ANYWHERE CLINIC

Grant Bullock

Speaker1: [00:00:01] Take some deep breaths here. Loosen. Come. Calm. Okay. Let's start with some softballs. Just introduce yourself. What do you enjoy? What are you passionate about? It's like that. Okay. Are we rolling? Okay.

Speaker2: [00:00:18] My name is.

Speaker1: [00:00:19] Sorry.

Speaker2: [00:00:20] My name is Grant Bolick. All right, we'll start over. I was actually curious about that. My name is Dr. Bullock from Central Illinois originally Champaign. It's a small university town.

Speaker1: [00:00:32] Hey, guys, we're filming. No more Walk in, please. Um, just start with doctor. Cool. All right.

Speaker2: [00:00:42] My name is Dr. Grant Bullock. I'm from Central Illinois, originally a small university town called Champagne, living in Las Vegas, Nevada. Currently finishing a psychiatry residency.

Speaker1: [00:00:55] What do you enjoy?

Speaker2: [00:00:56] In my free time when I'm not working, which does take up a fair amount, I enjoy woodworking. I've been trying to get into bow hunting general outdoorsy stuff when I'm trying to impress people in my free time. When no one's watching, I'll probably just hang out at home, mess around on a computer.

Speaker1: [00:01:15] Great. All right. Why did you get into mental health? What excites you about psychiatry? What excites you about this field?

Speaker2: [00:01:22] So in med school, we have to make that decision as to what to go into. And originally, I wasn't sure. There's all these choices. We could do surgery, you could do internal medicine, and psychiatry is the only field I saw where the person themselves was changed. Surgery. We can fix your bones, Cardiology. We can fix your heart. But in psychiatry, we can make the person better. Spiritually, emotionally.

[00:01:45] All of it. That was fantastic.

Speaker1: [00:01:49] What's your favorite natural antidepressant?

Speaker2: [00:01:53] That's a good question. I would argue sun and exercise are the best. Other than that, obviously water, but just a little bit of exercise and sun. It's amazing how much difference it can make in your overall well being.

Speaker1: [00:02:09] Think are some of the common reasons people struggle with their mental health.

Speaker2: [00:02:13] I think there's a large stigma to it. We view mental health is a failing of the person as a whole and not the failing of an organ system or a disease. And because of that, our society is getting better. But we still do continue to view the mentally ill as less than a whole person, as a broken person beyond repair.

Speaker1: [00:02:35] And how should we view people?

Speaker2: [00:02:36] I think we should view people as people. If someone has a thyroid disorder and we need to give them extra thyroid hormone, nobody considers them less of a person. But if someone has a chemical imbalance in their brain, all of a sudden they're not human anymore. In the eyes of some people, at least I view, I feel that we should view them as who they are as a human being.

 

Speaker1: [00:02:57] And when it comes to mental health, what are the contributory factors? Why? Why do people struggle with their depression anxiety?

 

Speaker2: [00:03:05] That is a good question. There's a lot. Obviously, there is a biological factor to it.

 

Speaker1: [00:03:10] But start from like the reasons that we can.

Speaker2: [00:03:14] Oh, I gotcha.

Speaker1: [00:03:14] Okay. Okay.

Speaker2: [00:03:17] Can you repeat the question one more time? Sorry.

Speaker1: [00:03:19] What are the contributory factors? What are the reasons that people struggle with their mental health? Is it just a chemical thing? Is there more.

Speaker2: [00:03:25] The reason why people struggle with their mental health? It's multifactorial there is a chemical issue to it in some instances, but not all society as a whole. No, I lost my train. Yeah.

Speaker1: [00:03:39] Because we can chop it up. Okay, cool. Take a breath.

Speaker2: [00:03:49] There are many factors that go into a person's mental health problems. They're in how we view ourselves and our society, our community, our support. Extremely important. Arguably the most important. It's easy to become outcast. It's easy to become depressed. There are many natural and normal reasons for mental illness. Of course there are chemical imbalances as well.

Speaker1: [00:04:15] How should someone overcome that stigma if they feel like, you know, I don't want to admit that I'm going through something, it makes me weak. If you were to talk directly to them, if you are with this, how would you advise or counsel someone? It's a it's.

Speaker2: [00:04:27] A bit of an overplayed saying it's okay not to be okay, but it's true. You know, there's nothing we can do to change that fundamental fact of human beings. We're not always perfect. We all need help at everything. And just because that issue you need help with is a mental illness doesn't mean that you shouldn't seek help for it. Everybody goes through this. I believe it's something around 20%. A little over 20% of all US citizens have been on some anti depressant at some point in their life. And that's just counting depression, let alone all the other psychiatric and mental illnesses there are. The truth is that more people than you think and more people than you would expect are suffering from mental illness. You're not alone in this. You just taking the right steps towards bettering yourself. Awesome.

Speaker1: [00:05:18] What about those people who have been in mental health treatment for a long time? They've done everything their doctor said. It's. Medication. They've tried the therapy. Things aren't working. How would you encourage that person? Is there anything on the.

Speaker2: [00:05:29] Horizon for them? We have a lot of options. There's a certain tool kit that most psychiatrists, mental health providers, even primary care physicians will use, but it's relatively limited in scope. We have a lot of very, very interesting new advancements coming out, particularly ketamine works on a completely different neurological system than any other antidepressant we have, and the results are astounding. Not to mention TMS. It's a trans magnetic stimulation. It's a non medical non-invasive procedural option that has proven wonderfully helpful, let alone the host of psychedelic medicines that will come to the forefront in the near future. We have a lot of options. Just because something hasn't worked in the past doesn't mean that nothing will work in the future.

Speaker1: [00:06:22] What about the standard of care of psychiatry? Have you seen your patients talk about standard of care and. Their experiences with psychiatrists before. How are you able to redirect that if they've had bad experiences in the past to keep them engaged and continue working on growth?

Speaker2: [00:06:37] I get one very common complaint, which is they weren't even talking to me. They were just texting. They were typing the whole time, rather. And I think that it's extremely important we treat the person as a person. We get so caught up in it in medicine. We have so many patients and so little time that it's easy to fall into viewing them as a statistic and as a as a number that we just need to get through by the end of the day. But it's a person and it's a person that's telling you about their problems.

It's telling them that a person that's telling you about all of the things that they love, the good aspects of their life and the bad aspects of their life. And I think that that's the biggest issue, is people don't view them as humans. People don't view patients in any field as humans, let alone psychiatry, where it's the most important. And in terms of overall complaints, yeah, it's that they're not treated the way that they should be treated. In my opinion, which is as a human.

Speaker1: [00:07:29] What have you done in your practice to show more empathy, to humanize the experience, to.

[00:07:35] Normalize what they're going through? Give them that feeling of safety, security and comfort through the process.

Speaker2: [00:07:41] It's going to sound silly, but it's just this You just sit down and you talk to them and you listen to them. You type your note later, you can do it later. It's better to end the visit a couple of minutes earlier and actually be there with the person in the moment and listen to them. It makes all of the difference.

Speaker1: [00:07:58] What results have you seen with ketamine therapy?

Speaker2: [00:08:01] They've been profound so far. Oh, yeah. So the results I've seen so far with ketamine have been profound. It's amazing what you can do in the course of one hour. You know, all of our other medications that we use. For the most part, they serve to change your response to certain stimuli, but they don't change the way you think about certain stimuli. And through ketamine and its associated therapy, you can fundamentally change bad habits, bad patterns, bad thought processes, negative thoughts. It's easy to fall into these, and through the use of ketamine and its neuro plastic abilities, we can finally change thoughts.

 

Speaker1: [00:08:43] That's awesome. Is that excites you about the future of your profession?

Speaker2: [00:08:46] Absolutely. Yeah. It's one of the first things I've seen in a long time that really works for the most part. Everything else. Like I said, you're just blunting a response. But now we can change it.

Speaker1: [00:08:56] Could you say, I'm excited about the future of psychiatry? Because. Yeah, sure.

Speaker2: [00:09:03] Yeah, I'm excited about the future of psychiatry. Because of this new tool we have Ketamine, TMS the upcoming, hopefully upcoming psychedelic therapies, we can change the way people think. We can make them a better person emotionally, mentally, spiritually, even. We can improve the person as a whole and not just a specific illness. Awesome.

Speaker1: [00:09:29] What does telemedicine allow for your patients?

Speaker2: [00:09:33] Ease of access, I think is the easiest way to say it. So whether it be physical or mental disability that prevents them from coming into the office or whether it just be a busy schedule, it allows us to fit people in in a time when they otherwise wouldn't be able to. It lowers the bar for entry really into mental health health care. Because of this, obviously it makes it easier to access, but because it's easier to access, it's easier to treat people and it's easier to fix them.

Speaker1: [00:10:00] Awesome. Could you say something along the lines of it's so easy to to get a mental health checkup these days. You just have to sign up your phones provider.

Speaker2: [00:10:10] Don't you have to leave home? Can you sell that? Sure, sure, sure, sure. Yeah. It's so easy nowadays to see a mental health provider. You don't have to go into an office. You don't have to wait. You don't have these six month wait periods that we see. Oftentimes, you you pick up your phone, you dial in a website, you talk to somebody, you set up an appointment, and then you meet with a psychiatrist. This can happen in bed if you want to. You don't have to go anywhere. It's it's a game changer that usually you don't have to go anywhere. Um, all right.

Speaker1: [00:10:47] Um, what has your experience been like in residency learning, psychiatry and med school and now actually practicing it? Can you talk about your growth of what you've seen over the.

Speaker2: [00:11:00] Years and things like that? Yeah, absolutely. So I'm in my fourth year, fourth and final year of my medical training as a whole. It's definitely been a long road starting out first year, we start with a lot of inpatient. It can be somewhat demoralizing. You see a lot of patients that society has given up on and they end up there and at this point they've had so many problems and so many downfalls in their life that I don't want to say I was going to say there's not much we can do to fix it. That's too much. I don't want to go down that road.

Speaker1: [00:11:33] It's it's a quite a big challenge. But yeah, in outpatient psychiatry or just in general mental health, you know, we're able to be there for them. We're able to see the change.

Speaker2: [00:11:43] Okay. So yeah, so residency started about four years ago. Now I'm in my fourth and final year. We started out initially in inpatient, which can be somewhat demoralizing. It's difficult to find change in these people because they never had the option of mental health care in the past, at least not an easily accessible option in the past. Now that we've moved into our final year, I'm mostly outpatient now and I can finally follow these patients over the course of a year or two years. Their life even I can see change as it happens. And it's remarkable not only using these tools we have, but the ease of access we have through the everywhere clinic. It's Oh, no, it is. I thought I thought it was anywhere. Yeah. So to say, hold on. So for this, should I start from the beginning? How does this work with cutting it? That's a good question.

Speaker1: [00:12:39] No, just like pick up where you wanted to leave off.

Speaker2: [00:12:41] Okay, so now that I'm able to follow patients over a long term, months, years, their lifetime even. Hold on. I'm going to do one more time.

Speaker1: [00:12:55] Yeah, that's about what that's like. What does continuity of care like for you as a provider?

Speaker2: [00:13:00] So now that I'm able to follow my patients over an extended period of time, not just one inpatient stay, I can see them growing. I can see them improving. I can see all of their issues fading away. The continuity of care is extremely helpful, not only for the patient but for us. And it leads to not only better outcomes, but happier providers. That's a little strange too. I don't.

Speaker1: [00:13:26] Want to. More fulfilling.

Speaker2: [00:13:27] Work. Yeah, more fulfilling work. Yeah.

Speaker1: [00:13:30] Okay.

Speaker2: [00:13:31] Yeah.

Speaker1: [00:13:32] That's better to see someone regularly in the comfort of their own home. Yeah. Leads to not only better outcome for them, but.

Speaker2: [00:13:37] More fulfilling work for us. So with the continuity of care, with being able to follow people for an extended period of time, being able to see them in the comfort of their own home, it leads not only to better outcomes for the patient, but more fulfilling work for us.

Speaker1: [00:13:52] That was great. How would you share with your colleagues if they're just like, Hey, tell us about psychiatry? Is that a good feel for us? Should we do that work? How would you advertise that kind of work to friends if they're asking it?

Speaker2: [00:14:06] Yeah, it is. It is a good field for us. This is my first experience with it. In the past several months I've started now. It was a little worried at first. You know, maybe we'll have device connectivity issues. I won't be able to see people. We'll have bad reception. And for the most part, that's not been the case at all. I've had a great time seeing them. I get to see them in the comfort of their own home. It's a much different experience than coming into an office feeling like you're some sort of specimen. You get to be relaxed, surrounded by the people you love and the walls of your house. It gives you a real opportunity to see the patient as who they are and not as simply a patient.

Speaker1: [00:14:47] Um, what about the lifestyle? Let's say we were going to create kind of a promotional video for recruitment providers. How has psychiatry help your lifestyle?

Speaker2: [00:14:57] It's it's made a pretty big difference, to say the least. Simply not having to drive into work every day makes a big difference. The dress code, if we're being honest, is somewhat laxed. When you only have to worry about having a clean shirt on. Things get easier. You don't have to put shoes on. You can schedule your time around how you want to schedule it. You're not bound to these limitations as well. You can see more patients throughout the day simply because you don't have a commute as well. You don't have to wait for them to show up. There's much greater patient appearances. We don't get no shows, hardly ever. It happens, but hardly ever. Not like in the real world where even a simple inconvenience can trigger a person to not want to come in. That doesn't happen here. We've eliminated that that limit.

Speaker1: [00:15:52] And on that topic, speaking to patients, telling them, you know, we get it. Sometimes it's hard coming. Yeah, but when you're struggling in second guessing, should I even see my provider say, I don't want to go through this? Yeah, let me reassure you that it's so much easier when you're just sitting at home. Yeah. And if you don't feel like it, I'm going to call you and cheer you up a little bit.

Speaker2: [00:16:15] Yeah. So in the patient side, typically even a minor inconvenience can keep them from coming in. And there's a lot of reasons not to come in to see your psychiatrist. Maybe you're just scared. Maybe you don't want to see them. Maybe it's on the other side of town. Maybe you don't have time from the comfort of your home. Now we can have an appointment on your terms, on your schedule, when it fits you. And if you don't want to come in, if you're scared to speak to us, don't be. And we make an appointment. Even if you don't come in, even if you don't show up. Rather, I'll. I'll still call you. We'll still get a hold of you. We'll still make sure you're okay. The help for you is here. And it's never been this easy to get.

[00:16:54] That was amazing.

Speaker1: [00:17:00] How about a question? If you could speak a little bit on who is the right candidate for ketamine therapy and what have you seen in your practice? How does it what type of person does it help? Anything more.

Speaker2: [00:17:13] About that? Sure. So ketamine is a is amazing new tool. The primary aspects, the primary aspects of mental illness that we're treating with it, one could argue, is depression. However, what is depression? How does everything fit into these boxes? The fact that ketamine can change the way you think about your problems, it can make you realize that there's more to life than these constant worries. Start that one over. I lost track of my thoughts. So what's ketamine good for? So elephants. Elephants?

Speaker1: [00:17:53] Horses. Who should consider getting.

Speaker2: [00:17:59] I think that anybody suffering from mental illness whose treatment has not worked should consider alternative options. Ketamine being one of them. Ketamine being one of them. I already started. Start that one. I think anybody suffering from untreated mental illness or mental illness that's not adequately controlled under the current treatment should consider ketamine as an option. Primarily, currently, it's working for not only depression, but it's working for all those negative thoughts, All those negative patterns and routines that we get in. It can break you of those. It can allow you to view the world as it is and not how you've made it up to be over the course of your lifetime. Over the course of this past three years, where everything seems like it's been darker than it has been. I think that ketamine has a tremendous power to help not only the severely depressed, not only the anxious, not only those with. Issues of personality. But the average everyday person, I think that everybody can benefit from a little cleaning every now and again.

Speaker1: [00:19:09] About the last couple of years and what that did for mental health and society. And if you can set a mental illness, let's call it mental health struggles. But if that comes up in general, the last couple of years, COVID being isolated at home, social justice, police brutality, all these things we're seeing on the news.

Speaker2: [00:19:28] You know.

Speaker1: [00:19:29] Segregating from each other, division of society, how has that affected people's mental health? What are we going through in these last two years? Sure.

Speaker2: [00:19:38] So the best three years now ever since the COVID pandemic has happened, we have become more closed off as a society. This was easier to see in the early days of it when we physically weren't able to leave our homes, we weren't able to congregate. We couldn't see the people that we loved. We're stuck at home watching riots. We're seeing police brutality. We're seeing society as a whole seemed to collapse around us. Especially if you're not working, you're at home, you've got nothing to do. But here, all these horrible things that happen around us. And in terms of mental health struggles, it's been pretty remarkable. It's caused quite a lot, as one could expect. You shut yourself off from society. You're not going to be doing as well.

Speaker1: [00:20:21] And although we've been isolated, it has created new tools for us adapted to models where we are finding access in the home that.

Speaker2: [00:20:34] Kind of ironically connects us. Could you speak on that a little bit? Yeah, it's a good point. You know, I remember three, four years ago I never even heard of Zoom before. And now it seems like it takes up a pretty large amount of my life and the ability to connect to people from your own home via social media, via the Internet. It's it's not all bad. It can definitely serve a purpose, especially for those that can't leave at all. It gives them an opportunity to connect on a certain level. They weren't able to earlier. At the same time that has led now we're going to cut that part way earlier as well. Now we're able to move mental health care and medicine as a whole into that realm. It's easier to get treatment now than it ever has been before. There's really no reason not to get it. That's easier than. Yeah, cool. Can you give me.

Speaker1: [00:21:27] A mental health care? Anytime. Anywhere?

Speaker2: [00:21:32] Yeah. Mental health care. Anytime, anywhere.

Speaker1: [00:21:39] That's great, man.

Speaker2: [00:21:40] Any time. Anywhere.

Speaker1: [00:21:41] Anything else? Sir?

Speaker2: [00:21:44] No, not really.

Speaker1: [00:21:47] If you're thinking about entering into a mental health career.

Speaker2: [00:21:52] Or.

Speaker1: [00:21:53] Mental health, I would highly encourage you because.

Speaker2: [00:21:56] Yeah. Yeah. So if you're thinking about entering into a career path of mental health, mental care, helping the. Try it again. Yeah. If you're looking into if you're looking into starting a career path in mental health, I would highly encourage it. It gives you the opportunity to care for the underserved and overlooked. It's remarkably rewarding to see a patient, to see a person grow, become better, to heal. There's nothing else like it, and there's no field that's nearly as rewarding as this. I would definitely recommend it.

Speaker1: [00:22:36] That was amazing. That was awesome.

[00:22:38] And then when? Escape me.

Speaker1: [00:22:46] So that was to the providers. How about just the call to action to

the patients? We all have a mental health journey. Yeah. And then if you feel like you're struggling with something, that's okay. It's normal. Reach out. We're here for you. You don't have to be sick to get better. We like that. Yeah.

Speaker2: [00:23:04] We all have a mental health struggle. Everybody goes through it. Even the people you think are perfect are not perfect. I can promise you that at this point, it's become so easy that there's no reason not to reach out. There's no reason not to get help. There's no reason not to try to make yourself better. You can you say you don't have to be sick. There it is. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker1: [00:23:27] Make yourself better. Yeah. And want to be the best version of yourself.

Speaker2: [00:23:30] That's perfect. Yeah. You don't have to be sick to be better. You don't have to be sick to be better. You don't have to have some large problem that needs to be fixed. Everybody could use a tuneup. Everybody should reach out. Awesome.

Speaker1: [00:23:46] Being the best version of yourself starts with taking steps just like this.

Speaker2: [00:23:52] Being the best version of yourself starts with little steps. Just like this. Log on. Contact us. We'll get in touch.

Speaker1: [00:24:03] Just like. How was your experience been at Common Clinic as a provider, and how would you invite people who want to come in? Good for common sense. True.

Speaker2: [00:24:12] So I've recently started working at the Calm clinic. It's been a few months for me now. For me, it might be somewhat selfish, but it's one of the cleanest and most comfortable clinics I've ever seen. Located minutes away from the downtown, the Strip. Let's try that again. I keep calling the strip downtown. For some reason. I've always done it.

Speaker1: [00:24:31] Without the months because we might use this. Oh, I gotcha. Okay. Okay.

Speaker2: [00:24:35] So the clinic has been so. The clinic has been wonderful for me. It's somewhat selfish, but it's clean. It's in a great location. Everybody here is kind, caring, nice. Everybody seems to have the patients best interests at heart. It also allows us the tools that most other clinics in the state and the country in the world don't have at our disposal. And not only is that beneficial for the patient, but it also provides a wonderful experience for the provider to see real change.

Speaker1: [00:25:05] Awesome. Oh, thank you, ma'am.

Speaker2: [00:25:07] You're welcome. They've.