EOT 327 - Deborah Granick

Eye on the Triangle

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Lise Nox 0:00

The views and opinions expressed during Eye on the Triangle do not represent WKNC or students media.

Lise Nox 0:11

Hi, this is Lise Nox and you're listening to Eye on the Triangle. In today's episode, I had the chance to talk with Deborah Granik, a mental health professional and more precisely a licensed social worker and a psychiatrist nurse practitioner working for Monarch. In a few words Monarch is a North Carolina statewide provider of comprehensive specialty mental health and human services. I'm personally really invested in making mental health matters less taboo. I love having open discussions regarding mental health struggles. So I was really grateful to be able to have this conversation with Debbie. In this episode, we talked about the mental health struggles that the Covid-19 pandemic brought up like work life balance, or how to deal with personal life issues and collective grief at the same time, or maintaining healthy relationships at a distance or setting boundaries. And a lot of other really interesting things. Before we get to the episode, I just like to say if you're a student at NC State University, and you're struggling with mental health in any way, you can always reach out to NC State's Counseling Center to set up an appointment. No matter who you are, where you are, you're not alone. And you can always ask for help, it does get better. And it starts with breaking the silence talking about it and reaching out for help. That being said, enjoy this episode. Yeah, thank you so much for being on the show.

Debbie Granick 1:23
My pleasure.

Lise Nox 1:24
Really glad you're here today. I just figured that with the pandemic and everything that we've been going through as a collective for the past year and 2021, there has been so many issues related to mental health that have just, you know, been brought up and being

Debbie Granick 1:39
Yes.

Lise Nox 1:39
Finally discussed for the first time in a very long time because people have been kind of ignoring all those things related to mental health because you know, when we're talking about like work life balance and burnout or boundaries with the people you live with, or you know, writing messages elation, or depression, anxiety, it's like, Yes, all the things that people live with on a daily basis, and they never do anything to actually take care of your mental health,

Debbie Granick 2:01
Right and without a pandemic, there's so many natural distractions from all those things, you go out, you go to a bar, you go to friends houses, like all these, you go to the gym. And so I agree, I think the pandemic brought some things up for people, but it also for people who maybe always have those things I get maybe maybe created new mental health issues, or it just exposed mental health concerns that were already there because people couldn't get away from them or solve them for themselves in the way that they usually do.

Lise Nox 2:30
Yeah. And I've had personally my own mother had to take a few days off work because she was being completely overworked. And she had she was like diagnosed with burnout. Like she right out. Because there was this idea that since when you're like you're at home, 24 seven people just assume you're available 24/7

Debbie Granick 2:47
That's right,

Lise Nox 2:48
To do you whatever they want you to do and she was never really able to say no, or set, you know, any healthy boundaries around where she thought she was supposed to do it all and just like, get everything done as quickly as possible. Because I have time I'm home so I can do everything they asked me to do. I feel like this has been one of the most challenging years for everyone in terms of work life balance, you know, whether we're talking people working from home, or students like me having online class.

Debbie Granick 3:13
Right, I agree. And you know, when like, for class, when things are tape recorded, you're like, oh, I'll watch it tonight. I don't want to do it from one to three, like when you would have during your normal class time. But you know what, at night, you don't realize you actually kind of treasure that time at night to hang out and watch Netflix or whatever. And so it's the same I think with the work life balance. I think a lot of people when you're at a job place and you leave at 6pm, there's a natural, naturally built in to kind of protect your home time, but at home at two o'clock, you're like I'm sick of working, I'll just do it later. And then that burnout happens because there's no none of those boundaries.

Lise Nox 3:45
Yeah, your personal life and your work life and every thing else in your life is completely like the strike

Debbie Granick 3:52
It melds

Lise Nox 3:53
Yeah, everything is blurred out because there's no difference between the 2. So you're a licensed clinical social worker, and a psychiatric nurse practitioner at Monarch.

Debbie Granick 4:02
So my job consists of talking to people who are struggling with mental health in some capacity. And for the most part using medications, my role is to help them with the medication part of their mental health to find things that help them feel better. I integrate in some counseling and we always stress the non pharmacological approaches to helping people feel better as well. You know, all those normal good health things. So I'm kind of in a combined role focusing mostly on the medication part, but also trying to integrate in some some counseling

Lise Nox 4:35
Did you have to go from seeing your patients in real life to having consultations over zoom?

Debbie Granick 4:42
I did. I very abruptly went from 100% of my client visits being in person to 100% of them being via telehealth, and it was a very quick transition. I think the biggest challenge at first was technology both for us but also for our patients and monarch serves a population that's very mixed demographically and financially. And many people don't have access to computers or great Wi Fi or, you know, phones with video capacity. And so I think for lower income people, that transition was even harder, I think, to telehealth, we take for granted that when we say telehealth, that everyone can sit in a quiet place and have a visit. You know, that was another thing actually, is that everyone's at home. So you've got a mom that you're asking to talk about her depression in front of her 14 year old daughter or eating disorder or her drinking problem. And that also posed a tremendous number of problems. It's just privacy. You know, I talked to a lot of people in their cars.

Lise Nox 5:38
Oh, wow.

Debbie Granick 5:40
Yeah,

Lise Nox 5:41
That's a solution. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I never really thought about this thing of, you know, having difficulty accessing the right technology because I just have a laptop, I have earphones or whatever,

Debbie Granick 5:51
Right? It's a very kind of middle upper middle class assumption that you can make that seamless transition to telehealth.

Lise Nox 5:58
So this was hard for your patients. But what was it like for you? So how did you approach your patients differently over zoom or like through computer?

Debbie Granick 6:06
I just missed that physical connection, seeing someone a few feet in front of me. And I think it makes empathy easier when you're together and you're looking at some...