Podcast Summary: “Being OK with Not Being OK”: Destigmatizing Mental Health for Health Care Workers

Advancing Health — American Hospital Association
Date: September 17, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode focuses on destigmatizing mental health for healthcare workers, highlighting the urgent need to normalize seeking support and the organizational and systemic changes required to improve access to mental health care in healthcare settings. Host Rebecca Chicky is joined by Corey Feist (CEO & co-founder, Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes Foundation) and Tiffany Little, RN (Director of Cultural Integration, Centra Health), to discuss collaborative initiatives that break down barriers to mental health care, share successful frameworks, and emphasize creating a culture where being “not okay” is accepted and supported.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Dr. Lorna Breen Foundation: Mission and Origins

• Founded in 2020 after Dr. Lorna Breen, a respected emergency physician, died by suicide during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Mission: Support the well-being and job satisfaction of all health workers in the U.S., and foster a culture where seeking mental health care is seen as a sign of strength.
• Quote (Corey Feist, 01:20):
  “Our mission is to support the well-being and job satisfaction of all health workers in the United States. We envision a world where seeking mental health care is viewed as a sign of strength for our healthcare workers.”

2. The ‘All In: Caring for Caregivers’ Coalition

• Collaboration between the Dr. Lorna Breen Foundation, AHA, and other partners to tackle mental health stigma and access.
• Three Phases:
  1. Remove mental health access barriers
  2. Educate healthcare leaders on system- and individual-level well-being
  3. Facilitate a year-long learning collaborative among multidisciplinary hospital teams.
• Transparent Approach: Sharing best practices and progress to reassure the workforce that real change is occurring.
• Quote (Corey Feist, 02:35):
  "One of our primary goals at the Lorna Breen foundation was to bring together health care organizations in an interdisciplinary way to wrap our arms around the mental health and well being of our workforce."

3. Barriers to Mental Health Access in Healthcare

• Persistent professional and personal barriers: particularly invasive licensing and credentialing questions about mental health history.

• Fear of losing credentials deters clinicians from seeking help—a key contributor to suicide and poor well-being.

• Impact: 1.5 million health workers now benefit from more appropriate credentialing processes, thanks to advocacy and technical support from the foundation.

• Quote (Corey Feist, 04:27):
  "I was completely unaware of the stigma as well as the professional barriers and really potentially penalties that healthcare professionals in the United States have... These mostly appear in the form of overly invasive and really inappropriate questions."

• Quote (Corey Feist, 06:03):
  "The first [driver of suicide among health workers]... is this concern around the loss of license and credentials associated with the stigma for mental health care."

4. Driving Regional, Systemic Change: The Caring for State Caregivers Initiatives

• “Caring for Virginia's Caregivers” and similar efforts in other states take healthcare organizations through practical steps:
  • Addressing mental health access barriers
  • Educating multidisciplinary teams
  • Implementing operational initiatives to reduce burnout
• Federal Support:
  • The Dr. Lorna Breen Healthcare Provider Protection Act led to guides and learning collaboratives under CDC leadership.
• Quote (Corey Feist, 07:17):
  "Caring for Virginia's caregivers... are all efforts for us to take organizations through the phases of work from the Impact Wellbeing Guide... and become educated about the solutions and then finally culminate in a learning collaborative focused on an operational initiative that drives burnout."

5. The Centra Health Experience: From Stigma to Support

• Motivation: Recognized that well-being isn’t a “nicety” but an organizational necessity, especially after seeing the pandemic’s toll.

• Challenges Faced by Providers: High rates of depression, suicidal ideation, and substance use among healthcare workers—rarely matched by adequate organizational support.

• Implementation: Sought tools and frameworks (like those from the Lorna Breen Foundation) to change the culture and provide real resources and safe channels for support.

• Quote (Tiffany Little, 09:22):
  "We really need to find avenues that we could help support our healthcare team members, not only address their own well being so that they can carry that forward, but also not place calluses where we should have compassion because we were facing a compassion crisis."

• Leadership Buy-In: Crucial support from the C-suite, with concrete efforts to improve nurse well-being leading to better retention, engagement, and patient experience.

• Quote (Tiffany Little, 11:53):
  "Our CNIO... led this effort to make sure that our nurses were healthy and well. Because... we are hemorrhaging new nurses at a rate of 1 in 3 in their first year leaving the profession altogether. So what can we do to support that work of us being healthy and well and really figure out what those drivers are?"

6. Organizational Impact and ROI

• Tangible Outcomes:
  • Improved staff retention and engagement
  • Better patient experience and quality scores
  • More clinicians choosing to stay in environments where they feel supported
  • Direct financial savings by reducing turnover
• Workplace Civility: Not only a well-being issue but an economic one—workplace incivility costs the U.S. $2 billion/day (SHRM, cited by Tiffany Little, 13:40).
• Quote (Tiffany Little, 13:40):
  "It's a necessity, it's not a nicety... If you aren't healthy and, well, you aren't engaging in all those things that we need to engage in because we are stronger together if we're working towards things like recreating healthcare and making it accessible to everyone."

7. Destigmatizing Not Being Okay

• Central message: It is “OK to not be OK.” Removing cultural, legal, and organizational barriers empowers health workers to seek help without fear of retribution or career harm.
• Quote (Tiffany Little, 10:55):
  "Being okay with being not okay. You know, it's okay for us not to come out of a situation at work and feel not okay about it. We have to be able to have those avenues."

Memorable Quotes & Timestamps

• Corey Feist (01:20): “We envision a world where citizens seeking mental health care is viewed as a sign of strength for our healthcare workers.”
• Corey Feist (04:27): “These mostly appear in the form of overly invasive and really inappropriate questions that clinicians are asked about whether they've ever been diagnosed or treated for mental illness, whether they've gone to therapy.”
• Tiffany Little (09:22): “We really need to find avenues that we could help support our healthcare team members, not only address their own well being so that they can carry that forward, but also not place calluses where we should have compassion because we were facing a compassion crisis, right?”
• Tiffany Little (10:55): “It's okay for us not to come out of a situation at work and feel not okay about it. We have to be able to have those avenues.”
• Tiffany Little (13:40): “It's a necessity, it's not a nicety... If you aren't healthy and, well, you aren't engaging in all those things that we need to engage in because we are stronger together..."

Key Timestamps for Reference

• 01:16 – Lorna Breen Foundation mission and vision (Corey Feist)
• 02:15 – Description of the 'All In: Caring for Caregivers' coalition (Corey Feist)
• 04:18 – Deep dive on credentialing/licensing barriers and real-world impact (Corey Feist)
• 06:03 – Suicide drivers among healthcare workers and AHA’s suicide prevention guide (Corey Feist)
• 07:17 – Launch and operation of state-level caregiver initiatives (Corey Feist)
• 08:48 – Centra Health’s motives and starting point (Tiffany Little)
• 11:53 – Leadership support and measurable retention impact at Centra (Tiffany Little)
• 13:40 – The necessity of wellbeing and broader workplace impacts (Tiffany Little)

Takeaways

• Stigma and legal/professional risk around mental health remain significant barriers for healthcare workers; changing policy and culture is key.
• Collaborative, cross-disciplinary efforts (like All In: Caring for Caregivers) are moving the needle, but ongoing education, leadership support, and transparency are crucial.
• Well-being is foundational—improving staff mental health improves retention, reduces costs, and enhances patient care.
• The core message resonates: Healthcare organizations must create safe spaces where “it’s OK not to be OK,” and staff are supported without fear.

For further information and organizational resources, visit the Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes’ Foundation website.