About The Show Hosts:
Duane France, MA, MBA, LPC is the Director of Veteran Services for the Family Care Center, a private mental health clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He is also the Executive Director of the Colorado Veterans Health and Wellness Agency, a 501(c)3 nonprofit professionally affiliated with the Family Care Center.
Upon retiring from the Army after a twenty-two year career, including five combat and operational deployments, Mr. France began serving as a clinical mental health counselor in 2014. He is a member of the inaugural class of the George W. Bush Institute Veteran Leadership Program, a program that supports individuals from diverse sectors across the country who are motivated to increase their impact in helping our nation's veterans.
In addition to his clinical work, he also writes and speaks about veteran mental health in a wide variety of settings. He has presented at national conferences on mental health and wellness in the military population. He has authored three books, and is the founder and host of Head Space and Timing, a blog and podcast that brings the information from the clinical community to service members, veterans, and their families. He has been published in numerous local and national media outlets, and writes an online column for Counseling Today.
Dr. Shauna Springer is a licensed psychologist and nationally recognized expert on initiatives that benefit the military community. Known as “Doc Springer”, she is a trusted advisor for a vast network of veterans, military families and fellow thought leaders. Her uniquely perceptive insights have helped thousands of warriors reconnect with their tribe, strengthen their relationships, and build lives driven by their values. Dr. Springer’s work has been featured on NPR, NBC, CBS Radio, Military Times and Marine Corps Times.
She is co-author of the best-selling book, Beyond the Military, which explores the psychological, cultural and relational aspects of military transition and provides a comprehensive roadmap for successfully navigating life after military service. In addition, she has expertise in several critical, cutting edge subjects – for example – moral injury, approaching conversations about firearm safety, the links between survivor guilt, shame, and suicidal ideation, combining therapy with Stellate Ganglion Block (an innovative treatment for post-traumatic stress), the trust gap between warriors and civilian treatment providers, and the bond between those who serve in the military and their trusted healers.
Her next book WARRIOR: How to Support Those Who Protect Us has been endorsed by Academy Award Nominee and Author of the books Tribe and War, Sebastian Junger. WARRIOR will be published in Spring 2020.
Episode Transcript:
Duane France: 00:00 Welcome to the seeking the Military Suicide Solution Podcast brought to you by the Military Times. I'm Duane France
Shauna Springer: 00:06 And I'm Doc Shauna Springer
Duane France: 00:08 And we'd like to thank you for taking the time to join us to talk about an extremely important topic, suicide in the military affiliated population.
Duane France: 00:22 So this is the introductory episode of the show and you wanted to take a few minutes to tell you a bit about us, what brought us here and why this show at this point in time. To start off with, I'll tell you a little bit about me. My name is Duane France. I said I'm a retired Army Noncommissioned Officer, combat veteran of both Iraq and Afghanistan and a clinical mental health counselor practicing in Colorado Springs, Colorado. In addition to my clinical work, I also write and speak about mental health and wellness on my blog and podcast, Head Space and Timing. In over 150 episodes of that show, the topic of suicide came up often. It started to come up so often that we decided to create this show to talk about that subject specifically. I'm joined by my cohost, Doc Springer. Shauna.
Shauna Springer: 01:06 Yes, thanks Duane. So I'm a licensed psychologist who's known as Doc Springer for my role as a trusted advisor in the military and veteran community. And in addition to spending years innovating in the area of suicide prevention, I have expertise in a number of topics that have not been well explored as yet. For example, moral injury, firearm safety conversations, and bridging the trust gap between veterans and civilian treatment providers. I've never served in the military, wouldn't want to represent that I did, but I had a pretty unconventional upbringing. That I'll talk about a little bit later in this episode that has helped veterans really feel like home to me and has really helped me feel comfortable working with those who have served in the military. I work has been featured on NPR, NBC, CBS radio, Military Times, and Marine Corps Times and I'm delighted to do this podcast series with Duane France, who I first met through the Head Space and Timing podcast. He does excellent interviews and I just thought what a thoughtful interview that was. And then when he asked me to cohost this with him, it just all kind of came together from there.
Duane France: 02:15 No, I really appreciate that. I think it was as I was thinking about the concept of this show, really wanting to bring someone on to to really, you know, parse some things out with and bounce some things off of. I really appreciated your willingness to come on and have the conversation.
Shauna Springer: 02:36 Yeah. You know, one of the things I really wanted to do in this episode is to give space for us to talk about how we came to this work. It's really important to me as we go through this process to interview guests that don't see this as just a job that really see this as a mission or a calling or something that is at least sacred work to them for some reason or another. And often there's a story behind what drives people to do this work in the first place. So I wanted to ask you, doing what brought you to this work? What's your story?
Duane France: 03:17 Everybody loves an origin story, right? Surprisingly, a pretty common question is, you know, how does a...I was not a mental health professional when I was in the army. I was actually in logistics. I made a choice 25 years ago now to to take the first thing smoking out of St Louis to be able to get out of my dad's basement and happened to be that particular MOS. And then opportunities over those 22 years I spent in the Army, I decided to do more crazy stuff like jumping out of airplanes and, you know, going to weird and exotic places like Turkey and Norway rather than changing my job. But I wasn't a mental health professional specifically. I wasn't a licensed clinician when I was in the army. When I do often say that it is somewhat similar to a Platoon Sergeant, a First Sergeant of, you know, "Hey Joe, what's going on?" And, and you know, "what's going on in your head?"
Duane France: 04:05 I always thought that I was going to be a high school teacher. Like you know, one of those English teachers or maybe a history teacher who, you know, the students could derail by asking war stories and not get any homework. And I had a Vietnam Vet teacher that we knew that if we got him talking about Vietnam, we could get out of homework. And, you know, I always saw myself doing something like that. And then some of the things in, I've talked about it, we will talk about ...
