I speak with John Neiley, 9th Judicial District Chief Judge, about his many years behind the bench. John and I have been involved in tragic cases through the years- shootings, assaults, neglect and accidents. But, unlike in medicine, the legal system must embrace those horrors repetitively over weeks and months as trials slowly evolve. John describes how those imbedded traumas can effect the court; defense, prosecutution, jurors and court staff, who often have to relive the tragedy of those cases with the victims and families, in terrible, granular detail. John's explains that while his duty as a judge is to remain impartial and objective, he has had to learn to innure himself against the natural human reactions of grief and outrage and doubt. We discuss the imperative of finding empathy in the cases he presides over and by helping others heal, from victim's families finding justice, to restorative healing of the perpetrators themselves, he finds solace and healing himself.
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Check out these resources from previous podcast guests for assistance with tracking your mental health, and reaching out for therapeutic assistance:
1. Jonathan Wilson and INVI MindHealth have developed an App using smart watch technology to track your daily mental health wellness:
2. From Raul Rivas and his Trauma Behind the Badge podcast episode he shared the inline resource therapy resource:
https://www.lighthousehw.org/
Available on the App Store or on Google Play.
Lighthouse Health & Wellness is an in-hand, on-demand, 100% confidential health and wellness platform available at no cost to our nation's public safety agencies.
Lighthouse was designed to provide your employees and their families anonymous access to your agency's existing health and wellness programs, along with a growing library of the latest educational health and wellness information and tools that have been tailored to the unique needs of those working in public safety.
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