Published: Mar. 11, 2025 at 1:44 PM PDT
Watch the video on the KKTV 11 News website.
Steve Carleton, Chief Clinical Officer at Porch Light Health, spoke with KKTV 11 News about mental health and substance use ahead of World Bipolar Day.
Aspen Andrews
I want to thank you for joining us at the 11 alert desk today. I’m Aspen Andrews, Digital Content producer, and I am here with Chief Clinical Officer, Porch light Health, Steve Carleton. And today we’re talking about mental health because World Bipolar Day is on March 30th. So Steve, what exactly is bipolar disorder?
Steve Carleton
Hi Aspen, it’s good to be with you. So bipolar disorder. In a nutshell, this is one of the more severe mental health conditions that people can suffer from. It I won’t say common, but it does happen. This is a problem that really is marked by significant levels of depression most of the time. I think when people hear bipolar, it’s commonly associated with manic episodes or behaving erratically in really bizarre ways or not sleeping. But most commonly in bipolar disorder, people are in a more depressed cycle. This isn’t mood swings. This is much more significant than that.
Aspen Andrews
And what exactly causes bipolar disorder?
Steve Carleton
Well, it’s really complex. So bipolar disorder, we do know runs in families. There’s a really strong genetic component to bipolar disorder. And so understanding your family history and if you have severe mental illness in your family, that is one of the most high risk factors there are. We also know So that some people also carry those types of traits and the risk of developing bipolar disorder. Stressful experiences can really trigger incidents and trigger depression, trigger manic episodes. So environmental factors are very important, as well as the genetic component here.
Aspen Andrews
And a mental health issue and substance abuse disorder often exist together. Can you treat both?
Steve Carleton
Yeah, they often exist together, right? So substance use, and probably the majority of cases, when people have a severe substance use problem, it’s more of a symptom than the primary concerns. So people use substances often to avoid and to manage negative emotions, negative symptoms. They use to cope with things like bipolar disorder that can be very uncomfortable. And so they often occur simultaneously. And so if you’re going to treat them, it’s important to treat them concurrently. So if you’re if you’re worried about that you have bipolar and you’re also worried about your relationship with substances, it’s good to find providers that can help you and treat both simultaneously.
Aspen Andrews
Could you tell me a little bit about the role of medication for both bipolar and substance abuse disorder?
Steve Carleton
Yeah, absolutely. So medication for Bipolar Disorder, it’s really common to get on some type of mood stabilizer. If you have Bipolar Disorder, you want to steer clear of SSRIs or your standard antidepressants like Prozac and Zoloft. Those can actually trigger manic episodes. So oftentimes that’s a real bad day if a provider thinks that you have a major depressive disorder and really have underlying bipolar. So with bipolar, it’s often some type of mood stabilizer. And medication compliance is the most important thing. If you’re working with a psychiatrist, you’re working with some type of psychiatric provider, it’s really important to stay on the same page. If you’re having problems with your medications, if you don’t feel like they’re working, if you feel like the side effects are too significant, a lot of people just end up, Stop seeing the psychiatrist, and then symptoms can get much worse. So I encourage anybody out there struggling with this and thinking about treatment, that if you are on medication, talk to your provider. If you’re having uncomfortable side effects that you don’t want, schedule an appointment, go and talk that through before stopping anything cold turkey. And the same goes with substance use disorder.
Steve Carleton
In the last 15 or so years, we’ve really come a long way in terms of identifying medications for addiction treatment, things like Suboxone that have been instrumental in this past year, decreasing the amount of overdose deaths that we’re seeing. There’s also medications out there for alcohol use disorder. So if you’re thinking about cutting back, you’re battling cravings and withdrawal symptoms, there are medications that can help with both of those and ease that, make it a little bit easier to reduce or even quit alcohol, depending on your goals.
Aspen Andrews
Could you tell us a little bit about how exactly treatment can help?
Steve Carleton
Yeah, what you’re doing in treatment is basically you’re trying to turn the volume on those negative symptoms that you don’t like. So if you have bipolar disorder and you have depression that really eat your lunch and keeps you in bed all day and keeps you unmotivated, treatment can help you develop skills and coping tools, structure routine, look at things like diet, exercise to improve and decrease the negative impact those symptoms are having on your life. And with substance use, what we’re really trying to do is insert other coping skills that substance use has been people’s reliant tool for. So for instance, if you’re struggling with really significant anxiety and your primary way of dealing with that is to drink three or four drinks. What we want to help you do is develop mindfulness skills, develop cognitive behavioral techniques that can help you better manage those thoughts and emotions and physical sensations so that you don’t have to rely on drugs and alcohol to cope.
Aspen Andrews
I think there’s a lot of stress that we’re collectively feeling right now, and many people are having a hard time. Can you give us some simple things that we can do to calm down, as well as could this be harder for someone with a mental illness?
Steve Carleton
Absolutely. I mean, really simple things. Having a structure is probably the most important. Even if that structure is as simple as getting up, making the bed, going for a walk. Just having some type routine or anchor point in your day is really critical in terms of recovery. So a lot of times in treatment, we call things it’s simple but not easy. And so things like that are really important. And then understanding just the fundamentals of cognitive behavioral therapy. The basics of it are that something happens in life. You experience something. Based on what you experience, you tell yourself something. You tell yourself something that might be helpful, might be unhelpful, might be realistic, might not be realistic. Based on what you think and how you’re interpreting what’s happening to you, that is what leads us to have emotions, and that’s what leads us to specific behaviors, especially more destructive behaviors. With significant amounts of negative emotion, destructive type behaviors, what we find often is that the messages people are telling themselves are often really unrealistic. I’m a bad person. They’re really unhelpful. I’m never going to get better. These These types of thoughts are really pervasive and can keep people stuck.
Steve Carleton
And so treatment, in a lot of ways, helps people unpack that and get to a place where they’re feeling more control and more sense of power over how things are going in their life.
Aspen Andrews
And Porch Light Health treats mental health and substance use. Can you give us some of the psych offerings as well as substance abuse offerings?
Steve Carleton
Yeah, absolutely. So at Porch Light Health, we offer the full gamut of care. We offer therapy. We offer therapy in some of our hub locations. We also offer a lot of virtual therapy. So if you’re in a rural community, if you’re not near Colorado Springs or other big city hubs, we can meet you where you’re at over the computer, over some type of device. We offer medications for addiction treatment. We offer infectious disease care. We offer smoking cessation if you’re struggling with nicotine. And then lastly, we offer psychiatric care. So we’re giving special attention right now to bipolar disorder. And so psychiatric care is perhaps the most important critical tool and better managing and recovering from bipolar and getting to a place where you’re enjoying your life. So at Porch Light Health, we do all of those things. So we really can be a one-stop location. And even if you aren’t near a clinic, we can help serve you virtually.
Aspen Andrews
That’s great. Thank you. And can you tell us where exactly we can find some more information about Porch Light Health?
Steve Carleton
Absolutely. The best place is porchlighthealth. Com. And if you want to call and talk to a person, it’s 866 MATSTAT, M-A-T-S-T-A-T, 866 MATSTAT.
Aspen Andrews
Great. Thank you so much, Steve, for joining us today to talk a little bit about Porch Light Health.
Steve Carleton
My pleasure. Thanks, Aspen.
