Send us a text

The number that surprised us wasn’t just the downloads. It was how clearly the most-played conversations pointed to one idea: listening changes more than medication ever could. We close the year with a wide-angle reflection and a deep dive into Sean’s journey from Navy psychiatric technician to nurse leader, tracing how psychotherapy, narrative, and cultural humility shape outcomes that stick.

We start with what resonated: candid talks on when pills aren’t enough, a fresh look at psychoanalysis, and a grounded tour of psychedelic-assisted therapy. Then we pivot to the craft behind the care. Sean explains how studying English and Latin sharpened the way he uses metaphor to translate complex concepts for patients and how writing notes is not clerical work but clinical reasoning in action. Creativity isn’t a side hobby here—it’s a clinical asset. Nursing narratives, he argues, can teach nuance better than slides, preserving the lessons that actually help at the bedside.

The heart of this episode lives in two stories. One is a hard truth about suicide that underscores our limits and the need for rituals of meaning in psychiatric care. The other is a simple kindness—a weekend of laundry duty—that became a patient’s lowest point and pivot toward long-term recovery. We connect these moments to Peplau’s interpersonal theory and share field stories from deployments that reveal how context matters: a grieving woman mislabeled “crazy” needed space, not meds; a patient eating a blanket needed food, not a diagnosis. Across it all, we make a case for protecting psychotherapy training in advanced practice nursing and for holding onto the slow skills that build trust.

If you’re here for mental health insights that are practical, human, and unvarnished, you’re in the right place. Subscribe, share this episode with a colleague who needs the reminder that presence is treatment, and leave a review telling us the small act that changed your practice.

Let’s Connect

Dr Dan Wesemann

Email: daniel-wesemann@uiowa.edu

Website: https://nursing.uiowa.edu/academics/dnp-programs/psych-mental-health-nurse-practitioner

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-wesemann

Dr Kate Melino

Email: Katerina.Melino@ucsf.edu

Dr Sean Convoy

Email: sc585@duke.edu

Dr Kendra Delany

Email: Kendra@empowered-heart.com

Dr Melissa Chapman

Email: mchapman@pdastats.com

Send us a text

What if the most powerful part of therapy is the space between the boxes on our diagrams—the arrows where trust lives and change begins? We invited researcher and evaluator Dr. Melissa Chapman-Hayes to sit in the guest chair and talk candidly about why she stayed close to psychotherapy, how early mentorship shaped her lens, and why relational work is the quiet engine beneath good data.

We dig into nursing’s unique role in psychotherapy: clinicians who spend the most time with patients often have the strongest relational skills, yet face billing, time, and visibility barriers. Melissa lays out a practical roadmap for building the case: tailor messages to audiences, combine defensible outcomes with human stories, and treat credibility as something defined by the people you need to persuade. From hospital leaders to accrediting bodies to the general public, evidence lands when it feels useful, plainspoken, and real.

Stigma looms large. We explore it as a public health crisis and focus on self-stigma as the most actionable barrier. Leadership vulnerability—like a commanding general sitting in a clinic to normalize care—can reshape culture. Access is more than coverage; it’s fit. We talk about finding the right therapist, why a few sessions are a fair test, and how telehealth expands options while leaving equity gaps. The conversation gets specific about cultural relevance too, from adapting CBT for a Black man with early cognitive decline to navigating directories that rarely capture identity or modality with nuance.

We close on isolation: a modern condition that technology both softens and sharpens. Loneliness erodes mental and physical health, yet connection can be prescribed, coached, and built through groups, community touchpoints, and brave conversations. If every data point is a person, every story is a chance to shift a system—one relationship at a time.

If this resonated, subscribe, share it with a colleague, and leave a review. Your feedback helps more listeners find thoughtful conversations about psychotherapy, nursing, stigma, and the future of mental health care.

Let’s Connect

Dr Dan Wesemann

Email: daniel-wesemann@uiowa.edu

Website: https://nursing.uiowa.edu/academics/dnp-programs/psych-mental-health-nurse-practitioner

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-wesemann

Dr Kate Melino

Email: Katerina.Melino@ucsf.edu

Dr Sean Convoy

Email: sc585@duke.edu

Dr Kendra Delany

Email: Kendra@empowered-heart.com

Dr Melissa Chapman

Email: mchapman@pdastats.com

Send us a text

What happens when a treatment designed to help may also carry injuries we rarely measure? We sit down with Sarah Price Hancock, co-founder and trustee of the Ionic Injury Foundation, to unpack ionic injury as a physiologic framework for understanding electrical exposure—including ECT—and the real-world consequences that can follow. Sarah shares her lived experience after 116 ECT sessions, the profound memory loss that reshaped her life, and the delayed neurologic symptoms that only made sense once she studied electrical injury research outside of psychiatry’s usual lanes.

Together we map the biology: rapid perfusion spikes, bradycardia, and reperfusion injury; blood–brain barrier shifts that may invite inflammatory cascades; and potential acquired channelopathies that present as episodic weakness, spasms, or exercise intolerance. We contrast short-term ECT outcome data with the lack of long-term tracking and the high variability in dosing, electrode placement, and anesthetic choices. The conversation stays grounded in practice: what to add to intake questions, which referrals actually help (neuropsych, central auditory and visual processing, vestibular and balance testing), and how to route patients toward rehabilitation and accommodations that restore function at school and work.

This is also a story about trust and agency. Sarah lays out simple tools for rebuilding a sense of control, and we discuss how clinicians can presume competence, partner on decisions, and stay curious when symptoms fall outside familiar patterns. Whether you support ECT, question it, or simply want better outcomes, this episode offers concrete steps to assess, document, and treat possible electrical injury with the same rigor we give any other trauma. If this conversation sparks ideas or challenges your assumptions, share it with a colleague, subscribe for more, and leave a review with one change you’d make in your practice today.

Let’s Connect

Dr Dan Wesemann

Email: daniel-wesemann@uiowa.edu

Website: https://nursing.uiowa.edu/academics/dnp-programs/psych-mental-health-nurse-practitioner

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-wesemann

Dr Kate Melino

Email: Katerina.Melino@ucsf.edu

Dr Sean Convoy

Email: sc585@duke.edu

Dr Kendra Delany

Email: Kendra@empowered-heart.com

Dr Melissa Chapman

Email: mchapman@pdastats.com