Snap Out of It! The Mental Illness in the Workplace Podcast with Natasha Tracy Natasha Tracy Media

Successful corporate mental health speaker Mike Veny is this week’s guest on Snap Out of It! The Mental Illness in the Workplace Podcast with Natasha Tracy. Mike is now a Certified Corporate Wellness Specialist®, but just five years ago, Mike was suffering from a mental health breakdown thanks to depression and anxiety. While now, Mike talks to corporations about mental wellness for their employees, only a few years ago, it was showing them, personally, what it was like when that isn’t taken care of. This video podcast conversation revolves around that mental breakdown and around Mike’s current thoughts about mental illness in the workplace.

After a Mental Health Breakdown

Mike and I discuss things like:


What having a mental health breakdown in your workplace is like
How Mike came back from a mental health breakdown
How Mike became a successful mental health speaker
Mike’s thoughts on mental illness in the workplace today

Whether you want to understand what mental illness in the workplace really looks like, are a fan of Mike’s, or want to protect your employee’s wellbeing at work, this podcast episode is for you.

Find the transcript and more at http://snapoutofitpodcast.com

Mike Veny’s Bio

Mike Veny‘s path to becoming a speaker became evident at an early age. He convinced the staff at psychiatric hospitals to discharge him three times during his childhood. In addition to being hospitalized as a child, he was expelled from three schools, attempted suicide, and was medicated in an effort to reduce his emotional instability and behavioral outbursts.

By the fifth grade, Mike was put in a special education class. Aside from getting more individualized attention from the teacher, he learned that pencil erasers make great sounds when tapped on a desk. He had no idea that drumming would become his career or his path to recovery.

As an adult, Mike spent many years facilitating drum workshops for children with special needs, teaching them to channel their energy by banging a drum while also learning how to listen, focus, work together and succeed through teamwork. The project was such a hit that he continued to expand his drumming program, first to adults in recovery and eventually into the corporate setting.

As a Certified Corporate Wellness Specialist®, Mike’s presentations move past simply educating an audience to provide them with actionable steps they can take to change their lives and work environments. His reputation as a dynamic speaker provides confidence and peace of mind for meeting planners everywhere.

The mission of his company, Mike Veny, Inc., is to support you in receiving the gift of emotional wellness through unique learning experiences designed to empower your personal and professional growth. The International Association for Continuing Education and Training has awarded his company the prestigious Accredited Provider accreditation for its continuing education programs.

Cara McNulty is a population health scientist and the President, Behavioral Health and Employee Assistance Programs at Aetna, a CVS Health Company. She’s also a woman who has experienced mental illness. This week, Snap Out of It! The Mental Illness in the Workplace Podcast with Natasha Tracy is talking with Cara McNulty about her own experience with mental illness, amplifying her passion for helping others with mental illness. We’re also going to be talking about what place an employer should have when dealing with employees with mental illness and how voices with mental illness are shamed and silenced.

Helping People with Mental Illness at Work

We’re going to be discussing things like:


Cara’s personal experience of mental illness
Passion for helping people with mental illness at work
Why employers should support people with mental illness
What employers should be doing to help people with mental illness
Changing the silencing and shaming of those with mental illness

Whether you are in human resources, a c-suite executive, or simply want to ensure that people with mental illness get what they need at work, you don’t want to miss this episode.

For more information and the transcript, go to http://snapoutofitpodcast.com

Cara McNulty's Bio

Cara McNulty, DPA, is President of Behavioral Health and Employee Assistance Programs at CVS Health, a leading provider of mental health and employee assistance program (EAP) solutions to members and communities around the globe. She oversees a national team that spearheads the development of CVS Health and Aetna’s programs, products, and capabilities designed to offer individuals easy access to quality, innovative treatments and meet people wherever they are along the continuum of mental wellbeing.

Cara is a highly-regarded executive leader and population health scientist whose success in driving population wellbeing outcomes spans the employer, government, payer/provider, start-up, and education sectors. She is known for her ability to integrate confirmed health science into practical business models that drive measurable outcomes.

Focused on the increased need for mental wellbeing resources exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, Cara leads CVS Health’s strategy to expand mental health services and resources. Most recently, this included Aetna offering members cost-sharing waivers for mental and behavioral health telemedicine visits at the onset of the pandemic, as well as opening Aetna’s Resources For Living crisis and health support lines to all consumers regardless of health plan.

Cara previously served as the North American leader of Integrated Wellbeing for Willis Towers Watson. Her responsibilities included advising clients on strategies focusing on employee engagement, clinical outcomes, and productivity. She sat on the company’s Health and Benefits Specialty Practice Leadership team and focused on integrated wellbeing, intellectual capital, and service development across physical, emotional, financial, and social dimensions.

As the former Head of Population Health, Team Member Wellbeing and Guest Wellness for Target Corporation, she led efforts to implement the company’s health agenda. She developed strategies that improved all team members’ health, driving value and business growth while decreasing health care expenditures.

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Curious about the workplace implications of hiring and managing people with mental illness? This week's episode is for you.

This week, Snap Out of It! The Mental Illness in the Workplace Podcast with Natasha Tracy is talking to Gary Koplin, Founder, and President at HealthyPlace.com, a large consumer mental health site. Gary has a unique perspective as he specifically hires and manages people with mental illness. He’s worked with people who have had disorders from social phobia to bipolar disorder, from depression to dissociative identity disorder, and everything in between. If anyone knows the ramifications of mental illness in the workplace, it’s Gary.

Hiring and Managing People with Mental Illness

We discuss topics like:


Misconceptions about hiring and managing people with mental illness
How to hire people with mental illness
The differences when managing people with mental illness
The benefits of hiring people with mental illness

And so much more.

Whether you are in human resources, manage a business, or simply want to ensure diversity in the workplace, you don’t want to miss this episode.

For more about this podcast and transcripts, go to http://snapoutofitpodcast.com

About Gary Koplin

Gary Koplin is the Founder and President of HealthyPlace.com, a large consumer mental health website that provides trusted information and support to those with mental health conditions and their loved ones. He started the company in 2000 when a vast majority of people with mental illness were still in hiding, and there was a great deal of shame and stigma surrounding mental illness.  Since that time, tens of millions of people have come to HealthyPlace to better understand their condition and interact with the site through its dozens of bloggers, videos, and social media. As part of his personal mission to help those with mental illness, everyone who works at and for  HealthyPlace lives with a mental health condition, such as bipolar disorder, major depression, PTSD, schizophrenia, and anorexia.  

Gary has a Journalism degree from the University of Maryland. After graduation, he was a radio and television news reporter and anchor in various markets, including New York City. While there, he went to Iona College for business classes. Gary is a serial entrepreneur and has started and run four successful businesses over the last 35 years. He mentors other young entrepreneurs and has served on the board of several community organizations.

Note: There is one profane word in the episode.

Snap Out of It! The Mental Illness in the Workplace Podcast with Natasha Tracy is talking to lawyer Julia Stephanides (@legally.holistic on Instagram). She’s schooling us on the rights people with mental illness have at work and how you can use those rights to better navigate working with a mental illness.  

Learn things like:  


Are all mental illnesses really considered disabilities? 
Can an employer not promote you because of your mental illness? 
What do you do if you think your employer is discriminating against you because of your mental illness? 
Do employers have to accommodate your needs because of a mental illness? 
What is a “reasonable accommodation” at work for a person with a mental illness? 
Do you have a right to paid medical leave? 

All these questions and more are addressed by Julia. Plus, we're answering your questions. 

See snapoutofitpodcast.com for the transcript.

About Julia Stephanides  

A graduate of Berkeley Law School, Julia Stephanides practiced corporate law for Silicon Valley startups before becoming an employment lawyer. She has represented workers facing discrimination, harassment, and other wrongful employment practices, with a focus on women’s rights cases. As part of this work, she represented many people with health issues. She counseled and advocated for clients who were denied medical leave or retaliated against for taking it, and clients who needed accommodations in the workplace. Now, she works for a labor union in Los Angeles.  

For most of her career, Julia has had health issues of her own. Her experiences in the conventional medical system were challenging and left her without sufficient support, so she dug into the research and various healing modalities and created her own roadmap for folks with health challenges. The first step on this roadmap is advocacy–knowing your rights and becoming empowered to stand up for yourself at work, at home, and with your doctors. The roadmap also includes things like eating in a way that supports your body and mind, connecting with the right doctors, nervous system support, and community.  

This is how Julia’s consulting practice was born. Legally Holistic serves as a home base and navigation system for people facing health challenges. Feel free to follow along for free resources or reach out for personalized guidance: @legally.holistic and legallyholistic.com. 

Snap Out of It! The Mental Illness in the Workplace Podcast with Natasha Tracy is talking about attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and binge eating disorder (BED) at work with Jason Hamburg. Jason is the Vice President of Neuroscience at Takeda Canada Inc. Jason wasn’t diagnosed with a mental illness until he was 44 years old, and he can attest to the fact that while he dealt with his mental illnesses in his own ways, those illnesses definitely held him back. Jason calls these illnesses impulsivity and compulsivity illnesses, and the difference in experience before and after treatment was striking.

See snapoutofitpodcast.com for the transcript.

ADHD and Binge Eating in the Workplace 

Jason is talking to us about what happens to people with ADHD or binge eating in the workplace, the illnesses’ effects on a lifestyle overall, and his own experiences with binge eating and ADHD. This is a conversation chock full of expert knowledge and patient experience. You don’t want to miss it.

This week on Snap Out of It! The Mental Illness in the Workplace Podcast with Natasha Tracy, I'm talking with, well, me! I'm going to be sharing my own story of what it's like to work with a mental illness. I'm going to talk about mental illness stigma in the workplace and finally leaving the workplace because of mental illness. I'm also going to talk about some basic statistics about why mental illness in the workplace matters and answer any questions you may have.

Make sure you tune in live or submit your questions early so the conversation can be shaped by you! If you're curious about what people with mental illness go through in the workplace, this is the episode for you.

For the transcript, please see here.

About Host Natasha Tracy
Natasha Tracy lives with bipolar disorder and works as an advocate, speaker, writer, and podcast host. She previously worked in the technology sector as a program manager at a major software company. She studied and worked with bipolar disorder for more than a decade. Now, she has authored a book, is writing blogs, delivering keynotes, and winning awards. For more about Natasha, please see here.