be a little thoughtful.

Jeff Harrell: Well, Kevin, we are so thankful for you for your wisdom, how you help people.

Dr. Kevin Gilliland: Oh man, it's so great to be with you Jeff. And I'm so thankful that you guys are an organization that's getting out ahead of, look, this is going to be a challenge for all of us to step back into life. Let's be mindful of a couple of things and I think we'll be surprised at how much that actually helps us do that well.

Jeff Harrell: How can people connect with you?

Dr. Kevin Gilliland: They can track me down here Innovation 360, I360Dallas.com, on Facebook Innovation 360, and then on Instagram, it's @ Dr_KevinG D-R, underscore, Kevin G.

Jeff Harrell: Well, I'm so thankful for people like Kevin who give their lives to help others. And with so many people in the world hurting right now, I really hope this information was valuable. Kevin will actually be back in a few weeks to talk about the opioid epidemic, and he's got some really good insights there as well. Again, thank you for listening to this podcast. I would love your feedback. Email me directly at podcast@tylertech.com. Of course, leave us a review and subscribe. We've got a lot more great topics headed your way. So until next time, this is Jeff Harrell, director of content marketing for Tyler Technologies. Thanks again for listening. Talk to you soon.