The Buena Vida Podcast

Transforming Mental Health: Dale Cook on Digital Therapy and Learn to Live

• Lacy Wolff • Season 3 • Episode 14

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Explore the transformative world of mental health management with our guest Dale Cook, CEO and co-founder of Learn to Live. Dale shares his personal journey with cognitive behavioral therapy, which inspired him to create a platform that makes mental health support accessible to everyone, everywhere. Discover how Learn to Live is tackling the stigma associated with mental health and offering digital programs that bridge the gap for those who might not seek traditional therapy. From breaking geographical barriers to fostering a proactive approach to well-being, Dale's insights offer a fresh perspective on the future of mental health care.

Learn to Live’s growth story is one of innovation and impact. Dale reveals the strategic steps taken to develop this digital platform, initially targeting consumers directly to engage with millions who are underserved by conventional therapy. By creating engaging digital content and programs for depression, anxiety, and more, Learn to Live has reached millions of Americans, with an expansion on the horizon. Dale discusses the challenges and triumphs of building a mission-driven organization, highlighting how collaboration between clinicians and business experts has been key in transforming lives and expanding their reach.

The conversation doesn't stop there—Dale outlines how Learn to Live measures success and plans for future expansions. From simplifying access with memorable codes to launching new programs targeting trauma, OCD, and ADHD, the platform is committed to enhancing user experience and outcomes. By fostering innovation and a culture of well-being within organizations, Dale emphasizes the importance of mental health as part of a holistic approach to health. As we look toward 2025, Dale encourages listeners to prioritize their well-being and support platforms that democratize access to mental health resources.

Learn more about Learn to Live and how to join through the HealthSelect of Texas website.

Enroll today through the Learn to Live portal.  If prompted for a code, use TEXAS

Dale Cook:

Mental health is health, and I think part of the stigma is you hear the word mental health and you think of a problem versus just being healthy like we would with watching our weight or getting exercise. And so I think one lesson learned for us internally and in our service and encouragement to all of your listeners, is think proactively about your mental health. You don't have to be clinically depressed to get something really meaningful out of the depression program. You don't have to be anxious to get something out of a progressive muscle relaxation audio.

Lacy Wolff:

Hi everyone and welcome back to the ERS Walk Talk podcast. I'm your host, lacey Wolfe. In today's episode, which will be the final episode for 2024, I am joined by Dale Cook, the CEO and co-founder of Learn to Live. This innovative platform is helping thousands of people manage their mental health through evidence-based online programs and tools. As we wrap up the year, I am excited to share this meaningful conversation where we dive into what inspired the creation of Learn to Live, how it works and the impact it's having on lives all over the country. So lace up your walking shoes one more time with me and let's explore how small, intentional steps can make a big difference in our mental health. All right, dale Cook, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for being a guest on the ERS Walk Talk podcast.

Dale Cook:

Well, thank you, Lacey. It's a pleasure to be here.

Lacy Wolff:

I was wanting to just start with having you talk a little bit about yourself. Can you share with our listeners where you come from, where you are today and what led you into the mental health care space?

Dale Cook:

and what led you into the mental health care space. I'm happy to do so. I think I mean that's a big question where I come from, where I am, why I'm here, but I'm based in Minneapolis, minnesota. I spent most of my formative years actually in Latin America, which was an amazing experience and really, I think, set the tone for kind of who I am and how I think about the choices I make in life, including where I spend my time, which a lion's share of that right now is learn to live. And I think, in terms of background and as we talk about learn to live and mental health today, you know there's probably two dimensions I think about.

Dale Cook:

On the personal front, I remember back in college I loved college, it was an amazing experience. I was a little over-involved and so I was pretty stressed and I didn't realize I was getting really anxious and so I couldn't sleep and I hadn't really heard about mental health or insomnia. And I was one of the lucky few who was able to go see a therapist on campus who was practicing cognitive behavioral therapy, which is a great CBT protocol, and I learned that I was actually just anxious because I was overextended and I took a couple sessions and the light bulb came on for me and started sleeping like a baby, and that was my kind of early mental health experience. I was really really fortunate to get that kind of help and so fast forward to what I'm doing now and sort of who I am and what this brings us to is, you know, founding, learn to Live, co-founding, learn to Live for me was really an opportunity to have impact, I think, for me in my life that's what I look for and, as I'm sure you know and I'm sure your listeners know, you know, mental health in the United States has really been a crisis for many years, for many decades.

Dale Cook:

It's only gotten worse with COVID and so, when we think about all of those problems and now even the research coming out about increased depression, anxiety, reduced resilience in our youth, all of the data coming out about my generation, gen X and nearby generations, the opportunity to address these issues in a different way, as you probably know, our traditional model, which is really counselors, therapists, psychologists, is troubled in that there's a limited supply, right, there's a really high need for a lot of those services and a really limited supply of those services.

Dale Cook:

In fact, over half the counties in the United States do not have a single mental health practitioner in them, and so we have a lot of people needing a lot of services, but not a lot of people able to provide traditional services either in person or virtually, and so it really demanded something different. And so it really demanded something different, and that was where Learn to Live was born about 12 years ago to provide a different kind of service, actually an array of services that were still clinically grounded, very, very effective, but could really be taken and engaged by anyone, anytime, anywhere. And that was really the exciting moment for me was to engage and start a company like that and have that kind of impact.

Lacy Wolff:

It's incredible and I love hearing your story and that you actually sought mental health care in college, which I think says a lot about you as a person, and then we're really interested in replicating or creating a program that would be scalable to reach so many people.

Lacy Wolff:

I'm really proud that we are able to offer Learn to Live to our health plan participants. I think it's an amazing tool and resource for folks, because I think, especially in Texas, we're a huge state and we have so many rural communities where there's not good access and also, I think, with the stigma, there's a lot of people who don't necessarily feel comfortable talking to somebody. So being able to access this kind of care from anywhere is is truly a gift I think that we can give to our health plan participants. So thank you for that, I'm hoping. Next, maybe you could just kind of describe the the program, because a lot of people because it is very new for us we just launched this in September a lot of people still don't know what it is. Can you explain the experience for like from the user experience, what it is like to go in and participate in the program?

Dale Cook:

I'd be happy to do that and, by the way, you know, you mentioned the word stigma and I think that's one of the biggest barriers that we all face today and I was fortunate in college, as you mentioned, to have people around me who helped really reduce that stigma, and that's one truly learn to live, I think, does transform the traditional care delivery model of mental health care services, in that we're able to address these mental health care needs really high acuity, low acuity, really at scale and again reach people where they are. You talk about, you know the, the, the, the kind of the crisis of access in Texas, and we'll probably talk about that a little bit more. But at our core, we provide these comprehensive, self-directed digital cognitive behavioral therapy programs that have extensive services and tools that individuals can use. So think about a comprehensive depression program or insomnia, or substance use or anxiety or stress. But it's not just these self-directed programs. There's other services. We have clinician coaches on staff 24-7. And so our users, our members, can meet with coaches via text, email and phone as much as they need to do that, which really our coaches kind of encourage people to stay engaged in the program, but they also then can help our members find other services. So if someone engages with us who actually determines that in fact they need to see a therapist or maybe a psychiatrist, our team can help them find that.

Dale Cook:

So another service we provide is this critical navigation service, and we can even manage crises. It doesn't happen a lot, but if someone is in crisis, we're tapped into all the local resources that are required to address that appropriately from a clinical standpoint, from a safety standpoint, and so our goal is to really scale that out and enable someone to address what we would call the probably the seven biggest barriers, you know. So that's that stigma. Another one is education. A lot of us don't always know what we're suffering from, or if it's a mental health problem or something else. A third is quality. So are we finding quality care that can actually move the needle for us? Another is stigma. I mentioned that earlier. Another is privacy and another is cost, and so we specifically address each of those in different ways, which I'm happy to talk about too, but maybe I'll pause there, so my answer doesn't get too long for you.

Lacy Wolff:

That's great, yeah, and I was thinking it would be also really good to have you define cognitive behavioral therapy and just talk a little bit about what that is for people who don't know.

Dale Cook:

Happy to do so. So cognitive behavioral therapy is really one of two primary clinical ways of addressing mental health we're all probably most familiar with or you might think, is that the counseling format, which has been around for over 100 years. So that's kind of Freudian psychology of talking about your past, maybe experiences that inform your present or your future, and while that can be helpful to some, really over the last 60 or 70 years cognitive behavioral therapy has come to the forefront as the most evidence-based form of mental health care and really what that's doing is saying it's considering how we interpret the things in our lives mentally, so how we kind of filter those in through our minds, and then how that in turn drives our emotions. So if I'm a socially anxious person and I'm out to eat, I might be incorrectly thinking that the individuals at the table nearby are laughing they're laughing and they seem to be having a good time and that they're making fun of me and that's making me anxious, when in fact they don't even notice me. But I'm not realizing that and so my mental frame is changing that into an anxious set of emotions that drive my social anxiety, and so what CBT does is really unpack that process, kind of puts an interruption in that process.

Dale Cook:

And the exciting thing about even digital CBT programs is that it's very structured. Think of it as homework, think of it as practice, a lot of practice on breaking moments down. And so here you have now, you know, with learn to live on your phone you can take that moment and record something in your homework and break up that activity and actually slow down that process. And over time then you become just very good at breaking up that process so that you don't have those anxious thoughts. And so CBT again precedes learn to live by many years. In fact, digital CBT precedes learn to live. It used to be on a CD-ROM about 25 years ago. It's research on digitally delivered CBT that shows that it's clinically as effective as face-to-face CBT.

Lacy Wolff:

That's amazing. You just have to have the desire and willingness to do it right. I mean, I guess that's the thing is having that motivation. And one of the things I think I've been going through the resiliency course through Learn to live I love, like the exercise that I did the other day was so great because, like you said, it's it teaches you kind of the concept, but then you go in and you actually apply it to a moment in your own life and that's powerful. I think that's really powerful as a participant because you you start to recognize oh, that's a pattern of thinking that I have and then that can help you in all the other areas of life, which is a game changer. So hopefully that you can continue to use that in all those different experiences. The sessions are pretty short, right, they're not overwhelmingly long. That's another thing that I think is great for people to kind of know about Learn to Live, that you don't have to, you know, sit down for an hour a day. How long do you try to keep your sessions?

Dale Cook:

Well, you're exactly right, I think you know the goal is to you know, technically speaking, I think each program has eight lessons and each of the lessons is about 45 minutes of seat time if you sat down for the whole thing. But, lacey, you're exactly right the goal is to enable each of us to take something significant and meaningful and actionable away from a lesson every five or six minutes. So if you think about the average time that any of us spends on, let's say, an app except maybe for social media, it's five to 10 minutes. And so the goal here is to say you know, what is something that Lacey or Dale can learn about their depression or their anxiety that they can then apply in their real life in such a way that really moves the needle for them and makes them say you know what? That was really helpful, I want to go back and do something again, you know. And so part of that is really the magic of building, I think, the right kind of digital content to keep people coming back. But that's another reason why we love what we do is that you know, we believe we're delivering something, a powerful positive force, for reasons, you know, for good reasons for people to be checking their phone once in a while to be checking in with these programs, and then the tools that they do in between, the programs that they can do on devices. They can print them out and do them old school if they want to do that.

Dale Cook:

But the idea there is again to have these quick hit moments, and whether that's in the program or also with other tools, we have something called Quick Breaks that we recently launched.

Dale Cook:

So these are, you know, two to four minute video vignettes about any number of things. It could be grief, it could be anxiety, it could be public speaking, it could be resilience. So that's the other goal with those tools is, you know, if you're not three lessons deep in the depression program, that's okay. If you'd rather take a quick video or listen to an audio on progressive muscle relaxation or meditation, we want to make that really, really easy for you, because we know that it's not a one-size-fits-all anywhere in healthcare. But for us, especially in mental healthcare, our mutual experience of maybe the same quote-unquote mental health problem could be very different, and what you need versus what I need is also very different, and so part of our well learned to live is to provide an array of services immediately accessible, of course, at no cost, to employees and family members, and retirees in this case, so that you can access at any time in privacy, with none of those barriers.

Lacy Wolff:

It's amazing. Can you share a little bit about the story of building? Learn to Live. I know this must not have been an easy feat to get to where you are today. There's always roadblocks, I think, when you're trying to build something, and it can be challenging. So how did you build this scalable mental health product?

Dale Cook:

Well, that's almost asked as a fellow entrepreneur and I don't know if you are one, lacey, but certainly it sounds like you understand what can be sometimes really tough about building any kind of organization, especially one that's very mission-based and focused. Morfitt and I were really fortunate to connect on this issue. You know he's a clinician. He's highly respected in his field, an experienced researcher, so he's really the what I call the lightning in a bottle when it comes to the power of what we can deliver. What I brought was kind of the business experience, the background, to say, okay, how do we take this really beautiful content that's clinically based, that's research based, and make it really consumable in a way that I would want to use it or that my teenage son would want to use? And then how do we create a business around that so that, you know, we can keep the lights on and we can pay for really good employees who do really good work. And how can we scale that out? You know, and so fast forward, 12 years in, we're scaled out to 36 million Americans. You know, we work with health plans and universities and employers and pharmacy benefit managers, and so we're blessed and fortunate to have scaled out.

Dale Cook:

But to your point many, many times along the way, very difficult. Especially 10 years ago, this wasn't even really a category. No one really knew about digital CBT, where now it's a little bit more ubiquitous and certainly with COVID there's a lot of noise in the space, and so we were way ahead of that curve and so I think, probably figuring out how to build this, and in fact we went direct to consumer at the beginning intentionally. We always knew that at the end of the day, we wanted health plans or employers to pay for the service so that we could remove that cost access for users. But we believe that unless we could offer our services out on the internet and find people out there who are suffering so three out of four people in the US will never seek in-person or virtual therapy. So we have this large group and almost half the people in the United States will have a mental health problem at some point in their lives. So three out of four of half of the people in the United States will not seek traditional therapy.

Dale Cook:

And so our goal was at the beginning how do we find those people online? How do we get them to kind of walk through our digital doors, if you will and trust us and stay with us long enough to have a real change in their life and for us to measure that clinically. If we can't do that, then we really don't have any business going to an ERS or going to a health plan and saying, hey, if you're willing to pay for this service, we can really help people and really get them to engage. And so the first year and a half or so was direct to consumer only, which, as you probably know, is very difficult and it's expensive, but it is extremely valuable and really formed the DNA of our ability to go in and get 20, 30, 40% engagement of a population every year, which is very, very high when you think about traditional mental health services. So I'm not sure if that answered your question and just want to be clear.

Lacy Wolff:

You said 36 million people have access to Learn to Live right now.

Dale Cook:

That's right, and soon to be by November, it will be 47. So we're on the doorstep of another big collaboration that will be announced a little bit later this year.

Lacy Wolff:

That has to feel so good to know that you can help that many people. I cannot imagine. Do you have any advice for somebody like me who is in a role where I'm trying to support mental health of my workforce with your product? Do you have any kind of success stories for how to engage people?

Dale Cook:

We are happy to share. You know, I think, what our team would consider hard fought experiences and life lessons on. You know how to engage a group of individuals you know myself included from college who are really struggling and they really want to do something about it. But part of the struggle is a social struggle, and you know whether that's stigma or access or cost or concerns about privacy is is how do you engage someone who wants to be, you know, be different, wants to change, but is a little bit wary and rightfully so of the services that are out there? And so I think number one is meet people where they are.

Dale Cook:

So with your messaging when you reach out, you know, understand that someone who's struggling with something isn't going to respond to messaging that says, hey, lacey, go get them. You know you can do it. You know exclamation them, you can do it, Exclamation point. It's a different kind of message to somehow communicate to you that we understand what you're struggling with and we've been there. We have other members here in our community that have been there, that are there, and it's okay, it's a safe place to be. I think the second thing is making it really, really easy to access, and so when people come to our website, they have a code, so an ERS employee will have a code. It's really easy code to remember. They can log in. What's that?

Lacy Wolff:

It's Texas.

Dale Cook:

Exactly. I'm so glad you share the code. It's very, very easy to remember. They can immediately access all kinds of services. And the third thing I would say is making the education very easy.

Dale Cook:

So in the case of mental health, you know, the first thing someone sees is what we call a comprehensive assessment. What it really is is a shortened version of gold standard, what we call psychometric assessment. So you may have heard of a PHQ-9 for depression or a GAD-7 for anxiety, but it's about a five-minute assessment that you can take very quickly, but it's clinically very sound, where there are a lot of algorithms that sit underneath that that will then say to you Lacey, based on what you've entered, here's the program we think you should start with. You don't have to, you can choose a different program, but here's what we think you should do.

Dale Cook:

The last thing I would say is we're really selective about how often we communicate with you. So, even once you become a member, we're not sending you emails every day. We never sell our data. We never share our data externally. We never do ads.

Dale Cook:

We never do any of that, because we know that the trust we have to build with you is very, very important and we need you to want to keep coming back, and so one of the ways we can do that is strike a balance of when do we reach out to give you a little nudge and encourage you and when do we just leave you alone. Because also, people are on a different, everyone is at a different place of what we call change readiness. And so we measure that you might enroll in a program right away. On the first day you get the link you put in Texas, you enroll in the anxiety program, but then you may not really be ready to start and it may just sit dormant for a month and then you might just take off. And so we want to be careful about how much we're pushing versus encouraging, if that makes sense.

Lacy Wolff:

And I'm guessing you probably do research around that and at what cadence of communication works best for people.

Dale Cook:

We do so. We do our own research around that and then we also survey twice a year. That's voluntary, our members don't have to complete the survey, it's anonymous. But we get a lot of, as you might imagine, product experience, product feedback. We get mental health feedback, user experience feedback. So that informs a lot of what we do, and then a lot of it is informed by other clinical practice. So Dr Russ is also ina clinical practice and our coaches are all clinicians, so they all have clinical experience and so they've had a lot of experience in understanding optimal ways to communicate with people who might be suffering with something.

Lacy Wolff:

Okay, that's great. You talked a little bit earlier about when you were starting your program. You had to be able to show that it is impactful. How do you measure success today, and what kinds of impact are you looking for?

Dale Cook:

Well, we measure success in a number of ways, I think you know. First and foremost we think about sort of what are the clinical markers of success? So sort of those unassailable data points that any psychiatrist or therapist or clinician or researcher would say, clearly, based on this, someone's depression is decreasing, they are improving their mental health, and so that primary marker is what we call these clinical psychometric assessments. So, for example, in the depression program, if I enrolled I would take the PHQ-9, which is the gold standard nine questionnaire, nine question questionnaire for depression. We get a baseline measure and then I take it at the beginning of each of the subsequent seven lessons. That helps me see my own progress, but that also helps learn to live, understand. Is my score decreasing? So in this case a decrease is very good and on average across our entire population, our users for depression, for example, decreased by 29%, which is a very, very good clinical outcome. So even in psychiatric care that's good. So that's what you know. We have a number of clinical measures that really are at the tip of the spear. We have a number of clinical measures that really are at the tip of the spear. The other measures are self-reported. So is Lacey hitting the goals that she set for herself? Is she expressing and articulating that she's feeling better? Is she doing things? Is she maybe back at work or is she getting up sooner in the morning? Is she activating? Is she going for walks when she wasn't going for walks before? So there's a lot of self-reported measures that are just as legitimate. A little less black and white on the data, pure data side.

Dale Cook:

But that's the second thing, and then we have a few others. I think one is are users happy with their experience with our services? So, just like in any kind of consumer situation, do they like the app? Are they happy with the coaching? Do they like the other tools that we provide? But we don't stop there, I think.

Dale Cook:

The other pieces are things like are we moving people? For example, 46% of our users move from a clinical to a subclinical level in their levels of suffering, and so that's really meaningful when you start to think about not just their life being changed but driving costs out of the system. So, whether that's for ERS or for the health plans, or for employers, that's fewer visits to the ER, or maybe it's getting off a short or long-term disability or it's, you know, going to work more or being more present right when you're at work, and so those are also measurable outcomes that are really more on the business to business side but are also very important because everybody wins with that. When someone feels better, that's the most important thing, but then when an employer can reduce costs, they can use those saved funds for other things that can also benefit their community.

Lacy Wolff:

Yeah, that makes so much sense. Yeah, and helping someone's mental health helps everyone, essentially the employee, the family, all the way through. I love that you can measure the impact in that way, actually showing I mean 29,. Do you say 29% decrease in depression.

Dale Cook:

That's right. Yeah, just in depression, yep.

Lacy Wolff:

And can you run down for me just the list of the programs that are available, like the mental health conditions that people can seek help through your platform for?

Dale Cook:

We currently offer seven different programs and then we have another 11 in our roadmap, and I think that's important to know that was my next question.

Dale Cook:

Yeah, well, there we go. I just segued you. Yeah, that's perfect. But the current programs we have are and I'm saying these by memory, I don't have the list in front of me, so this is a good test for me with so much but we have programs for social anxiety, for what we call stress, anxiety and worry, or, clinically speaking, it's generalized anxiety, insomnia, substance use.

Dale Cook:

Let's see what am I missing? Resilience, panic and depression. Oh my goodness, we've been talking about that the most today. So that's the seven, and then early this next year we're going to launch our eighth, which is called trauma. So it's often, I think, people think of post-traumatic stress disorder, ptsd, which is part of the trauma set, if you will. But PTSD is really one part of a broader mental health problem, of trauma, and so I think our trauma program is going to be very impactful. And then we've got, you know, another 10 after that that are slated to come out, about two a year. So we're really excited about getting those out, and that doesn't include all of the other tools that sit around that. So we have, you know, these quick breaks that are on grief or on, you know, other problem sets that maybe we don't have an eight lesson program for yet, but are very specifically targeted for different issues that people might be struggling with in the moment.

Lacy Wolff:

Wow, I can't wait to see the evolution of this program. It sounds like you've got some great stuff coming. Just today we had a, or yesterday we had a webinar with your team, with our plan participants, and people are asking do you have a program for OCD, Do you have a program for various things? And so it's good to kind of know for us what is in that roadmap so we can say no, not yet, but it will be coming. So I love that you're continuing to innovate and think about how to make things more accessible for folks.

Dale Cook:

And I would add, Lacey, if I may, on that front, that you're exactly right While OCD, ADHD, conflict resolution which people often don't really think about anger management, while these are on the roadmap, the other thing that's important to note is, again, we have tools that are really focused around almost all of these already that people can access, really focused around almost all of these already that people can access. So, if it's a, we do a lot of what we call clinical webinars so that's hosted by our clinicians that are all CBT based, that the community can access at any time they can. They're the first time we do them. They're live and then they're recorded and then they can access them either synchronously or asynchronously, but they can address, they can get into these other issues that may not yet have a full-blown program. So for OCD or ADHD, they can just look through our site and they can see where those tools are, which is important to them.

Lacy Wolff:

That's great. So I wanted to ask you as a CEO and leader, I'm sure and being so aware of what's going on in the mental health space how do you foster a culture of health and wellbeing for your employees, and do you have any advice for leaders that are trying to do that?

Dale Cook:

I'm actually really glad you asked this question because I think we as a team at Learn to Live, we try to intentionally discuss this weekly if we can, because I think when you're a part of such a mission-based organization, you know we can only speak to our organization. I think that term that you know, superman or Superwoman also needs to be able to take off their cape, sometimes right, to be able to take off their cape sometimes right. Or the idea that parents put on the air mask right On an airplane if something goes wrong before they help their kids, because they need to make sure they're okay first in order to help others, that's really important for us. And so I think reminding each other to take days off, to take wellbeing days, to take time away, even time during the day if they have a particularly stressful call or they need that time it's really important. You know, if we can't do it and we're a mental health care company, then something is really wrong.

Dale Cook:

But I think also, aside from the well-being, I think you had asked about innovation maybe we had talked earlier about that and I think for us you know, for any organization like ours, where we're really pushing, we're pushing hard to innovate, we're pushing hard to consider things like AI or consider what's coming, and is that a benefit or a detriment and how does that impact our members?

Dale Cook:

We need spaces in our company for people to innovate and fail, and that it's okay to fail and it's safe to fail, and we don't do that on the front side with our members, because that's a sacred place where we need to use tested, tried and true methods, of course, but behind the scenes, within our teams, when we're looking for that next thing and we're looking to push the envelope, our teams need to experience failure and experience that management that their colleagues still support them, still believe in them, still see all the amazing superpowers that they have and that they still have those superpowers. It's just that sometimes things aren't going to work and that should be happening. If we're not failing, then we're not innovating, and I think that's a really, really important thing that it's easy to say. I think it's an entirely different thing for people to really experience that and feel safe in that, and that really is in the behavior, that's in the culture. I think it's there or it's not.

Lacy Wolff:

If that makes sense Wow, yeah, I can, that is so. It's so interesting because I think even just in the culture as Americans, that's hard for us. So, yeah, I can imagine it's difficult and I think a lot of leaders are really trying to figure this stuff out. You know support employees, mental health. We know it's a problem, we know we have challenges and I do really appreciate your solution. Do you have any closing thoughts for our listeners? Anything that I should have asked you that I didn't?

Dale Cook:

Well, I think I would. You know, one thing I would say and this is maybe a lesson learned for me and for our company, but also an encouragement to the listeners is that you know, as we've talked a little bit about Lacey, you know, as we've talked a little bit about Lacey, you know mental health is health and you know, I think this part of the stigma is you hear the word mental health and you think of a problem versus just being healthy like we would with watching our weight or getting exercise. And so I think one lesson learned for us internally and in our service, and encouragement to all of your listeners, is think proactively about your mental health. You know you don't have to be clinically depressed to get something really meaningful out of the depression program. You don't have to be anxious to get something out of a progressive muscle relaxation audio. So that's one thing I would say no-transcript, to not forget that your mental health is tied to so many other things.

Dale Cook:

I heard a snippet of a really great podcast you did with Hinge Health, and I think one of the opening statements in Hinge Health, which is really about musculoskeletal issues and right and joint health, is mental health and how closely they're tied together, and so I think the last thing I would say is please remember that your mental health and your physical health and your relational health they're all inextricably tied together, and so the more, even for myself, that I can remember that every day, a meditation or every day logging in whether it's our app or a different app proactively can have an outsized impact on your life. I think is a really critical message to provide for all of us as we go.

Lacy Wolff:

That is great closing thoughts and I am so appreciative of your time, dale, and I look forward to getting this out to our listeners.

Dale Cook:

Thank you so much, lacey, great to talk to you.

Lacy Wolff:

Thank you so much for joining me on this special episode of the ERS Walk Talk podcast. As my last episode for 2024, I want to thank you for walking with me this year and being a part of these important conversations. I hope you enjoyed learning more about Learn to Live and how it's helping to make mental health resources more accessible and effective. If you'd like to explore this platform or share with someone else who might benefit, please check out our show notes for all the details for eligibility requirements and how to enroll. As we look ahead to 2025, I encourage you to keep prioritizing your well-being, one step at a time. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast and share it with others. It's a great way to share information and inspiration. Take care and keep moving forward. I will see you in the new year. Take care everybody.