BTM60 Transcription

Welcome to Episode 60  of Behind The Mission, a show that sparks conversations with PsychArmor trusted partners and educational experts. 

My name is Duane France, and each week I'll be having conversations with podcast guests that will equip you with tools and resources to effectively engage with and support military service members, Veterans and their families. Find the show on all the podcast players by going to www.psycharmor.org/podcast.

Thanks again for joining us on Behind The Mission. Our work and mission are supported by generous partnerships and sponsors, who also believe that education changes lives. This episode is brought to you by PsychArmor, the premier education and learning ecosystem, specializing in military cultural content. PsychArmor offers an online e-learning laboratory that's free to individual learners as well as custom training options for organizations. You can find more PsychArmor at www.psycharmor.org. 

On today's episode, I'm having a conversation with Coast Guard Veteran, Zach Kenny, about the Stack Up Overwatch Program, a peer led suicide prevention program that provides critical support through around the clock access to a team of trained and certified crisis management volunteers. Zach is a former US Coast Guard Officer in interdiction and intelligence who worked in IT security and engineering for most of his civilian life. As the parent of an autistic child, he developed skills and an affinity for working with people who have special needs. This grew his passion for helping others and that led him to peer support and suicide prevention. You can find out more about Zach by checking out his bio in our show notes. 

Let's get into my conversation with him and come back afterwards to talk about some of the key points. 

DUANE: As a Veteran yourself, like many of us, you have a particular concern about suicide in the military and Veteran population. I'd like to hear the story behind your dedication to this mission and how you became involved in Stack Up and your leadership of the Stack Up Overwatch Program. 

ZACH: Like so many of our brothers and sisters, I see people's struggle. On the long deployments or major days, you would always see people and you try and help them. And anyone that's in your AO or right under your command, you do what you can. And, I just, after I left the service, I was just like, well, I don't know, what do I do?

I went into IT, but I was like, had that feeling like I always wanted to help people. Then I met Steven through a game stream actually. He was doing like a charity meet and greet game stream. And I'm like, wait a minute. This makes sense. This is kind of what I was missing because I did not work in the mental health space at all. I have a degree in computer engineering. So this is not, this was not the path that I had originally chosen for myself. But, you know, I was just inspired by Stack Ups mission and that got me to the point where I volunteered with the Overwatch Program in progress and you just kept, dedicating more time to it.

There was a point where a position came open, I applied and then, moved up and became a manager there. It was just, it's a weird set of circumstances, but it was just the path that was laid out to me. And it was clearly meant to be.

DUANE: I think that's really common for a lot of Veterans to get out of the military service and like you said, now what? What's next? What's the next mission? What's the next thing and you can find a job that pays the bills and maybe it gives a sense of satisfaction, but you were missing something. And for you that something was connecting with other Veterans through gaming. 

ZACH: Yeah, absolutely. And so then I met Steven and then he explained. Why Stack Up came to be, which is an interesting story in itself. He was on a very long deployment, they had gotten a care package from some random person that donated to their unit. And it was a bunch of romance novels. Naturally these gentlemen were less than enthused, but they take what they can get.

They actually read them. Then later I used them for target practice. He always mentioned how he always had his DS with them on deployments and he would play games. It's like more people need this more deployed units and people need this for downtime and to relax. Because he realized the impact it had in his mental health and overall wellbeing.

And that has evolved into what is Stack Up is now. Originally they rendered themselves as a gaming charity, but then they're like, we're actually a mental health charity that uses gaming as a focus to help and it evolved from there.

It started with what are called supply crates, which is them sending Xboxes and other consulates to deployed units overseas. Then he wanted to do more locally. So they expanded to what's called the Stacks Program, which is the community outreach and all that. Then we have,what are called aerosols now where he's when they get home, what do we do?

So they take deserving Veterans or active duty to gaming events or comic conventions, all expenses paid, things like that. And then, they saw a lot of people in discord on struggling and talking about issues and that's where the Overwatch Program came from. Because they're like, naturally Veterans have dark humor. Particularly since you don't, for example, my boss is EOD and that's the darkest humor I've ever seen. He's like either I have a good day on the job or it's not my problem anymore. I'm like, oh, okay. They're like, now we need to address this. So they started this peer support program, which was the Overwatch Stack-Ups Overwatch Program, which has just expanded to the point now where we've evolved in this way now.

Every piece of Stack Up is a mental health portion, even though it's involving gaming or whatever, it's just, it supplements various phases. I am the tip of the spear. I am more crisis management and suicide prevention comes in. Then, once we get these people, calm down or help them find guidance, get them to clinicians to get them the help they need.Then we have the community to help them find what they're looking for. To have that purpose, have common people to talk, to have things to do, because the biggest thing that I always see is, and I even struggled with this as relating to civilians post service because what I like to say is we suffer from perspective.

When you've seen the worst of humanity, when you've seen battle, when you see war, you tend to get irritated with people that get upset about the smallest things. You're like, does that really matter? And that's a common thing I've seen with people in crisis. Is it like small things like that will compound them?

Or like, why does this matter? Why does this upset you? And then that upsets them even more. They're like, you just don't know why this doesn't matter. So when you have common people that get it and understand what you're going through, it makes it very easy to work through all of these issues.

DUANE: I really appreciate that. And I think he, like you said, even from the origin Stack Up was an organization that really focused on wellbeing, like psychological health. Like you said, you know, when I was in Afghanistan and we'd come off patrol, and my troops would go play Call of Duty and I'm like, didn’t you just get 10, 12, 15 hours of that but it was a different kind of release. 

Absolutely. I think I was playing Elder Scrolls At Grand Theft Auto. It was a way to relax and unwind when you weren’t on patrol, weren't on duty or things like that. And I think that's something that's very unique obviously to our generation.

Gulf War Veterans and Vietnam Veterans didn't have that sort of technology. But really the origins were about let's find a way to support the war fighters, while they're deployed. But then that need doesn't stop whenever they come back. And that's really where, shifting not away from supporting service members, but in addition to supporting Veterans throughout the life cycle has really been a goal of  Stack Up. 

ZACH: Absolutely. And anyone that has served us, not just Vets. We cover outside of the United States. We cover all of our allies so we've shipped supply crates to the UK. We try to help anyone that we can think of that we would ever be able to. It's just been, it's expanded.It's like my program, for example, has expanded 10 fold the amount of people we see since it's first year. So there's clearly a need there. And, that's what Stack Up tried to do is just try and fill those gaps because the VA does what the VA does.Wwe're trying to help them where we actually collaborate with the VA Vet Centers locally quite often now.

They wanted us to help with events and things like that because we understand what the current generations of Veterans want and need. They understand from a clinical perspective, they understand everything else you have. Most of these people have served, but like they don't get the culture fully if that makes sense.

We are that culture, we've all lived that culture. We are those people, we are honestly all nerds and all gamers, So we're not shy about it too. Like in Overwatch, half the time, if I'm interacting with a user that's in crisis, I always bring up what games they like.

They’re like, “Oh, there was one gentleman who was borderline suicidal and I was talking to him and I'm like, what are you doing? He's just sitting in this game at the LaMi right now. I'm like, cool. I got that game. I'll hop in.” And I was talking to him and was able to talk them down. We were just sitting there talking and having fun and even cracking jokes. And at the end he's like, thank you. That's what I needed.

And that's the kind of approach we need to take to mental health now. We need to get past all these stigmas. Because in the military we're taught we are the war. We are war fighters. We cannot, our feelings, all of those, not factors. We just need to mission, mission, mission, mission, mission. When we get home, how did these people learn to take care of themselves? Two week out processing is not going to undo everything that they've dealt with. So that's basically, we're an extension of that.

DUANE: And the really unique thing, and I want to say unique in the way that you do it, but not necessarily unique in, in the approach, is like you said, you give a particular group of Veterans what they want and need. That's one of the things, again, that I've always valued about Stack Up, is that you connect, like you said gamers and nerds. Veterans who were interested in that, similar to how Team RWB connects to Veterans who are interested in fitness and The Mission Continues connects Veterans who are interested in community engagement. There's a lot of overlap there, but Stack Up as an organization that's really good at supporting service members and Veterans that are interested in what you do. 

ZACH: Yeah. And, it's just one of those things where it's Steve, the founder and he never hoped we would get this big, but like seeing we've got a discord with over 4,000 people in it now that's active. It's really wonderful to see it grow. 

Working with PsychArmor has been amazing because Heidi and her crew are the most easily approachable and thought out people they ever work with. If there's an issue, I'd bring it up. They deal with it. Their training has been vital in how we do things. Because it's all straightforward, but tastefully done. Like they cover the hard material, but they don't do it in a way that's not digestible. They don't, as you know, clinicians are not the most well-spoken people when they're trying to teach things. And when you're trying to teach someone who's in the  peer support level and trying to keep them engaged to retain that material. That's a very difficult approach and that's why I love working with PsychArmor. They deliver that perfectly in a way where that happens.

DUANE: Clinicians can be very good in small rooms, sitting on a couch, talking to people. We are not as good getting up in front of people and explaining what we do in an easily relatable way. You're absolutely right. This is one of the things when I talked to my colleagues, even, this show, this podcast, it was like, you should get out and you should talk more.

And clinicians are like, it's something that they avoid. I appreciate that idea of you recognizing we do what we do well at Stack Up, but we also need partnerships. PsychArmor, isn't speaking to the gaming community, specifically, any more than it's speaking to the fitness community or what have you.

And there's a lot of overlap. I know a lot of folks that are both RWB and Stack Up gamers, who also are logged distance runners. It's not to be able to say that these are separate and distinct, but this idea of not one organization can do everything. There needs to be partnerships like between you and the Vet Centers and you and PsychArmor and you and other organizations. 

Zach: Yeah, absolutely. We can't do everything. All we want is to have the partners and the information we need to succeed. We're very humble about that. We don't claim to have all of the answers. That's why we work with PsychArmor. That's why we have a clinician that's on retainer that I can talk to in case of issues or that when we have what's called a duty to warn, which is an imminent threat of fetal, suicidal, or homicidal ideations. Then, we can walk through a process with him to make sure we help the user and we take care of everything. We make sure we have the tools. If we don't possess the abilities ourselves. We have no problem bringing other people into the fold. We're not arrogant in any way. We're not trying to be this big entity. All we want to do is help people and we're willing to take whatever steps we can do.

DUANE: And so you've talked some about the Overwatch Program as part of what Stack Up is in your role in this short conversation. But maybe be helpful for listeners to understand really what the Stack Up Overwatch Program, which is the program that you manage, as how it relates to the larger Stack Up.

 ZACH: Just knocking down that 22 a day. We want to help our brothers and sisters. We want to save lives and that's the bottom line. It’s not just to save lives, but to improve Veterans and active duties quality of life. And that's what we're there for. There's things that people can't go to their CO's about. They may not want to talk to anyone in their unit about it, and we're there. That's why we're there. It's to a point now where we're actually getting deployed. Some of our systems tied into Overwatch are getting deployed at certain key facilities now, which we'll be releasing a press release about at some point.

So it's the point where certain military organizations are actually looking to us going, okay, how do we help these people? And Overwatch has become this pillar of Stack Up. One of the four major pillars that are all just parts of mental health.We help people 24/7 let's you know, they said we helped over 431 people last year. We had 40 our first year. It's just been great to see this kind of expansion. 

Do I worry a little? Yeah. When you see people in crisis and you see a large amount of people in crisis, you're like it's a double edged sword. I'm glad people are finding us, but you're also, you see the pulse of what's going on. And you're like, “Okay. Do we need to do more? For example, for my program I monitor trends. We're fully HIPAA compliant, but like I see a common issue start popping up. We have what's called, now what's called support groups. It's not therapy, we do common themes with the support groups.

We'll transition to civilian life, managing anxiety, living with PTSD. And then we just have these little called fireside chats that are just group support. So we sit down and talk about it and then go through coping mechanisms, ways that manage things. And that's just another preventative measure that's in the Overwatch Program.

 Now to cut down on that, our ultimate goal is to save lives. We joke that we're a cleverly disguised mental health charity. We said we were a gaming charity and we're like, pull back the masco, surprise! It's kind of how that evolution has happened. 

DUANE: Often, I think since I've learned of what Stack Up, and again, more specifically the Overwatch Program, is doing, has used it as an example of your peer support organization, right? Like you said, you're not a clinician. You have a degree in computer science. and you're a Veteran and you're a gamer. You also, you and the organization have taken the time to learn some basic mental health skills. You don't have to go get a master's degree. You don't have to go to college for years and years. but you have a clinician on retainer. You have certain parameters, you have a training program. This isn't you waking up one day saying, I was in the military so I can help people with PTSD. You and your team, actually go out, get the training to be able to help individuals in an effective way.

ZACH: Absolutely. Just to give you an example, if someone signs up to become a member of the Overwatch Program, they would go through all of PsychArmor’s training, and then we do a series of four to six, what are called oral reviews, where we do role-play sessions and see how they go from that.

We then have them observe interactions and see how us or the volunteers handle it and then go through that certification process. In addition to getting them HIPPA certified, then having them interact with users. So we have a pretty extensive training process. It's not daunting because obviously with volunteers, their time is their donations.

So you don't want to make them jump through too many hoops, but you might do it enough so they're effective in that. And it's actually safe and helpful.

DUANE: And again, I think that's a really critical component that is necessary for really effective peer support. And I think this is really again where Stack Up is on the leading edge of some of the peer support training. In that, somebody can't just say, “Hey, I have lived experience, but I got to stop my own bleeding first.I need to make sure that I'm okay before I can go out and help somebody else.” Because like you said, if you start to go out and say, “Hey, who needs help?” And you start handing out chips and all of a sudden you have 400 people that need help that can be overwhelming for people. 

Zach: Yeah. I want to touch on what you brought up. A lot of people that are our volunteers have lived through these issues. These are not people they're just like, I want to help just cause I want to help. That has happened. We've had civilians that are just interested in helping, but a lot of these people have overcome these problems and dealt or lived with it.

So that's another level of relatability and peer support. When they're not talking to a clinician, they're talking to someone who is trained in helping them, but has also experienced what they have. And that's key to building bonds because peer support effectiveness is about that bond. The bond that we can have that clinicians can not. We can draw parallels from our experiences where, in a clinical sense, you can't do that at all. Again, we're not knocking clinical, but we are just another tip of that mental health. We guide them to the clinical folks or help them make the steps they can to improve themselves.

DUANE: And in many ways you are guides, right? You have been through that tunnel. You come out the other side of that tunnel and you go back and you help people navigate something and bridge that connection between when they have a mental health concern. And if it's, and I don't want to say minor, but if it's something manageable, like you said, if it's just a matter of somebody who just needs some time to connect with another Veteran that helps them, let's solve it at the lowest level. And you have the ability to connect them to more long-term clinical support and offload some of that trust that you have in the clinical process that they may not have. 

ZACH: Yeah. And help them just build trust in the process. I also see us as sharing the load. We all know how overwhelmed the VA.You know that at the beginning of COVID, we had one user who was trying to schedule. He came into us frustrated trying to schedule a mental health visit. And they told him at his local VA, it was three to five months. That's too long for any form of mental health visit. So we're just happy that we exist so we can help and do what we can and help spread that load. Obviously, like I said, we're not clinical, but if we can take a lot of that trouble that people have been trying to talk to clinicians about and help them and get them that immediate help.That is key. 

And like I said, we've all lived it. One of the biggest inside jokes about the Overwatch Program and Stack Up is that we're the best case scenario of the patients running the asylum.

DUANE: I think that's a good example. But also you said you're not clinicians, but you are clinically informed and you're clinically supported. I had a mentor of mine who used to say “In my nonclinical opinion” and then he would express a clinical opinion. In what Stack Up does is really provide that bridge, but also recognizes that, not being the experts in the room, in the mental health space, being able to support that. Zach again, I'm a huge fan of Stack Up in general, the Overwatch Program in particular. If people wanted to find out more about what you're doing, how they can connect even through discord, for example, how can they do that? 

ZACH: Okay. Well, we've got our website. You can go to https://www.stackup.org/stop. Otherwise you can join our discord. It's linked on the website. It's all done. It's also just, if you want to open it right in the browser and connect directly https://discord.com/invite/stackupdotorg. 

DUANE: Sounds good. And I'll make sure that all those links are in the show notes. Zack, thank you so much for coming on the show.

ZACH: Thank you for having me. 

Once again, we would like to thank this week's sponsor, PsychArmor. PsychArmor is the premier education and learning ecosystem specializing in military culture content. PsychArmor offers an online e-learning laboratory. That's free to individual learners as well as custom training options for organizations. And you can find more about PsychArmor at www.psycharmor.org.

One of the points that I'd like to talk about is something that Zach said early in the conversation. Those who served in the military and their family members very often will immediately understand. But those who haven't served may not understand very well. 

 It's the presence of dark humor that many service members and Veterans express. When you're faced with sitting in a cold, wet bunker or tent with nothing but cold MRAs and staring at the same faces that you've been looking at for months, you find that you have to make jokes just to cope. And the jokes that you make are not always what may be for polite company. 

Compound that with the danger that you might experience and you have to find ways to deal with it in such a way so as to not go crazy. That's not to say the dark humor is appropriate, even when it's happening. But it doesn't mean that service members or Veterans are depraved or morally deficient. It's just that sometimes we have a different reaction to stress. 

Consider the scene in Saving Private Ryan when the squad comes upon the glider crash site with all the wounded airborne troops. One of the leaders gives Captain Miller a bag with a bunch of dog tags, a fallen paratrooper. Three of the squad immediately sit down to see if they can find Private Ryan and the pile and turn it into a game. Captain Miller himself observes with a half grin. And the squads really gets into it without any consideration of how their actions are perceived by the other troops around them. Until the team's conscience, the Medic Wade steps in to remind them of what they're actually doing. 

There are certainly times in my post-military life where my dark humor slips but it's something that is extremely common amongst service members and Veterans. And likely one of the things that increases the value of peer support, especially in situations like these gaming or in the middle of a long ruck march with Team RWB and it starts raining or cleaning up after a natural disaster with Team Rubicon. 

There's a shared bond. And sometimes that bond is expressed with jokes, like Zach's explosive ordnance disposal boss cracking a joke about a bad day on the job, not being a problem anymore. And that's okay. That's just the part of Veteran life that Veterans are certainly used to. And that those that work with Veterans have to come to terms with. 

The other point that I'd like to make is that Zach's description of the Stack Up Overwatch Program is what active peer led suicide prevention actually looks like. 

We can go to all the workshops and classes like applied suicide intervention, skills training, or QPR or ACE or mental health first aid. And we can get training on how to respond, but those courses are a bit like driver's education in that we learn what we're supposed to do when we get out on the road, then when we're actually driving the situation is much more complex. 

Someone in danger of suicidal self harm is not like a light switch and that you're not in crisis one minute and you are in crisis the next. Suicidal crisis exists on a continuum from not considering suicide to imminent danger of suicidal behavior.There are a lot of steps between those two things. Vague thoughts of distress, non-specific suicidal ideation such as, maybe it would be better if I didn't wake up, specific suicidal ideation, specific thoughts about death and suicidal self-harm. Contemplating methods and plan behaviors like gathering methods and putting a plan in place. And the danger increases exponentially the farther you go on the continuum. Understanding how to respond to someone at one point in the continuum, as opposed to someone at another point in the continuum takes practice and discernment. There is not one size fits all. If someone we're talking to has vague thoughts of distress and we respond as if they're an imminent danger then we will likely shut them down from sharing anything with us. I had the opportunity to talk to one of Zach's team members after Zach and I recorded this interview and she pointed out that there are two things that are necessary in her role as a Stack Up Overwatch program Shift Leader. Trust and directness; that's two necessary elements for effective peer led suicide prevention. Trust that the person the Veteran is talking to is safe and has the Veteran's best interest in heart and the directness to be able to ask the hard questions very clearly. If someone has the directness to ask the hard question, but has not established trust in the Veteran's eyes, then you're not going to get the real answers to the important questions. 

And if you have established trust, but don't have the directness to ask the hard questions, then you're never going to get to the real reason the Veteran is in distress. If you're listening to this and you're looking to establish your improve a better in peer support suicide prevention program then you couldn't do much better than reaching out to Zach and the folks at the Stack Up Overwatch Program and see how they're doing it because they're doing it right. 

For this week's PsychArmor resource of the week, I'd like to share not a PsychArmor course, but a research article that highlights the partnership between the Stack Up Overwatch Program and PsychArmor. Published in 2021 in The Journal Frontiers In Psychology, the article is a community case study about the program, “Community Case Study: Stack Up’s Overwatch Program, an Online Suicide Prevention and Peer Support Program for Video Gamers.” And in this article you'll get a deeper understanding of the program and how PsychArmor training supports it. You can check out the article through a link in the show notes.