Angelo Sandoval, Clinical Director for Behavioral Health at Porch Light Health, joined KDCE Newsradio in Española to discuss Mental Illness Awareness Week and World Mental Health Day, the connection between mental health disorders and substance use (dual diagnosis), and how addressing underlying trauma, depression, and anxiety through evidence-based therapies and compassionate support helps individuals achieve lasting recovery in New Mexico communities.
KDCE Radio
Tell us, you’re here to talk about Mental Illness Awareness Week, and it’s also World Mental Health Day that’s happening this month?
Angelo Sandoval
Yes, sir.
KDCE Radio
Okay. Tell us a little bit about Mental Illness Awareness Week. Is it this week or coming up?
Angelo Sandoval
Yeah, it’s this week and then this month as well. What mental illness is, is basically understanding things like depression, anxiety, PTSD, posttraumatic stress syndrome. These are the most common things. Then we also have stuff like personality disorders, bipolar. There’s just a bunch of other things where the brain isn’t functioning at its capacity or it’s deficient in how it’s functioning for someone.
KDCE Radio
Tell us about World Mental Health Day. When is that? Or World Mental Health Day. What date is it? Or has it passed? Or is it coming up?
Angelo Sandoval
I think it’s coming up. I’m not exactly sure on the exact date. I’m learning a lot of these months lately. But it’s this month. This month, we’re really focusing on people’s mental health and understanding how mental health impacts people’s lives and decision making, how they do things.
KDCE Radio
All right. So Porch Light Health treats mental health issues and also substance use, substance abuse. Tell us a little bit about, I guess they go hand in hand, the mental- Right.
Angelo Sandoval
How we classify it now is called a dual diagnosis, meaning is that they are carrying both a mental health disorder and a substance use disorder. Normally what happens is… Substance abuse isn’t necessarily the first… It isn’t the first problem. That’s not the primary problem that we’re dealing with. What we’re really dealing with is mental health. We’re dealing with people like with childhood trauma, sexual trauma. We’re dealing with depression, anxiety, grief, and loss. It’s all these other things that happen, and then alcohol or drugs become the self-medication aspect of dealing with those mental health. A lot of people don’t wake up in the morning and say, I want to be an addict. They wake up in the morning or they’re going to bed at night feeling depressed, feeling anxious. They’ve had a really traumatic childhood, victims of domestic violence. Then they start utilizing, let’s say, alcohol, for example. They notice that when they drink, they just feel a little bit better. Starts numbing them. They are able to momentarily forget their problems or they’re able to numb out their problems. If you do that long enough, then your body says, Well, you know what? This feels better than that.
Angelo Sandoval
So let’s go back to this.
KDCE Radio
All right. I guess the first problem be the mental health problem. Then, like you said, they go to drinking or alcohol or to drugs to medicate or to try to cope with that problem, right?
Angelo Sandoval
Right. When we look back to the ’80s and ’90s, We focused on stopping people from drinking. We can do that. It’s semi-simple to stop somebody from using drugs. They go to the hospital, they go to rehab, they go to jail. We can physically stop them. There’s ways to get them to stop, but that’s not really the key to treatment. The key to treatment is understanding the why. What keeps them going back to the drug? Why do they keep going back? This is where we’re looking at the mental health side. This is where we’re looking at. We’re looking at, again, some of the common themes in our area right now is really depression and anxiety and post-traumatic stress, which post-traumatic stress is really very much linked to depression and anxiety. What we want to do is we want to address those issues, those problems, so that then now they don’t have to go back to the substance abuse because now they’ve learned how to cope, or we get them on the proper medications. Some mental health situations do require medication, but what porcelain health does is now we put them on proper medications that we can monitor, we can dose, we can adjust.
Angelo Sandoval
If that one doesn’t work, then we can treat something different.
KDCE Radio
What are the most common mental health diagnosis that come with this?
Angelo Sandoval
So locally, a lot of what I’ve seen is a lot of depression, a lot of anxiety, but a lot of it’s really tied into a lot of trauma. There’s trauma from domestic violence, grief and loss, just childhood trauma from being abused, neglect. Then, of course, you have people who have gone to war, who have developed traumatic stress syndrome. People have been in prison, traumatic stress syndrome, anger issues. I think one big issue is that we live in a culture that really doesn’t focus on understanding emotions. We don’t really deal with our emotions. We don’t understand what emotions are. We default everything to anger, even though anger is also a secondary problem, usually comes from something else. But we always default to anger or default to… Anything we go, it’s like this weird default, right? To we always blame anger for everything. But a lot of times it is sadness. It is heartbreak. Even heartbreak can cause depression, can cause anxiety. But we do a lot of see a lot of childhood trauma. In my previous employment, I worked with a lot of childhood trauma and helping relieve that. What we’re learning is that if we can get healthy parents and we can get healthy children, then hopefully then we can make a turn down the road.
KDCE Radio
How can family members tell if a person needs help with this, I guess that would be a major issue, right? To have the support, the family support.
Angelo Sandoval
Oh, definitely. Family support is one of the greatest One of the greatest parts of treatment is that support system. One of the things is that we have to understand or to come to learn to recognize behavior changes, behavior shifts in someone. So let’s say, for example, you have a child who enjoys eating snacks, and they’re always snacking, they’re always eating. But then you notice that they’re not eating anymore. They’re just not eating and they’re withdrawn. This is when we start looking at what’s going on here. Start paying attention to behavior changes or vice versa. They’d say you have a kid who doesn’t really… Who’s very disciplined in how they eat, but all of a sudden they’re eating a bunch of junk food and stuff like that, random places or random times. This when you start paying attention It’s like, Okay, what’s going on? Looking at what’s going on in their life. If you have a spouse who likes to have a drink at night or a drink with dinner, but all of a sudden you notice that they’re having two or three drinks with dinner or they’re drinking more days than not, or you’re noticing that they want to isolate when they drink.
Angelo Sandoval
So these are the things you’re looking at. This shifts in their patterns of behavior, extreme shifts in what they normally do.
KDCE Radio
The family would be the one to recognize this, like they live in the household or-Yes. So they notice that there’s a change and that they might need help in coping with whatever they’re going to.
Angelo Sandoval
Right. And one of the things is, one of the biggest things that I remember the thing as a kid is that only crazy people go to therapy. But that’s not true. We have to look at what’s going on with the brain just like any other organ. Just like when you have heart problems, you go to a cardiologist. When you have a broken bone that can’t be simply you go to a bone doctor. Well, a therapist is basically the brain doctor. A psychiatrist, a psychologist, a therapist like myself. We work on healing the brain. We have to treat the brain like any other organ. When it gets sick, we go get treatment. There’s a proper ways of treating it. Yeah, you can treat a broken bone with sticks and string, but if when you go to the orthopedic doctor, he fixes it. Same thing, you can fix or you can mask your mental health stuff with substances, but why not come to Porch light where we can actually do the right thing, diagnose it properly, give you the right medications, give you the proper ways of processing your trauma, processing your experiences, and putting it in order, and putting those experiences and your emotions, putting them to line up with each other.
Angelo Sandoval
Because sometimes our emotions are deceiving because the body doesn’t keep track of events. It keeps track of experiences. Sometimes two different events can elicit the same experience. We want to help you put things into perspective that they match.
KDCE Radio
What are the types of treatment for this mental disorders? To heal the brain, what type of treatment do you offer?
Angelo Sandoval
For me personally, where I’m trained at is I’m trained in… We use MRT, which is moral recognition therapy, which is a way of understanding your substance use based on experiences where you’ve been changing your view of life, basically taking you back to your moral standards that you were raised in, looking at it from a moral perspective, but helping you get back to the morals that you were raised in as an individual. I also use dialectical behavioral therapy, which is, again, understanding emotions from reality, how do they come together, how to be able to integrate How to integrate into social norms, how to integrate into being in public settings, interpersonal relationships with other people, how to communicate more effectively, how to put the cognitive brain and the emotional brain, how to bring those two to come together and work as a team rather than one overwriting the other. Other things we have is cognitive behavioral therapy, which is, again, being cognizant of your behaviors, looking at your behaviors, making changes to your behaviors. Then we have medications, which for For example, for depression, depression can have a chemical imbalance. What happens is when you take substances, it gives you an artificial boost in those chemicals, but then you crash.
Angelo Sandoval
Whereas when we medicate you properly, then we stabilize you and we allow the brain to start normalizing itself. It’s a boost for that. There’s a bunch of different evidence-based models that are utilized. These These are the ones that I utilize, specifically, that I’ve been trained in or been exposed to. These are the ones that I use, but there’s a bunch of other ones.
KDCE Radio
It depends on the individual, right? Not two individuals are the same. You have different problems, different issues that you’re dealing with. It’s on a purpose and basis, I guess, right?
Angelo Sandoval
Correct. But these models are evidence-based. They’ve done years and decades of research. If you utilize the techniques appropriately, then you can tailor a lesson, if you will, a lesson to every individual person. So five people can get the same lesson, but you’re going to apply the lesson according to their personal needs. Because these are evidence-based. They’ve done research. They still do research even today. They still collect data.
KDCE Radio
So it’s tailored to each different individual. Family members. How would a family member or friend approach a situation with someone that they think needs help? You know how, like you said, people might get aggressive or don’t like to be called out on. How do you approach it? It’s not saying you have a drug problem and you have to go to treatment, right? Do you have to approach it in different ways.
Angelo Sandoval
Yeah, there’s always… Again, traditionally, we’ve always been very blunt, Oh, you’re doing this, you’re Sometimes that might work. But other times, the best thing to do is have conversation. Call out what you see in a compassionate way. Last time we were here, we’re talking about compassion. Yes, it’s good to say, Hey, I’ve noticed that you’re doing this. You’ve noticed that you’re doing that. Hey, how are you feeling? Doing what we call more checking. How are you feeling? How are you doing today? But not just simply, Are you okay? Because if you ask me, Are you okay? I’m going to probably say yes. It’s It’s more like, How are you doing today? There’s this method of asking questions called open-ended, really. What that means is when you’re asking a question, it puts the other person in a position where they have to give you an answer. It’s not just yes or no or okay or not okay. It’s like, Tell me about your day. How was your day? How did things go at your doctor’s appointment? How did things go with your probation officer? How was your job search today? It’s like you’re wanting to create a conversation, a dialog, not just simple yes or no questions.
Angelo Sandoval
You want to elicit a conversation.
KDCE Radio
Do you actually have family members coming in or friends, and you talk to them about how they can approach this or discuss this with them?
Angelo Sandoval
I have in the past, but I do try to encourage clients to bring their families, at least to have at least one education session. Usually what I try and do is I try and teach family members, especially when someone is in recovery, how to support their recovery. Because one of the last things to change is behaviors, because we don’t always manifest the same behavior all the time. Sometimes we only manifest behaviors under certain circumstances, under certain situations. But our family members can read those more better than what we can because it’s like brushing your teeth. You can brush your teeth and you don’t really realize what you’re doing because you’ve done it so long. It’s just a bad habit of how you do things, right? So we can do that as individuals, but our families can pick up on these behaviors. They can pick up on these actions that we do. So what I try and teach families is when you notice your family member who is in recovery, if they’re eliciting a behavior that’s associated with their drug use, alcohol use, don’t accuse them of relapse, but do a check-in. How are you feeling today?
Angelo Sandoval
It’s okay to ask the question, Do you feel like relapsing? Because they might feel like relapsing. But if you accuse them, then now you’re giving them the excuse to say, Well, nobody believes me, so I’m just going to go do it anyway. Instead of accusing, asking, Do you feel like it? How are you feeling? Do you need more support? When you do that, you tend to get a better response.
KDCE radio
We talked about a lot of things. How do people get treatment if you feel you need help, I guess one of the biggest problems is people admitting that they want to get help, right? It’s up to the individual to make the decision to seek help first.
Angelo Sandoval
Yes. They have to be ready. Again, somebody can be not ready, and they can be forced to be physically sober. Go to jail, extended hospital stay. We can get them to be clean by certain circumstances, but the key is to help them stay clean. The key is dealing with the problems that have pushed them in a position where they think they have to use drugs to feel better. All right.
KDCE radio
People can reach out to Porch Light. You’re located here in Espanola, right? Yes. In other parts of the state. But locally, you’re in Espanola.
Angelo Sandoval
Yeah. So if you’re in the Espanola, Santa Fe area, we are over here on the right in Actually, we’re right next to Latterberger. So Latterberger is south, and we’re just north of Latterberger if you’re going towards trauma in that general direction. We have one in Taos, we have one in Farmington, and we have a clinic in the Burquerque, one in Las Cruces.
KDCE Radio
Do people call you or just stop by or you’re open? I’m sure you’re quite busy, right? You have different sessions going on. So you would encourage people to call?
Angelo Sandoval
Yeah. So we have a The 1-866 number, MAT-STAT. That’s the 1-800 number or the 1-866 number, a toll free. And that’s tied into a central call center. So what they’ll do is they’ll tie you into the most The clinic that’s closest to you. The cool thing is that you don’t have to always come physically into the office. We also have offer telehealth, so video health. We do that as well. You can walk into any of our clinics. We do have walk-ins. Most of the time, we can probably see you that same day. Most days, I think on the average day, you can come in and be seen almost right away.
KDCE Radio
But you have the option of doing Telehealth, so you don’t even have to go into the clinic, right?
Angelo Sandoval
For some things, you do have to. If you’re given a medication that requires an injection, a shot, then for those of you, you definitely have to go in.
KDCE Radio
And so call the 866 number, and then you have a website, of course, right?
Angelo Sandoval
Yes. It is porchlighthealth.com. There is a link there that you can actually just do the self-referral form to trigger on our end that you’re interested in services, and then we’ll call you and schedule you.
KDCE Radio
Then you’ll accept all types of payment. If you’re worried about paying, that’s not an issue, right?
Angelo Sandoval
No. Even if you don’t have insurance, we’ll work with you. Sliding scales, even the self-pay realm will work with you. We’ll find how to help you. Sliding scales, there’s other options. We don’t want money to be a barrier to getting healthy again.
KDCE Radio
Thank you, Angelo. We’re out of time and we have an upcoming second edition of coffee break, so I’m going to have to let you go. I’m sure we’ll be talking to you probably again next month, most likely.
Angelo Sandoval
Sounds great.
KDCE Radio
The clinic is Porch Light Health, and it’s located here in Espanola.
KDCE radio
Okay, take care.
Angelo Sandoval
Thank you.
