Into the Fold: the Mental Health Podcast
Health, Fitness & Longevity
About
Into the Fold: Issues in Mental Health is the monthly podcast by the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health. Consistent with the spirit of the foundation's work, the podcast captures the human implications of mental health and related issues, bringing you conversations with mental health advocates, researchers, consumers, officials, and others who carry the torch on behalf of mental health and wellness in Texas and beyond.Into the Fold is part of the Texas Podcast Network. Texas Podcast Network is brought to you by The University of Texas at Austin. Podcasts are produced by faculty members and staffers at UT Austin who work with University Communications to craft content that adheres to journalistic best practices. The University of Texas at Austin offers these podcasts at no charge. Podcasts appearing on the network and this webpage represent the views of the hosts, not of The University of Texas at Austin.
Episodes
- BONUS CONTENT: Lived Experience Storytelling: Primer for Advocacy
In a special bonus segment, Hogg Foundation policy fellow Maddie Garza, along with returning guest Ayaan Moledina of Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT), discuss the Lived Experience Storytelling Primer, a toolkit designed to encour…
- Policy: Telling Your Story
This episode is the second of the Policy arc of our season, an arc focused on how systems change happens, and how mental health policy is shaped not just by moments of urgency, but by sustained leadership. Today’s conversation looks at how…
- Policy: What's in It for Me?
When most people hear the word "policy", they think of lawmakers, bills, or political debates — not necessarily something that affects their day-to-day life. But policy is everywhere. It shapes the jobs we can get, the healthcare we can af…
- Partnership Across Distance: The Texas Panhandle
In rural communities, distance shapes everything - e.g. distance to the nearest hospital; distance to a licensed counselor; or distance to broadband access. When it comes to mental health care, those distances can become barriers.But what…
- Beyond the Bed: Care as Partnership
When someone leaves a state hospital and returns to their community, recovery doesn’t pause — it becomes more complicated. Housing, connection, medication, transportation, stigma, isolation — the real work of healing often begins outside t…
- Faith as a Mental Health Partner
For generations, churches have been more than places of worship. They’ve been gathering spaces, support systems, sources of strength in moments of uncertainty and crisis. In African American communities especially, faith institutions have…
- Mutual Aid, Mutual Respect
On a summer morning in July 2025, floodwaters swept through Burnet and Llano counties in Central Texas, turning quiet roads into rivers. Homes were lost. Families displaced. Older adults had to be rescued from a HUD apartment complex. An R…
- Let Community Drive the Work
All across Texas, people are showing that you don’t have to wait for change from the top down — you can build it from the ground up. And when local efforts succeed, they don’t just transform a workplace, a neighborhood, a classroom — they…
- Rebuilding Trust in Systems of Care
Every system of care — whether it’s education, health, or justice — is built on trust. Trust that when we reach out for help, we’ll be treated with respect and fairness. But for too many Texans, that hasn’t always been the case. People wit…
- From the Robert Lee Sutherland Seminar: Humanly Possible
Today’s episode was recorded as part of the Robert Lee Sutherland Seminar , an event the Hogg Foundation hosts every two years to explore urgent issues in mental health and well-being. This year’s seminar included a screening of Humanly Po…
- Rhythms of Resilience: An Early Look at the Robert Lee Sutherland Seminar
Since 1978, The Hogg Foundation’s biennial Robert Lee Sutherland Seminar (RLS) has been held to increase awareness about mental health concepts such as recovery, integrated health, and barriers to well-being. This year’s event offers a cha…
- Community-Based Solutions: Grassroots Mental Health Innovations That Work
When it comes to supporting rural communities, especially around mental health, success often starts not with answers, but with questions—and a deep commitment to listening. In our latest episode of Into the Fold, host Ike Evans speaks wit…
- Children of Change: Supporting Youth Mental Health in an Uncertain World
In this timely and heartfelt episode of Into the Fold , co-hosts Vicky Coffee and Ike Evans sit down with Shawn Kent, therapist and director at the Amala Foundation, to explore the mental health challenges—and sources of resilience—facing…
- AI and Beyond: Technology Shaping Mental Health
Today’s conversation is about the promises—and the pitfalls—of technology. Specifically, we’re exploring how artificial intelligence is reshaping mental health care and what it means for equity, access, and privacy. While AI has the potent…
- Funding Mental Health: Innovations and Opportunities
In this episode, we’re diving into a topic that’s both essential and often behind the scenes—funding. Who funds mental health work? How do organizations access support for the critical services they provide? And what does innovation in men…
- The Heart of Healing: Social Workers and Their Role in Mental Health Care
March is National Social Work Month, and here at the Hogg Foundation, we see firsthand the major role social workers play in the upkeep of mental health. For Episode 172, we are joined today by Catherine Wilsnack, a doctoral candidate at t…
- Learning to Love: Dr. Leo Buscaglia on The Human Condition
Love is a profound and multifaceted concept that has fascinated people for centuries. But do we really understand it? This question is at the center of our most recent episode of Into the Fold, which features an archived recording of the H…
- Building a Resilient Future: What’s Next for Mental Health Advocacy
This is Part 2 of the conversation we began with last month's Episode 169, Navigating Systemic Shifts: Policy Changes That Impact Mental Health Care. We want to know, from those doing the work, what feels different about doing mental healt…
- Navigating Systemic Shifts: Policy Changes That Impact Mental Health Care
We are coming to you from Austin, Texas, site of the Texas Legislature an epicenter of the changes that are impacting people, as well as concerted efforts to address those changes. We thought it would be fitting to kick off this new season…
- Supporting Mental Health during the Holidays
The holidays can be a time of joy, but for many, they bring unique challenges, such as loneliness, financial stress, or grief. Today, we’re focusing on ways to provide meaningful support to individuals during the holiday season. We are joi…
- The Purpose of Policy Work in a Divisive Time
In today’s episode, we’re diving into the unique stresses and rewards of policy work, even or especially during an election year as divisive as this one has been. With the help of Alison Mohr Boleware, policy director for the Hogg Foundati…
- It's Time to Prioritize Mental Health in the Workplace
The Hogg Foundation often characterizes its mission as being one "to transform the places where people live, learn, work, play, and pray." That third word, work, is the focus of today's episode. In observance of World Mental Health Day and…
- From Struggle to Strength: Exploring Journeys of Recovery
For the month of September, the Hogg Foundation is celebrating National Recovery Month. Throughout the month we’ll be highlighting the creativity, resilience, and leadership of people in recovery from mental and substance use conditions, a…
- Peer Support on Campus
Historically, the mental health system, and the conversation surrounding it, has given more value to the expert opinions of providers and clinicians than the experiences of those living with mental health conditions. For well over a decade…
- The Future of Recovery
Mental health care and recovery services have historically prioritized a clinical medical model. Under this model, expertise resided almost exclusively in the hands of professionally trained healthcare providers. Beginning in the 1960s and…
- It's a Texas Thing: Celebrating Recovery at PeerFest
PeerFest is an educational and celebratory event for Texans who have faced mental health challenges and are on a journey to wellness. Dr. William DeFoore , author of, among other books, Anger Among Angels: Shedding Light on the Darkness of…
- Digital Well-being for Youth
By some accounts, young people's relationship to technology is unfolding crisis. It is now commonplace for adults to lament the “screen time” of young people and worry about its effect on their social lives and mental health. In 2023, the…
- Episode 160: Honoring a Mental Health Pioneer
Dr. Melvin P. Sikes was a member of renowned unit of African American fighter pilots who flew during World War II known as the Tuskegee Airmen. After the war, Dr. Sikes earned a doctorate in education administration from the University of…
- Episode 159: A Day of Racial Healing
For this first podcast of the new year we are taking a look back at the National Day of Racial Healing. The National Day of Racial Healing is a nationwide observance that also coincides with Martin Luther King Day . For the second year in…
- Episode 158: Exploring Gratitude
it was back in 2017 that we had on Dr. Art Markman, co-host of the KUT show Two Guys on Your Head, to talk about political climate as a chronic stressor. And so, six years after the fact, we thought that it would make sense to close that c…
- Student Well-being during Finals Week
Podcast host Ike Evans speaks with two UT Austin students currently working with the Hogg Foundation’s operations department and a counselor from the UT Counseling and Mental Health Center’s Counselors in Academic Residence program (CARE)…
- Episode 157: Young Minds Matter - Real Queens
For this episode, we offer a look back at Young Minds Matter 2023! We drop in on some of the attendees, as well as our featured guest, Brandie Meister, youth advocate, published author, and vice president of Real Queens Fix Each Other's Cr…
- Episode 156: Transforming Young Minds Collectively
The theme of our 2023 Young Minds Matter conference is Transforming Our Communities Collectively . With a focus on collaborating with children, youth, and families as decision-makers and leaders in community transformation, it promises to…
- Episode 155: Mental Health is a Universal Human Right
This episode is dropping on World Mental Health Day, October 10. World Mental Health Day 2023 is an opportunity for people and communities to unite behind the theme ‘Mental health is a universal human right.” From its inception the Hogg Fo…
- Episode 154: The Loneliness Epidemic
U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, issued a public advisory earlier this year titled, the Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation in the U.S. To quote: “Our epidemic of loneliness and isolation has been an underappreciated public health crisi…
- Episode 153: Mental Health Goes Back to School
Kids in 2023 are going back to school at a particularly fraught moment for schools, teachers and parents in Texas. What do kids need this school year in order to thrive? What kind of support do parents and teachers need? Joining us for thi…
- Episode 152: Asian Texans Mobilize for Mental Health
What does it mean to do public policy work in a state with as challenging a policy environment as Texas? And for Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities, what particular challenges confront them in the mental health policy s…
- Episode 151: Diversity, Awareness and Wellness in Action
DAWA, standing for Diversity, Awareness and Wellness in Action, is an Austin-based organization that honors, celebrates, and empowers the essential work of community frontliners and creatives of color through direct financial support, and…
- Episode 150: Uplifting Black Men
June is an interesting month for mental health! It is both Pride Month as well as the month of Juneteenth. The theme of emancipation runs through the month —i.e. emancipation from trauma, emancipation from stigma, emancipation from lonelin…
- Episode 149: Juneteenth and Mental Emancipation
On today’s Into the Fold we’re talking about Juneteenth, the federal holiday on June 19th that commemorates the day in 1865 that the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect in Texas. Also known as Emancipation Day, it's also an opportun…
- Episode 148: In Tune: Music Therapy for Kids
Today on Into the Fold we’re talking about music therapy as a uniquely powerful way to help kids with their mental health, including for those dealing with traumatic experiences such as parental incarceration. Our guests are Cynthia Smith,…
- Episode 147: Some More Good News in Public Policy
Just last month, for Episode 146, we took a look at some recent successes in public policy by one of our grantee partners, Texas Harm Reduction Alliance. In that episode and in many others we’ve tried to get across that not only is the pol…
- Episode #146 Some Good News in Public Policy
On April 6, 2023 Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced a $10 million fentanyl awareness campaign. This will include the Texas Division of Emergency Management delivering a total of 20,000 doses of the overdose-reversing medication, naloxone, mo…
- Episode 145: Social Work in a Time of Division
With March being Social Work Month, we thought it worth exploring an increasingly urgent issue within social work: the challenges of doing ethical social work practice in a politically divided time like ours. In Texas, this is especially t…
- Episode 144: Teaching in a Time of Division
Public school teaching has never been easy, but the willingness of some lawmakers to crack down on what is taught is unprecedented in recent memory. In Texas, there are signs that lawmakers are ready to follow in the footsteps of Florida,…
- Episode 143: Black History, the Hogg Foundation, and the Red Scare in Texas
The Hogg Foundation, past and present, wants to know more about the people and communities it aims to impact through its work. But during the 1950's this desire for greater knowledge ran headlong into the social and political climate of th…
- Episode 142: Empowering Girls in 2023
Girls Empowerment Network seeks to “ignite the power in girls by teaching them the skills to thrive and believe in their ability to be unstoppable.” Ana O’Quin is a newly hired policy fellow for Girls Empowerment Network. On this episode s…
- Episode 141: Legislative Preview 2023
The 88th session of the Texas Legislature kicks off in January. In a time of increasing polarization, mental health stands apart as an issue that lends itself to bipartisan cooperation. But will that be as true in 2023? What can we expect…
- Episode 140: What Happened to You? Part III: Moral Injury
In our What Happened to You? series, we are looking at trauma, at both the individual and community level. COVID-19 has been a generational trauma, affecting children, families, communities, and whole societies. Health care workers have be…
- Episode 139: What Happened to You, Part II: Why We Talk About It
It’s hard to miss the multitude of public conversations about personal trauma taking place these days. Once a very privately held concern, discussing Discussing personal trauma and its long-term impact has become markedly less stigmatized.…