Pivotal People
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Pivotal People
Training Everyday Mental Health Responders with Project 55
We welcome Justin Goodman, founder of Project 55, to share a simple goal with big impact: train 100,000 everyday mental health responders and make support as common as CPR. We explore workplace gaps, practical scripts, active listening, and clear off-ramps to professional care.
• 55 percent not getting help as core mission
• workplace prevalence, productivity loss, and unused EAPs
• stigma, cost, and access as barriers to care
• a CPR-style model for everyday responders
• EAGER framework to engage, listen, support, empower, refer
• separating identity from illness to reduce shame
• active listening with prompts for real-life scenarios
• boundaries, advocacy, and when to pass the baton
• suicide risk, warning signs, and protective community
• tell five people you’re their safe call today
• free, self-paced training and mobile resource library
• speaking availability and commitment to keep training free
Go to project55.org, find the training, and sign up. Contact: Justin at project55.org or find Justin Goodman on LinkedIn.
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I'd like to welcome Justin Goodman to the Pivotal People Podcast. Justin is the founder of a nonprofit called Project 55. He's also a nonprofit mental health educator, and he has a goal of training 100,000, what he calls, mental health responders, which is really all of us. I visited Justin's website before this podcast to get to know him a little bit better, Project 55 of his nonprofit. And I was fascinated to see what a need there is for mental health support, specifically Justin's talking about in the workplace. I've I've just had a conversation the other day with a friend of mine who's a mental health professional, and we were talking about this huge mental health problem. Who is going to take care of that? You know, the government needs to spend money on that. We don't even know what that looks like. And then when I got on Justin's website, I realized, oh my gosh, it's all of us who can have a role in helping work towards and support this unbelievable mental health crisis. So, Justin, this podcast came just in time. I was just having that conversation. And I think that all of us would love to hear your insight and your really practical suggestions for how we can be better at identifying and supporting people who are struggling with mental health. Thank you for being here.
SPEAKER_01:Wonderful. And thanks for having me on.
SPEAKER_00:So let's start in the beginning. Project 55. Tell us why it's called Project 55.
SPEAKER_01:55% of people struggling with mental health aren't getting the help they need. And I wasn't all that creative. I said, why don't we just work on that statistic and lowering the number?
SPEAKER_00:And yes, okay, that was eye-opening to me. 55% of people who need help aren't getting the help they need. All right, next. On your website, you have all kinds of compelling statistics. One that really got me was 84% of workers experienced at least one mental health challenge over the last year. Okay, hold that thought. And then 52% of employees don't feel they get enough support from their employer for their mental well-being. So I looked at that. Well, it would be nice if employers provided mental health support. And then you drill it down to the practical reality that productivity is seriously impacted by mental health. Specifically, you said that 12 billion working days a year are lost to depression and anxiety. And that you're really looking at it as in terms of how can we make identifying and helping mental health as common as getting CPR training? I love that, Justin. I mean, if CPR training became something really tangible to people. Oh, I could do something in the event of an emergency. So could you talk to us about that? About your whole approach. What is your dream in terms of getting this message out to people and training people?
SPEAKER_01:I'd say the the dream really is to get more people equipped. Right now, uh, as you mentioned, yes, there are there are employers that exist that do support employees with mental health challenges. Usually they do it with an employee assistance program. And those can have either sometimes an online hotline, sometimes a free counseling visit or several. But usually those resources are not being leveraged. And they're not being leveraged for a number of reasons. Number one, the organization in the onboarding of said new hire only spends 10 seconds mentioning any of those resources and where to find them. So when someone's in crisis, they don't know where to find them. Or two, there's stigma attached to it. What will my employer know when I'm using these resources, which is a common challenge? And I can tell you that most employers actually look at it, we just want you to get the help you need. We're not going to be deep diving on what you're doing to get support. Um, but there is that stigma there. And then the other part of this equation is there's a cost factor when people are struggling for mental health support. To get in, I live in California. Any quality therapist is going to be$200 an hour in California. That's kind of the minimum threshold we've seen with somebody with four to five years of experience. We're not even talking the upper echelon. That's that's just somebody who I would say is competent and seeing enough patients that I would send my kid there. Um that's a huge barrier given where most people don't even have a thousand dollars saved up in an emergency fund. And in most cases, depression or anxiety that comes onto people should be treated like the emergency situation it is. It deserves the attention, but we don't set aside those funds for that rainy day when it's going to happen. So then you have people who are struggling with even run-of-the-mill depression or anxiety, not getting resources and or turning to other substances or other harmful behaviors instead of getting the help they need. At the same time, there are not enough mental health professionals in the pipeline to remotely address the crisis. And we can the government would do well to just say, hey, if you want to be a psychologist, therapist, et cetera, we will fund your education because that's the only way we're gonna get enough people into that profession to meet the need. So in my dream world, I say, well, what's the solution? And to your point, we are the solution. I can't take the lay person in 10 or 15 hours of training and make them a mental health expert, nor can I make them what would be deemed a lay counselor that you've seen, someone who's had six months of training. But I can equip them well enough that when somebody's struggling, that they can be there to support them, nurture them, provide them resources, give them uh recommendations on where they can go for additional uh low-cost support, and really sit as an advocate for that person as they attempt to solve their own problems. And so in my dream world, this program that we've built, we get distributed to as many people as possible because our whole program is a paint by numbers approach to addressing somebody who's in crisis and how to support them, both with the right things to say, what not to say, and it's all contextual to the life circumstance somebody is in. And so if we could get that 100,000 people trained, life would be a lot easier. And when you talk to mental health professionals, they are all about the lay people stepping in. Because what you'll find when you talk to mental health professionals is they will say, oftentimes, I wish this person had a support network that could help echo some of the key learnings that we're having in this session and reinforce the truths about the individual. And so often people struggle, they struggle in isolation. So they've got this echo chamber of their own mind that they're in. And what really needs to take place is if you've been trained and you know how to support somebody and to speak hope and to really address some of the relational support needs they have, it equips that provider to focus on the true expert work that needs to take place, the deeper dives that need to take place, the practical steps that will move that person forward and propel them towards wellness, towards health, and help prevent them from regressing. And so we want this program out there. We want people equipped to say, whether I'm dealing with someone who's in crisis, or I'll call them, let's say, pre-diabetic, but versus like full-on diabetes where we got to chop a limb off. I want to get them to an early stage, get them the resources they need, and do it in a way that people can learn these skills easily online at their own pace without a cost ever having to be a factor.
SPEAKER_00:Isn't that incredible? Everyone just heard that. And I've been on his website, and you can easily sign up. Tell us about your training program. So, what can people expect if they said, okay, Justin makes a lot of sense. I actually have a couple of teenagers I'd like to learn these skills with. I have family members, I want to be a person who learns CPR. I'm not going to be the heart surgeon, but I can certainly help this person get to the next step. Because, you know, a lot of people listening to this podcast are, how can I do a better job loving people? Here is a great way to love people. So if someone's listening, they're like, okay, tell me more. Tell me about, tell us all about your training program. What is that and what what does it involve?
SPEAKER_01:Perfect. So our training program is the the core material is 10 hours in length with six optional hours on top of that. Uh the first 10 hours are uh about three hours of really education on mental health. There are things that some of us take for granted, knowledge that we have about best practices, uh cutting edge research, and steps that you can take with your own mental health. So we want to make sure we give people both the resources that are readily available out there to help them be in a stable place, and really educate them that's saying, hey, before you help somebody else, you know, put on your own oxygen mask, get set, but also educate them about the mental health process, what the roles of psychologists are versus a therapist versus what's the role of a psychiatrist in medication and how do they interplay. And even down to some of the newer research on psychedelics and where that's coming into the mental health field. So what we want to do is get someone primed enough so they have enough information to one, tackle some things for themselves, some best practices and some boundaries to set, two, understand the language of vocabulary that we'll be talking about, because if you're butchering the vocabulary of saying you need to see a psychiatrist versus your marriage is struggling and a marriage and family therapist might be the right person that you should talk to, we want to make sure the vocabulary we use is accurate. The next step is we want to talk about the mental health conditions. So we go through the DSM 5, some of the most commonly diagnosed mental health conditions people struggle with. And then we pivot into really the steps of action. Because in most cases, what happens is someone is struggling and they don't have a diagnosable mental health illness in most cases. It's a period of time where I'm feeling down, I'm feeling struggling, or I'm going through grief. And so, yes, we can call it depression, but it's really tied to the grief of a loss of a loved one, a lost opportunity, or something to that effect. And so we want to separate diagnosable illnesses versus I'm struggling in this capacity. Now, the diagnosing is really a label just so that we can assign a treatment path. And so what happens is people say, you know, I'm depressed, et cetera. Well, then you're making it your identity. So we want to separate the two of those things: your illness from your identity. You're not, you're not depressed, you are struggling with depression at this time or down or anxiety. Uh then we talk about actionable steps. What everyone struggles with, and when I would speak at conferences on mental health, what everyone came to me and said is, Justin, I don't know the words to say. This friend of mine just lost a child. What in the world do you say? Well, the truth is there's very specific words you can say, and there's very specific things you shouldn't say. And so we walk through in all these contextual examples of what to say and how to start a conversation with somebody who's struggling. We call it the eager framework, how to engage, actively listen, give support, empower, and then refer to professionals. And one thing I run up a lot with the younger generation, and by younger, I'm talking 17 to 25, is they have trouble starting these conversations. I once said to a gentleman while I was building the program, I was talking about how to start this conversation on this difficult topic. And he says, no, no, no. I don't know how to start a conversation with somebody. Like if there's a group just standing there, I don't even know how to step in and introduce myself, let alone when somebody's really struggling. The stakes seem really high. They're so used to the texting, they're not not ready for these type of conversations. So we give a framework for not only starting those conversations, but when to have those conversations, what to say, what depth level, um, and what you can do when the person inevitably says, you know what, I don't necessarily want to share right now. So we give a framework there. Then we do a whole session on active listening. And so often in this day and age, we're waiting for the person to stop talking so we can start talking. And we've all been there, we've known that person who does that, and we have to retrain our brain to listen in a different way. And so there's a very specific methodology of active listening that therapists use that really bring out uh the emotion in people and help them work towards goals and solve problems. And so we teach those active listening skills and again make it contextual. So, for example, it's if someone is talking about their divorce, we are going to give prompts, responses, questions to ask for somebody that is in a struggle in that capacity versus someone who's in financial crisis. Um, but they're all questions that you can review ahead of time or anytime pull out or even bring to you to a meeting that help you to have a better conversation. Then there's the giving support side of the equation. Oftentimes people think giving support is giving money or solving a problem. We are not in the problem-solving business. We are really in the support business. And support looks like giving hope, reaffirming truth. It can be providing resources, it can be referring to people, but in general, what we're supposed to do to give support is to be present with that person and help them identify where their challenge is and push them gently towards recognizing I gotta handle this, I've gotta to uh be with them in this moment or be and tackle my problem in this moment. Um, did you ever see the movie A Beautiful, not a beautiful mind, um, What Dreams May Come with Robin Williams?
SPEAKER_00:No, but now I will. Tell me about it.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, I'm gonna spoil the ending if no one's ever seen it, but it's a it's an important one because it's it's one of my favorite movies of all times. Uh it's about the afterlife, Robin Williams. Um, he's married, um, they lose their kids in an accident. His wife ultimately takes her own life after he dies in a separate accident, and he goes into heaven and he's searching for his wife, and his wife isn't there. And it's about his journey to go find his wife. And his wife is trapped in hell, and this is not really a spiritual conversation I'm giving, I'm just contextually bringing this up for the story. But he goes on this journey to find his wife trapped in hell. And he's like, She's the greatest woman I know. Why is she trapped there? And she's in this dark place alone, doesn't know where she is, she can't really move, and she's stuck. And not until she sees that he's willing to sit with her in hell does she start to recover and realize that she's been trapped in this hell. And so often giving support is getting down in that hole with that person, not just saying, oh man, it looks rough down there, but going down there and sitting with them in that pain, not looking away and just asking the questions and being willing to feel some of those emotions. And there's a cost to that. And so we teach how to give support in that capacity. And then we also teach the next step of empowering somebody. Therapists for years have used a couple different frameworks to help people that are struggling, uh, both in mental illness, but also just struggling with executive function. And they use two frameworks. They use the solve framework for solving problems, and it's a step-by-step sequential way to help someone navigate a challenge and identify the way to solve the problem. But before that, when someone's struggling with a personal issue, I can't convince anybody to change their ways or take an action towards their betterment. But there's a framework called Darn C that really drives getting somebody to identify their problem, make those pain points of like why this problem needs to be addressed so strong, they convince themselves they need to take an action towards remedying that problem. And so we teach those two frameworks in our give support section so that you can have help someone say, okay, let's convince this person to convince themselves they got to address this issue. And then we pivot towards a solve framework where now it's like, what action steps are we gonna take? And we help them come up with a solution on a guided approach through that process. But there are things and there are clear off ramps where we are not mental health professionals. And so all throughout the coursework, we have guidelines for, hey, when you get to this area, i.e., if if someone starts talking about their sexual abuse they've suffered, you can listen in that moment and you can support in that moment. But that is a clear indicator of something much greater that requires professional intervention. And support doesn't necessarily look like you listening to them every week on this and being the the person that's going to be there from. It could involve you going to the counselor's office and sitting outside of that appointment room so they have the confidence to go and do that. And so um we have clear off ramps that we we give um and a time when a professional needs to be called in. And there's a number of different times when a professional needs to be called in and you're not abandoning somebody. It's just passing the baton. It's it's as simple as if the paramedic shows up and is triaging the situation and they get into the hospital and the person needs surgery. The paramedic doesn't feel bad that he's not equipped to do surgery. He's happy he got to the person, triaged the situation, got into the hospital, seeing the expert. And so we want to talk about the specific off-ramps for the experts to get involved because there's a clear line when that happens. And then in our coursework, we also talk about what happens when someone is having suicidal ideation, how do we address that situation, the warning signs, and then getting them the help they need, andor making sure there is support around them to prevent uh that, you know, that negative um process from going further. Last but not least, we provide a contextual basis for everything, these 14 life different scenarios. So all the coursework then becomes geared towards each life situation. We take through all the steps of the eager framework there, and then we have an entire resource library that it is free as well that breaks everything down into bite-sized chunks. So on your phone, you could just click and you could have in front of your phone the questions to ask or what not to say, or you could download this whole packet. And um we did experiments with it where I had um a team member um go and support somebody else outside our organization who was struggling, and he printed out uh this grief packet with him. And the person was so touched that he took the time to try and understand what they were going through. It didn't matter that he was reading from some lines and questions to ask. The person was so impacted that he was deliberate and thoughtful in the engagement process. And so what we try and do is get people from being a reactive supporter to a proactive supporter who's also thoughtful about those conversations, and then also thoughtful about the boundaries that need to be in place as well, because one people have marriages and it can be very easy to support somebody, and then all of a sudden there's a bond that grows. So there's clear boundaries we have there. There are boundaries from, hey, this is where my competency level stops. And then there are also situations where you have to tap out like a judge would when there's a conflict of interest or there's there's some way you're personally impacted and you've got a wounding that you may have healed from, but it's too painful for you to engage. And so we try and provide clear guidelines throughout the coursework. Again, it's all online, self-paced, and you can go through it as fast or as slowly as you want, but you don't have to memorize anything because everything is going to be in our resource library as well. So that's the long and the short boom.
SPEAKER_00:Why wouldn't all of us want to do that? Why wouldn't all of us? I mean, I'm sitting here thinking, oh my gosh, this is online. This is I'm listening to you, Justin, thinking, how did I get such a wise person on my podcast? This is so great. You are, this is, I'm I'm just sitting here thinking, this is great for me. I am gonna do this. I hope a lot of people are listening to this because of the ripple effect. You know, suppose that one person listening gets excited about this and does the training, and it helps with their friends and it helps with their kids, and it helps perhaps it helps in the workplace. This is what we're talking about. And maybe they start talking about it at Thanksgiving. And then pretty soon four other people are saying, Well, that's free. That that training is free, it's obviously very professional, and that's how this happens. That's the grassroots way you have put out this free content. I love this so much because 20 years ago I had a dream and I put it out free, and it grows if people share it with other people. So I'm gonna ask listeners to find project55.org. It's so clear, it's so easy to understand. Find the training, just sign up for the training. And even if you just did a little bit of it, but if you did that, you're gonna personally benefit because I heard the first three hours is doing our own work, right? We all need to do our own work no matter what. And then you never know when this is gonna become come in handy. You never know when you're gonna need to use that CPR. But when you do, you are so thankful you knew how to do it. Um, one of the things you talked about in your training was, and you referenced it quickly just now, is um suicide prevention. And we've all heard this, especially since COVID, how the suicide um attempt rate has increased. Can you tell us a little bit about where we stand today in terms of suicide statistics?
SPEAKER_01:I wish I could say it was was getting better. Um unfortunately, I'll I'll give you kind of some crazy things. I finally decided to move forward building this training after I was speaking at a conference. And I um and I'm in the insurance space and I'm kind of an educator, and and so people heard that I was gonna be talking on mental health versus my normal stuff I do, and I had five people out of a conference of 4,000 who had lost someone to suicide approach me, and then countless others with struggles and and just all so many people that have been impacted, and the numbers of people who reach out um and struggle, it it continues to grow. Obviously, COVID with a lot of forced isolation and and what took place there did not do wonders for mental health for people. And the the biggest challenge I I think with a suicide rate is that both for the people struggling and for the people wanting to support, is we've we've lost the actual human connection standpoint. We're so close to our phones all the time that it's harder to spot when somebody's struggling. We also notice that more of these relationships are superficial, and so we don't have that. Yeah, most people don't have a best friend. Most people today, and it's a stark contrast to 30 or 40 years ago, they have nobody to turn to, or they perceive they have nobody to turn to. And they did a great study on, and this is kind of an ADHD way of answering your question, um, on addiction. Many years ago, they did this study on rats. And this study took place, and basically what they did is they gave this rat liquid cocaine, and basically there was food sitting there, all the food it could ever have, um, but it had access to liquid cocaine. And it always went for the cocaine, they always just kept dying and dying. Well, then they got the idea of putting in a bunch of fun activities, but the liquid cocaine there and the food, and it still just went for the drug every time. But then they introduced a community of other rats and liquid cocaine in there, and once the cocaine was in there with the community and all the activities, what happened was the use of the liquid cocaine dropped off a cliff. People what they've they've started to really recognize about addiction and struggle is community is a great antidote to addiction, mental health illness. Now it's not the end all be all, but that safety net there is critically important. And without more people being deliberate about saying, I can be your safety net, we won't get there. And so I've always, when I I I talk at conferences, said to people, you have five people in your life right now that you know you would be there in a heartbeat for them if they ever went south. While they are in a good headspace, while they are healthy, while they are not outwardly, in your view, depressed, proactively say, This might sound odd, but I heard this guy talk and I wanted to make sure you knew. It doesn't matter what you've done, what the situation is, how bad you're hurting, how embarrassing, shameful, whatever it is, I want to be that call, and it would be an honor to do that, and I would be frustrated as a friend or a family member if you chose not to reach out to me in that moment and to make that known. Because too often what happens is they don't know, they don't have that person to turn to. Um, I was working with a father um this past week who had lost his son uh to suicide, and there wasn't a a full history of what had uh taken place, meaning there wasn't a pattern of depression. There's typical struggles and whatnot, and and ultimately there's a loss of a relationship, and and the son made a permanent decision, you know, uh to try and deal with a temporary uh depression. And the father is left with like, well, what could I have said more, et cetera, and and candidly, I think the father and the mother did everything they could to support their kid. But at the end of the day, you look at some of these high school relationships people have, and and even on an adult, they don't have people that will be there for them to support them through that process. And so we see that community is such a critical aspect of supporting somebody and preventing them from going there. If you have a few best friends, the likelihood of you having a suicidal ideation moment drops significantly because it's not I'm alone. It's I may be miserable, but I can vent it to my friends. I know they'll be there. I still have something with me. Um, and especially if they've proactively spoken to them.
SPEAKER_00:And what you said earlier about the young person who didn't feel comfortable breaking into a conversation because we've that generation has lost the skills. I heard on your podcast you just spoke to a mental health professional about this today with young people and suicide and depression and anxiety. They don't have those skills. So let's fast forward the whole idea of having a really trusted friendship in person is, you know, rare, more and more rare. And and oh my gosh, you know, I'm 62, so I didn't have to grow up with Instagram in high school, and now you see the young kids, and it's been talked about so much, I really don't need to belabor this point. Everybody says that social media and the phone has done such a disservice to our young people from an emotional standpoint, from a social standpoint. I so love your idea of letting five people know that I am on. On team, whoever. I am on team, Justin. You call me. I years ago, I went to a funeral of a man we really respected. He had been our boss, my best boss I'd ever had at that point in my life. My husband and I worked for him. And we went to a funeral. He had killed himself. And the funeral was packed. And all of us had this feeling like had he called me, I would have sent him a check. We all, it was a financial, you know, it's a spiral, but it was a business failure, is what started the spiral. None of us would have, we would all have been so flattered if he had thought that we were a good enough friend that he would call and ask for help. So part of it is people don't want to ask for help. So what I love is let's give people permission way in advance to say, yeah, like you said, nothing's wrong. You're perfectly stable. I know that. But I want you to know that I'm one of your people. So call me. And guess what? How good is it going to make that person feel on that day to know that they're one of your people? So it's so easy, you know. Though I started out by saying this is a way for us to, this training is a way for us to love people because we don't know who we could be helping. But short term, we could be reaching out to people, as you just said, right now. I mean, what a great way to love people, just to let them know you are such a valued friend. I want to be your valued friend. Um, yeah, it doesn't take much to make someone's day. That would um so I'm sitting uh oh, your podcast. So everyone, I listened to one of Justin's episodes on his podcast, which is also called Project 55, and I told him before I started, I couldn't decide which episode to listen to because they were all so good. There are so many compelling topics. So go to Project 55, listen to any of the mental health experts who are on there. Um, there is so much to learn. Go to his website, project55.org, sign up for this training, and there's a lot more you can learn on the website too. And how can people get in touch with you, Justin? If they you said you speak at conferences. I don't know if you are available for speaking. I don't know if you have any books or if that's coming. Um, but how can people reach you if they'd like to reach you directly? What's the best way?
SPEAKER_01:The best way to reach me is uh project55.org. There should be uh a section there where you can find me, or just Justin at project55.org. You can also find me on LinkedIn, uh Justin Goodman, I'm there, and my contact information is readily available. And uh yeah, I I have spoken at a number of conferences. One of the things with this nonprofit, um I will just say is we are allergic to people that are are speaking in the mental health community and or really any painful point community where they're they're monetizing off of that. It's such a powerful need out there that needs to be addressed. So uh yes, I I do go speak at conferences. We will never charge to go speak at a conference if it's a very difficult flight or something. We may ask for a little offset there. But outside of that, uh we want to make sure that there isn't a burden to somebody who's actually trying to get the message out.
SPEAKER_00:Oh wow, I love that. We might have to play that put piece twice on this podcast. So thank you so much. This has been wonderful, and I know we're gonna get a lot of good feedback from this episode. So um project55.org and the podcast Project 55. Thanks so much, Justin. I wish you the best of luck in this dream. It's gonna be fun to watch.
SPEAKER_01:Wonderful. Thank you so much.
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