Silicon Slopes to Host Brent Esplin as Panelist of Mental Health Town Hall
Brent Esplin discusses Dialectical Behavioral Therapy as a way to treat mental health issues. Part of the ongoing Mental Health Series with Silicon Slopes and Promise2Live.
People & Culture
August 13, 2024, Lehi, Utah
Continuing our Promise2Live mental health series, speaker and mental health educator Brent Esplin shares personal insights about suicide prevention.
See the inaugural article in this series—the January 16, 2024 profile story about Promise2Live, authored by Promise2Live founder, Brandy Vega.
The second article in this series—an introduction Tom Telford's BrainStoke podcast—can be found here.
The third article in the series was written by Richard Godfrey, Co-founder and CEO of Avec Me. It discusses fitting prosthetic limbs for elephants that have been injured by landmines in Cambodia. Read it here.
The fourth article in the series features Cameron McBride, CEO of Blomquist Hale Solutions, a Salt Lake City-based company specializing in mental health solutions, who shares tips on how to provide help to those who are struggling.
The sixth article in the series came from Ganel-Lyn Condie who shared profound lessons about suicide prevention from her sister Meggan's suicide.
The seventh article came from Joe Tuia'ana who presented the i love you, bro PROJECT, a suicide prevention program for men.
The eighth article in the series featured Carrie Hill who shared how she navigated unaddressed mental health issues within her own family.
The article below, the ninth article in the series, was written by Brent Esplin, LMFT, Executive Director at OASIS Ascent. Esplin shares his personal insights about suicide prevention. He will participate in another Silicon Slopes & Promise2Live Mental Health Town Hall on Thursday, August 15, 2024 at the Silicon Slopes HQ from noon until 2pm.
He will be joined by Dr. Dave Morgan, Brandon Condie, Andrea Beckstrom, Crawford Cragun, and Brandy Vega, the organizer of the series.
The event is free, as always, but the organizers highly appreciates it when people register. Do so here. Lunch will be provided, courtesy LÉVO.
Mental Illness Affected The Most Mentally and Physical Tough Person I Know
By Brent Esplin
While in graduate school to become a Marriage and Family therapist, my wife Julie became pregnant with our first child. We had been married for a few years and she was working full-time as an accountant at a large accounting firm to get me through graduate school. I spent most of my day and well into the evening at work or at school.
Julie was very sick during her pregnancy, vomiting multiple times a day, not just for the first trimester, but for the entire nine months. I knew at the time she was physically sick, what I did not know is she was mentally ill as well. My wife is one of the most mentally tough people I know. She ran track and cross country at BYU and later became an elite marathon runner who did Spartan races just for fun. It never occurred to me that someone with her level of mental toughness might struggle with mental health issues.
Ten years later, we had three small children, when I helped start the Provo Canyon Behavioral Hospital in Utah County, which is now Aspen Grove Behavioral Hospital. One of my responsibilities with the hospital was to do suicide awareness and prevention presentations in the community. One evening, as I prepared one if these presentations, my wife disclosed to me she had suicidal thoughts during her first pregnancy. She described how when she drove to work through Wichita, Kansas on a long overpass, she frequently thought of driving off the overpass into the water. She didn’t want to think that way and tried to push out those thoughts. When she was unable to do that, she drove to work a longer way down a more rural road. Soon she noticed the large trees on the side of the road and thought of driving her car into the trees. Reflecting back to the time 10 years earlier, here I was in graduate school studying to become a Marriage and Family Therapist, to help people with their mental health issues, and the person I loved and cared about the most was suffering immensely.
I wish I knew she was struggling. I wish I knew then what I know now. I would have gotten her into therapy, and to get more help with her nausea and vomiting from her OB. I also would have taught her some simple skills that she could use to help her emotionally self-regulate. Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) has many such skills. Temperature, intense exercise, paced breathing, and pared muscle
relaxation (TIPP), is one of these skills, I now know can be especially helpful when someone is struggling.
I propose mental health issues touch all our lives, whether us personally, family, friends, or neighbors. We all know someone struggling with mental health issues. I feel like we’ve come a long way with removing the stigma of talking about mental health over the last decade. I hope we can continue to increase the conversation about taking care of our mental health, similar to our physical health, so the
people we love can get the support they need.
Brent Esplin will share more information, along with his co-panelists on August 15, 2024. Register here for the panel. Lunch will be provided, courtesy LÉVO.
