**** Producer's Note: The following is a general transcript of LCC Connect's weekly radio program. Contents include but may not be limited to podcasts, program imaging, announcements, and PSAs. More detailed and accurate transcripts of the podcast episodes featured in this broadcast can be found at LCCconnect.com or by following the links provided in the show notes of this episode. ****

Welcome to Front row Backstage, the show that takes you behind the velvet ropes of the media world. I'm LCC student Greg Trimmer, and each week we'll explore the stars you see on screen, stage, and radio, and the tech and talent making the magic happen behind it. From unsung heroes to spotlight sensations, we've got the stories you won't hear anywhere else. So grab your popcorn and let's dive in. Welcome, guys. Today we are joined by Steve Simonson, an accomplished audio engineer, producer, sound designer, educator, and live sound technician with a career spanning decades. Steve's journey began as a young drummer, evolved through experiencing with analog recording, and led to a thriving career in audio production. Welcome, Steve.

Hello there, Greg. Nice to see you again, man.

Just a couple little icebreaker questions. I did some research on you, believe it or not, before this good old.

Wikipedia.

And found out before you ever got into audio or AV or anything, you were a drummer.

That's correct.

Pretty young age. What drew you to that at such a young age?

Well, I mean, it really goes down to where I was at when I was growing up. I grew up in the Detroit area, went to a school called Clinton Dale, the Clinton Dale school systems. And even when we were in elementary school, back then, you could sign up for an instrument. So around fourth grade or so, most of my buddies are like, hey, we're gonna join band. We're gonna get. Okay, cool. Let's check it out. So I actually ended up picking up the trombone. And so when I started off in fourth grade, I was playing trombone, and then I got an ear infection, and I really couldn't play the trombone anymore for a while. And so the next school year comes along, and I'm like, I can't really play the thing. What should I do? The band people are like, well, take home the slip and talk with your parents and whatever you want to do. And so, all right. Looked at the various instruments, I'm like, I can't really blow anything, you know? They said, what's this Percussion? They said, well, that's drumming. I said, I'll. And that was it. Sometime in August, before fifth grade, that was history. Yeah, I started playing, doing that type of thing. And Clintale had a very strong music program. I mean, I had private lessons with a local parent in the schools after hours and stuff like that. I went to Blue Lake Fine arts camp. We had music theory classes in high school. It was pretty advanced kind of stuff. I didn't know it at the time. It was just, hey, it's fun.

I've Heard a lot of people talk about Blue Lake, actually, so it's a.

Great place to go.

One more little icebreaker question. I did find out a little bit that you kind of started out your early days performing with, like, festivals and weddings and stuff. What is one of your most like, memorable moments from that time?

Oh, that's tough. I mean, because I was working with a young. Another friend of mine. His name's Mark. He's on the Detroit area. He's actually a financial analyst, but he is still playing as well. He's a pretty well accomplished keyboardist down in the area. And so we were like this weird little Italian band, wunderkind type of thing. It was me and him, and later on when his brother got a little older, his brother playing guitar and we would play. It was drums and organ and he had the whole thing. It was a B3, which is a very large wooden organ, and the bass pedals that go with it.

Beautiful.

We had a Fender Rhodes piano, a Hohner Clavinet, and one of the original Mini Moogs. And he ran all that stuff through a lovely Roland amplifier. And so it was like a two man, three man band. And we were playing pop hits of the day. But him being of, you know, the Italian descent and stuff like that, we'd play a lot of Italian stuff and Italian weddings. And we played this Italian festival. Out of that came an invitation to play a certain wedding for some certain gentlemen at a certain golf club someplace. And it was a very interesting, heavily Italian event. And we were like the American band. It was like they had this, you know, I mean, just like you'd think.

You were the foreign novelty to them.

Yeah, so the kids want to dance, they want to play bassas and stuff instead of, you know, all the most. The Italian type of standards of that era. So it was a very interesting event. The number of people who were there and the way it was all set up for a kid, it was pretty overwhelming. And I don't know anything about any of this stuff, but it really looked like something out of the Godfather. You know, it was really kind of like that. I don't think any of those people were probably involved in any of that, of course, it just seem that way to me, you know, a big fancy thing, event like this. So that one stuck with me. They had like, you know, those, those. Those buffet pans that are out there and they had like ducks in one of them, you know, like chunks of duck and. Oh, it was, it was. I. Yeah, I was 14, 15, you know, I mean, I'd never seen most.

14, 15 year olds have an eight duck in their life.

That's right. So those are. And then there's, you know, a many other festivals have come along since then, but from that era that's the one of the Working with Mark and the old Taste of Honey Band. What a crazy silly name.

So yeah, getting into some meat here, like you were a part of like a band or whatever when you were drumming, you had some sort of vehicle that you were able to start hauling the PA gear. And then somehow that led to passion and sound down the road. Explain that a little bit. Go into that a little bit. How did you get from. Hey, I'm a drummer playing festivals and stuff and I'm the actual musician too. Oh man, I'm the one that makes them sound good.

Well, again, that's a very kind of strange thing to kind of think about and the ways. Because the way that things go back and forth and it's one of my favorite stories to tell in class is, you know, hey, I was the drummer and so of course I've got the van, I've got the station wagon, I got my drums. And then they shove the PA in there as well and we show up to the gig and there's of course nobody but the drummer and the bass player maybe because he's riding with me. And then we gotta set the whole thing up and all that. So that's a little stylized, a little fanciful. Honestly, I've been interested in this stuff for a long time. I remember in fifth grade, again back around the time I started to play drums, we had a science fair and I was interested in recordings and records and I learned about Edison's first phonograph. And I actually built one out of a coffee can and I used a little nail for a needle. And it was strangely, you got a book out of the library science fair projects and oh, Bill Edison's phonograph. Later on I was introduced to, strangely enough, through a neighbor's day, French avant garde music, which was basically tape loops in that. Which led me to understanding later on what the Beatles were doing with a lot of stuff. And I always sort of recognized that the studio early on that it was a creative tool more than just a place to go in and have what you do captured. So. Yeah, but that's all. Yeah, it's kind of all tied in together. It really came about more or less in the early 80s when I came back to school. I started at MSU as a music major. The money ran out, I dropped out Moved home. I did a bunch of different jobs. That's a whole nother podcast, you know. But I played in a bunch of different bands. It was sort of strange the way that worked out too. But when I came back, I decided I didn't want to major in music. I got into broadcasting at msu. So I started learning that and learning all the engineering part of it.

Not to age you, not to age you at all. But I know a lot of your early time was working with analog equipment, like reel to reel machines, cassette tapes, cassette decks. What was it like working with some of that early equipment back then?

I mean, for us, that's what we had. That's just what we did, you know. I mean, and again, the limitations of analog as compared to digital really force you to work in a different mindset, a different way. It's much more about. I mean, you can have some experimentation going on, don't get me wrong, but you generally go in with a goal of we want to play this song, we're going to record it, and then you might do some editing or something like that and learn to do that. Then you learn how you can use the tape machines to do strange things like create echoes and that type of thing. And it grows from there. Really the thing about analog was being so linear. You really had to work in a way that you could go back and fix things if you needed to and have that in mind at all times. I grew up basically in the multi track era. So the first stuff I did was four tracks, eight tracks, cassette decks, all that type of stuff. And we was mostly just goofing around at home with one of those four track cassette decks until I got to college and that type of thing.

Right. Walk us through your experience transitioning from analog to digital. Because you've done both now and there obviously had to be something sort of transition period, changing from one to the other. And what was that like for you? Because you learned on analog and then had to learn this whole new world. Like when it came about.

And at the time too, it was very different than it is now even it was much more computery. You know, everything was, you know, really cheesy graphics and that. You didn't really look at waveforms very much. Back in the day, anything you did would have to render. If I wanted to change the EQ on something, I'd have to say, I'm going to get this file and I'm going to do this and this and this to it, and then I'm going to hit render and I'M going to go get coffee and come back in two hours and listen to the bass drum and then say, oh, you know, I don't like that. And hopefully I hit undo and then I didn't permanently alter the file. You know, all these little traps and pitfalls. It's odd because digital came about right as I was getting into professional audio. As I graduated from school, I was working at, working at a local radio station, a local recording studio that led into one of the local music stores where I ran the PA department, that type of thing. But it was such a big shift for me quite frankly because I had to come out of thinking linearly, thinking about how this is going to go. I have to make these machines all line up and work to if I get it all on the computer the right way, it's all going to come back just fine. And so it was a very big sort of shift of how I had to think about it in terms of workflow. The audio was the same really. EQ is EQ compression, those type of things. But how you work them in the computers and then learning the quirks and the tweaks and the pitfalls of various DOS based machines. Let's just say enough, that's enough. DOS based editing is not for the weak of heart.

Ms. DOS people. If anybody remembers Ms. Dos, it's still with us.

It's just underneath all the graphics and all that.

So you are an adjunct professor here?

That's correct.

You do live sound work, you do like studio recording work. Those are all very big things. How do you balance all that?

Well, I mean Lansing isn't exactly New York or Los Angeles. So I long ago sort of became one of these people in town who just started working different jobs. I mean I had a job here and there. The only real full time job I had in this. Well, I had a couple full time jobs. The studio I worked in at the time was called Harvest Music and Production and at Music Manor that's where all the other place I worked as a PA guy and started doing live sound. That's where I really got into live from a engineering standpoint as opposed to being a performer and something like that. So it was a bit of a learning curve there, different way of approaching things but. But it just start to basically get to the point where I need to take this job. I'm going to do this and I've got my full time gig. But if I can go make pretty good money working for a night, I may as well go and do that, right? Everybody wants to make a little more money, work a little extra, that type of thing. So I've been working in the gig economy now since the early 90s. And it's one of those things. You maybe heard me say it in class. One of my favorite things to tell people is that just don't say no to honest money if you're going to be working in a gig line. Because, you know, you got to show up and make it happen. And even if it's maybe not your favorite thing and all that type of stuff, be the pro, show up, do the job, and you'll get more. So that's how I balance all of that stuff. As far as the headspace, I guess if you want to think about the rational approach I'm taking to what I'm doing, they're all different. So they all just kind of work out to be. I'm going to have to execute this way. It's sort of like I'm. That's another analogy I use is I'm a pilot. I've got all this equipment, and I've got to get my plane and my cargo from here to here and make it happen like this. So that's how I make a flight plan. I make a system diagram. I make a signal flowchart and all that type of stuff. And, you know, just set it up like that. It's not very different, you know, once you get into it, you just. This is what I'm doing now.

So, yeah, from a creative standpoint. I know you mentioned that a little bit. Like, what kind of approach do you typically take in kind of finding, like, I know, like they say it in this industry, that elusive, like, perfect sound, you know, but what approach do you take from a creative standpoint in trying to reach that? Whether it's in the studio or live settings, you can kind of touch in on both, especially with today's digital tools.

Well, the tools make it easier in a lot of ways because you can save things. Before, again, the days of analog automation was Polaroid pictures and grease pencils on the consoles where you're parking the knobs and stuff like that. So these days you can make a setting and save it, and then you've got a really good baseline for this performer, whatever it is they're doing, whenever they're doing it, especially with live type of stuff. A lot of the live stuff I do is, again, festivals and that type of thing. And it's what I would generally refer to as what we call run and gun, you know, so you get up there, this Thing on. Okay, and now you're singing, there's your cue. Go. And I get to mix them on the fly. Hopefully we've had enough time to them here, at least something in their monitors that they want. And then we go. So that's a different thing when you're doing live sound like that. The digital tools help. I gave up a long time ago on trying to make the perfect sound. I know what I want, when I want for me. So as an engineer, I had to put my other hat on, switch my brain out, I suppose, is one way to think about it, to say, now I'm here to help this person get what they want. So I try to talk to them, understand what it is they're looking for. It's very difficult sometimes because sound is so really subjective to how people hear it. And so when they say, well, it sounds a little too brashy or it sounds a little too gray, well, what does that mean? So you start to think about those things and you just communicate with them and you work it out basically, often in sort of unspoken ways. You can see my head says, I think this might work. And so I'm going to take this knob and do this and make this change adjustment. And you watch them, and if they like it, they get into it. If they kind of are reacting, that type of thing, then you can say, oh, I'm getting where they want to go now. We can continue to work with that. The longer you work with people, the more you understand them, they understand you. It's easier to communicate, too. So. But then we just work it out and the perfect sound is whatever works. Right then, right now, let's go to the next record. They're all different. They're all just here and now and gone, you know.

Right. Jumping into your teaching career a little, what inspired you to start teaching audio production? And when did that happen?

June 1995. One of the people who worked at LCC here approached me and said, hey, I'm going to go on sabbatical. You want to teach a class? And I said, hmm, honest money? Yes, it's really that simple. Honestly, what happened too, is there's a little deeper backstory to that. When I was working at Harvest Productions, LCC was running a recording studio class, a business, amusing class, stuff like that. But they didn't have any facilities, really, so they would rent Harvest, and I was literally the engineer for some of the early recording classes back in those days, again, the early, early 90s. So when they finally got some stuff up and running for themselves, and they needed extra help. This guy says, hey, I'm going to go off and do sabbatical. You want to teach my class over the summer? And I said sure. And then a job opened up about shortly after that because this very building that we're sitting in was going to be built. And this guy who was working here at the time, lead faculty for audio production, knew that I had some background in this type of stuff and said, there's a job here that's opened up and I really think you should apply for it. And I became a part time employee here in the audio media services and we designed the studio parts of this building actually to help build it. And so that was a very, very good thing to be involved in. And I'm really glad I did it.

I mean the studios down there are beautiful.

Well right here, this beautiful place too. Yeah, I mean this is the cosmetics. But then the people don't really see. They see some of what we have here with these lovely microphones and great cameras and stuff like that. But the infrastructure is really important too. We were fortunate enough to work with good people and had a great team that I was a small part of really in many ways. And we've been able to keep up with maintenance. And it's a great place to study this kind of stuff if you want to. I mean, I literally have classes with 8, 9, 10 students in them. Sometimes we'd like to get the numbers up there, but that's a pretty good student teacher ratio, especially for this type of stuff. It's one of those things you fall into things like that and you don't really realize how much it's going to be something that you like. You know, I didn't really think I was ever gonna really wanna be a teacher. That would be. That didn't sound like all that much fun. I'm gonna be doing this. Be a rock star, dude. Produce rock star. So I'm gonna tour the world with the band.

You know, I wanna go be Eddie Van Halen.

But it turned out that teaching was really, really fulfilling to me in a lot of ways, especially now that I've been doing it for a long time. I might get a call to work with the local union at the Wharton Center. And there's people I graduated with and worked with for years and then there's former students right there on the deck too, pushing the boxes and loading in shucked or wicked or whatever. Come back seven, eight, ten days later and take it all apart.

So how do you think the ever developing digital technology in this realm has shaped the way that you teach students.

Oh, well, I mean, it's a lot easier to give people examples of things these days. A lot easier to move data and that type of stuff. That's what's made it better. I like some of our online tools because I can basically. I used to slay so many trees. Oh, my God. Papers and papers and bookworks and workbooks and all these things. And it's just like now it's online. If you want to print one out, sometimes it's more convenient. But, you know, it's not like I'm giving you three reams of paper every semester, you know, so that's been a big, big difference. The audio technology, I think, is going to continually change. We've already seen some things that were predicted. I'm not much of a technology wonk like that. I don't get a chance to really dig deep into the stuff that's coming up. AI is already going to change a lot of things in the industry, which.

I think is kind of sad, to be honest.

It's like Mozart saying, what is this? Recording? No, you have to have the musicians play it fresh every time for him, maybe recording would be a weird thing for them. Mozart and those cats. Recording was writing the notes down on paper so somebody else could play it later, you know, so it's an ever evolving thing. And what we do, really, especially with music and this type of stuff and into theater and all these type of artistic, theatrical type endeavors, is we're expressing ourselves now. And people are always going to find a way to do that, and they're going to do it differently than we understand it. You know, AI can be a tool just like digital is. There's lots of people who would swear up and down at analogs better. Vinyl's making this giant comeback. I guess cassette tapes are now enjoying a revival. Please don't.

Just don't, dude. Just don't. Cassettes can stay away.

But I mean, digital, I love digital. It's cheaper, it's easier. It's allowed me to have the tools I need to do great things. You used to have to have a record company back in the day. We were shopping our band by sending headshots and bios and cassette demos to record labels hoping to get known now. I mean, shoot, if we would have had Spotify and that type of thing back in the day. Or what is the other one? Bandcamp? You don't need that music. Yeah, you can put your. You can reach your audience, you know, these days. So that's always my advice to folks who are creative and creators in that. Do it, make it happen. There's nothing holding you back. You know, you should really just let your mind, your creativity flow. Do your best to make it the best it can be. Remember, at some point, it's got to be done and put it out there, see what the people think. I grew up in a live performance era. That's what I do mostly back in the day. You know, he's a drummer, and I get that feedback off the audience, and that's a very important part of how.

I see you do the next thing.

Yeah.

I mean, if a band goes up there and just. It's just dead and the audience isn't responding and they're kind of just standing there staring at you, that's. That's not what bands are looking for.

No. No. And if that's happening to you, you need to get back in the woodshed. Yeah. All right, fellas, let's try and rehearse this little more. Get better at what you do. It's tough out there. There's always somebody who wants to do this, and there's always somebody willing to take your place if you don't do it very well. So practice, practice, practice.

All right, well, we got a little quick, rapid fire round of questions here. Favorite project you've worked on?

Boy, that's so hard. I mean, I did so many, but I'd have to say I did a project with a woman who I worked at, went to this church with, and she's a fantastic singer. She wasn't happy with it. She had a limited release, but it's just some really, really good stuff overall, or just all of it.

Dream collaboration with any artist or producer.

Well, can I go into the people who have been not with us anymore and stuff?

Yeah, for sure.

I mean, I would have to say, you know, definitely would want to work with Quincy Jones at some point, if possible. That would have been a beautiful thing. Maybe Miles Davis, Coltrane. I'm a jazz person. I really like jazz. It's when I got started playing and all that. It'd be interesting to deal with some of those and work with some of those people. But just to be in there as an intern, even emptying ashtrays and bringing coffee and sandwiches, that would be fine.

Most exciting piece of digital audio tech that you've used.

Oh, man, I don't know. I mean, the first time I sat down at a thing and saw that we could. It was at a radio convention and you could cut audio apart Without a razor blade. That was revolutionary. But I think maybe recently we've revived our live sound class here and we've acquired some digital mixing consoles which I've used limited work in the past a little bit. I'm just not really into that. The big ones as it is. Anyway. We got a nice big one here, the Midas M32 live. And trying to learn and get my head around that is pretty interesting. It's a pretty cool thing. And I could see how if I was doing a lot of live stuff, a lot of consistently, you know, I'm going to work with this artist. It'd be a wonderful thing. Like I've read about all of them are. But even just running in and running gun, I don't know much about it, but I was like, oh, I know audio. I can make this happen. Call this up, push this button. Oh, here's the controls. I'm familiar with.

I think one of my favorite digital consoles to work with for a live environment is the Allen and Heath DLive S7000.

I know that those are getting big. We got a couple of. We got a quantum here, I think, or something like that small one over in the black box. Maybe it's an advantage. I can't.

Oh, we've got a small Allen and Heath over in the black box. And then final. Is there any piece of analog equipment that you still find irreplaceable?

Well, I don't particularly own any myself. I mean I have an analog compressor that's just from left over from way back in the day. I actually have a two channel tape machine that probably used to belong to this college and it was bought, sold in the surplus store, the old Atari MX5050. That's a wonderful thing. But it's up for sale, so it's not that I can't live without it. You know, there's certain analog microphone preamps, even if they're modern, that are very nice. I like the. This Avalon one that's out there now. It's been around for several years. I suppose I might get into some classic Neve preamps and stuff like that. I mean, if we're talking about analog microphones, basically all analog anyway. Some of those classic 50s telefunkins and stuff like. Oh yeah, I wouldn't.

I know they're kind of expensive, but some of the older. Neumann. Oh yeah, Neumann U81s and stuff. Yeah. So just final question. Anybody getting into this industry that sees the vast career you've had, like what.

Did most of it in this little Town.

What advice would you give to these kids that are aspiring to do and be someone like you someday?

Well, that's a very, very, very fine compliment. I appreciate you saying. It's very nice of you to say. And I do really take a bit of a. I feel responsible to some degree to helping people learn. I really came across that as a musician. You know, even the musicians learned you have to pass the torch on. So I guess there's a couple things that go with it. Mostly you gotta be ready to go and show up and be ready to do what needs to be done to make it go. It's a show. We've gotta put on a show. Let's make it happen. Be creative, think outside the box and do your best to just show up and make it happen. Be prepared, be ready to go, that type of thing. Do all the preparation you can. Keep yourself trained, well practiced, you know, if you're an instrumentalist, practice your instrument. If you work in sound and that, read the manuals, work on the gear, refine your techniques and keep doing shows, just keep doing it because everyone's new and every time you do something, you learn something new and you meet more people that you can work with and you might have some magic spark with somebody and create a great collaboration. And, oh, you started off, he was a lighting director and you were, you know, doing some audio stuff, but you turned out that you wrote a great play together or something like that. So keep your mind open, your ears open, and commit fully, I suppose.

All right, well, thanks for coming to talk with us here on front row backstage, Steve. It's always amazing. Honestly, I only was in your class for a couple semesters, but I owe a lot of what I know about audio to you.

Well, you're very, very kind and I guess I. There's two things you say with your teacher. You remember the good ones and the bad ones. Let's say I remember you for the right reason.

Thanks for tuning in to Front Row Backstage. We hope you enjoyed this week behind the curtains of the media world. Don't forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Instagram for more information. And join us next week for more stories from the front lines of entertainment. Until then, stay tuned because whether it's on stage, behind the scenes or over the airwaves, the real action is everywhere.

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Welcome to a Psycho delicious conversation on mental health issues and trends from two local mental health professionals in the greater Lansing area.

I'm Michael Stratton, lmsw and I'm Morgan Bowen, dnp, pmhnp and we're here to provide you with a deep dive into the human experience of consciousness and beyond. Our aim is to be educational and entertaining. So just kick back and open your ears and your minds.

Hey, this is Mike Stratton and I'm.

Morgan Bowen and we are here post.

Holidays, which who knows when you're going to hear this but. But we're here in our time machine just a week after New Year's Eve.

Happy New Year.

New year.

Yeah, 2025.

So we were talking all things celebratory before we opened things up. However, that's not our topic today.

We'll give you the other stuff. What are we talking about today?

Michael, I believe you made the suggestion. I did actually, that we talk about schizophrenia.

I did. We haven't talked about it and over the break I had some time so I watched a documentary called, I think it was called Six Schizophrenic Brothers and it's on Netflix. It's a four part series of a family in Colorado with 12 children. They were an Irish Catholic family similar to one of the speakers here. I don't know about you.

My wife's family, well, she only had half a dozen somewhere in the wandering for miles.

But six out of the 12 children had schizophrenia, which is a huge amount of.

That's a lot of schizophrenia in the family yeah.

So it got me thinking about. About schizophrenia, which we haven't talked about. So. No, figured that would be a good topic for us. And it's in the realm of, you know, serious mental illness or smi. So if you work in the field, that's. And it's kind of a specific sub. You know, a sub. I don't want to call it a subset, but typically people who work in the field, you know, who work with SMI or serious mental illness, including schizophrenia, are a bit different than, you know, what you and I do in the outpatient private practice world. Although sometimes there's some crossover.

Although, you know, both of us had experience working with a number of schizophrenics when we were working at the. The hospital.

Yeah.

Inpatient and then also adult day treatment, where I worked for a couple of years. Didn't you? I mean, you were a psych tech. What. What years were you? Do we want to say specific years?

We can't. I don't mind.

How many years? Let's put it that way.

Oh, let's see. So it was before I became a nurse. It was while I was going to nursing school. So I did it for, I think. I think about three years total. And it was in the 2010 range, you know, in the 2000, early 2010s.

Yeah. So I was like 30 years before you, and I was there for just over two years, and then I was in day treatment for like, another two and a half years. So I was over there a total of five years.

So was the day treatment through St. Lawrence.

Yep, yep, yep. And it was a lot of schizophrenics who had pass through there. When we saw him inpatient, which I'm sure you did, too, you would see people who were what they call floridly psychotic. They were having the symptoms of schizophrenia upon admission.

That is such an old phrase. I love that phrase. Floridly. Yes. When I first read that and like a doctor's note or in charting, I just thought it was kind of a beautiful way to describe. What do they say now, a very ill person? Gosh, I don't, you know, exhibiting, you know, psychotic symptoms, exhibiting severe psychosis, delusional, you know, hallucinations, hallucinating, kind of more of the specifics. I would think maybe floridly psychotic is a little too general for today's charting.

Yeah, I would think so, too. From a layman's term, like I have, I can't actually say that I've ever met or that I knowingly met somebody with Schizophrenia. So my familiarity is. Is pretty much movies. And I was kind of looking over at like A Beautiful Mind.

Is that like, did you see it?

He was psychiatric. Would you say that's a good portrayal? Like, reflective of what it's like?

Well, so. All right, so. And we should, you know, kind of define some things and talk about it. So A Beautiful Mind. And actually there is a, like a controversy, a discussion about what. What was his name? John Nash. Stephen Nash. It was Nash.

Played by Russell Crowe.

Played by Russell Crowe. Very, very, very smart scientist. What was he, a physicist or. Nope. Economics. Yeah. Mathematician.

John Forbes.

So a lot of people think that he was actually bipolar with psychosis because he was so high functioning at times. And a lot of times with schizophrenia, people are not so high functioning. Although that's not always true. That is not universally true. But it is an illness that I think most people associate with psychotic phenomenon features, which are hallucinations. So seeing things that people can't see.

And more often hearing.

Yeah, hearing things.

Yeah, yeah, that's a more common hallucination. Like hearing. It's like the radio's on, but there's no radio in the room. Like you're hearing it and wondering why other people aren't hearing it. When does it usually show up in somebody?

Early. Well, adolescence or early adulthood typically is the onset.

Late adolescence, early adulthood.

And so 17 maybe starting to show some signs. And there is a pre presentation like things that happen to somebody before the. Before the illness happens. But usually 19, 20 is kind of when it starts to become more apparent.

What would those signs be?

Well, certainly, and a lot of times a person doesn't talk about them because it's very scary. And the person doesn't know exactly what's happening, but their disorganized thinking. So sometimes not making sense to others, talking about things that are not happening. Maybe people are following them or they can see somebody outside or, you know, something happens. There's a lot of fear. Lots of, you know, they don't know what's going on, so they're afraid of something.

Paranoia sounds like the biggest sign.

Yeah, huge sign. Also there's like behavioral kind of disturbances. Maybe walking a lot, pacing, looking off into the distance. Sometimes periods of time where they're very still and just kind of don't appear to be sort of they're there but they're not there kind of thing, things like that. Just bizarre types of things that happen that are out of character for them. That's what I would say. What about you, Mike? What do you remember what do you see?

Well, what I remember from the hospital when people would show up. And I like that idea of the fear because I remember there was a psychiatrist who came and gave us an in service one once on schizophrenia. And he said it's the condition of chronic terror. Just being terrified of the world, it's not making sense to them. So the disorganized thinking, there's input that's coming in that doesn't seem to be matching what else is going on. And so the delusional states are a way of trying to make sense of it. I'm hearing voices telling me things. No one else seems to be doing this. So therefore there must be some kind of a conspiracy going on, probably against me. Maybe it's the government, maybe it's aliens, maybe it's monsters, maybe it's who knows what. But the delusions, the delusional states that kind of explain to them what's happening internally that other people don't seem to be making any sense of for themselves.

Yeah, and a delusion is a little bit different than a hallucination. A delusion is like a belief in something. It's a thought, and frequently an organized way of thinking. So if somebody has a paranoid delusion, maybe they think that the police are out after them or the FBI or aliens are able to read their thoughts. Those are some kind of common things that you hear with people. There also can be, and very frequently is a religious component to it, to either a delusion or hallucination. Lots of ideas of good and bad and evil and who's good and who's evil. It's very terrifying to the person. The person is usually incredibly scared. And a lot of the reactive behaviors that can happen are from fear. Or really the person may be thinking that you're after them. And if you're trying to help them, then it can kind of create a situation where they're afraid of their life and may react in a way that that reflects that.

So one thing I'm always looking at is continuums. At the far end is that kind of delusional thinking that's a result of hallucinations. But I think to some extent we all are trying to tell ourselves a story that makes the world make sense to us. It may not be at that point of delusion, but we may be believing things that aren't real. And as time goes on, you come to realize like, oh my gosh, he really was a crook the whole time, for instance. But do you think that there are different? The word that comes to Mind is gradations or maybe different levels of how badly someone has schizophrenia. Are there mild cases of schizophrenia?

Well, I think it's more. Well, how much it's going to impact quality of life and functioning. Because. Because the other components with schizophrenia are not a lot of interest in relationships. Not really. Sometimes not a lot of interest in bathing, showering. There tends to be kind of a neglect of grooming that happens and just kind of not following or not keyed into social norms or societal norms. So that can cause problems with being able to work, have a job, you know, kind of function in a way that allows them to integrate into society. Not always. And with treatment, that can be changed. But I think that usually the severity is how much the symptoms or the illness is going to impact that.

You know, some people use the term psychotic break. So there's kind of a gradual onset. A lot of what you were describing is kind of a gradual onset, but then there's also like a real sudden break that someone might experience. I think both of us talked about this in a prior episode, that some people that are prone to this, that have a family history of this, can be triggered by smoking some very strong cannabis, for instance, or some angel dust or something else that can trigger like a psychosis. And people will describe like they were just fine. And then all of a sudden they were. They weren't dealing with the same reality. They were not fine.

They were not fine.

They were really not fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So in schizophrenia, it tends to be that more gradual, you know, like you can usually looking back, identify a. Because not all psychotic illnesses are schizophrenia. There are other versions or presentations that are not so consistent with schizophrenia. That just tends to be the one that is most known, you know, in psychiatry and psychology. That that was one of the most interesting things for early psychology was to really understand the experience of people who were psychotic. So psychiatry has a really rich history of it or interest in it. So we're kind of talking about the presentation and then the quality of life as well. And one thing I would say is that it's just incredibly debilitating. And it happens to somebody when they're young. And so a lot of times they're in school, they're doing really well, things are going to person has really a bright future, and then they begin to show signs. And that's what really came out in this documentary I was talking about. It was very, very good representation of just how the illness impacts the person as well as like the entire family and community.

So one after the other was Starting to show signs of it. They just as they reached a certain age.

Yeah. And the, the thinking is that there is a strong genetic component to it. With soap, they and other families where there had been multiple cases of the illness, and one family have been part of a study and a series of studies to sort of connect the genetics with the disorder.

Have they found like, is there like a schizophrenic gene? Have they been able to narrow that down to that point?

I don't know. Yes. Not that I know of. That's the goal. There are genes that are associated with it. They have found genes of interest, I guess I would say, as far as I understand, I'm not an expert in this realm, but genes of interest. Genes of interest. Because what you look for is genes that show up, especially in a family, you know, repeated genes, where only the people with the illness have this gene mutation and those in the family that don't have the illness don't have that. That's kind of very confirmatory evidence. And so that's why there's so much interest in this particular case. And at least according to the documentary, one particular researcher from Harvard, psychiatrist, I can't remember her name, was able to identify a gene of interest. To continue on.

I have to apologize. I've been watching Crunk. So she would say, would you find these genes in the mall?

Right, right, right. D n A Crunk is the name.

It's a show.

It's a. Yeah. Filamena Crunk is her name.

But yeah, she goes, yeah, she's, she makes those kind of ridiculous. Very, very. Oh, that's her. That's her. You just, you just brought her up. There she is.

Is it?

Sorry.

Thank goodness.

I, I, I thought we were getting all Little John up in this anyway.

Oh, so we, I like Crunk on Earth. Sorry, go ahead.

Do people who are schizophrenic realize they're schizophrenic?

So this is another. I'm glad you brought that up because that is hugely connected to the success of treatment. So anosognosia is the state of not believing that you are ill. And so there is, yes, people that do experience Anosignia. I always struggle with saying that correctly and I'm not sure I did it. But if they don't accept, they don't take medication, they won't. And so this happens. And that's associated with poor outcomes. So yes, there are people with the illness who absolutely do not believe that they do have the illness, particularly when they are psychotic or in the acute stages of the illness, which makes it very difficult to, you know, to work with and to treat.

I'm thinking about a particular individual that I was working with at one point when I was in day treatment. These were people who were generally pretty stabilized, you know, and so they were coming in two to three times a week and having programming. And I was running a group of some kind. And this person came up to me and said, I need to talk to you right away. And I said, what is it? And they said, I have just destroyed the universe. And it was kind of shocking to hear someone say that. And I said, you know what? I was just out in the universe and things were okay. Things were really okay. And they said, no, no, I've done it. I said, well, wait until the group is over and we'll go check it out. And so we walked out onto the street and I said, see, everything is here. He said, just beyond this, right behind those houses, everything is gone. And so I said, well, let's go do that. Anyway, we did that for a couple of streets or so. And then I realized, like, this was not going to be a matter of logic. It wasn't a matter of reality testing. He was very, very sure that, in fact, I mean, that was his delusion, was that he had destroyed the universe. So it's like, you know, you need to get on some medication again and get stabilized and all that kind of stuff. But what a miserable thing to think that you've destroyed the universe, you know?

Yeah, it's very, very. Again, just like there's a heavy burden, there's just a heavy mental burden that comes with, you know, believing that a lot of the common things that you will hear, especially with auditory hallucinations, is, you know, people can't really make out what they're. A lot of times the voices are muted, they're not really intelligible. They can make out some words, but not a lot. It's almost always negative and negative commentary on the person. They're ugly, they're not good enough, you know, they're never going to do anything. They're evil, their thoughts are bad. And the person can be very ashamed. And it's just a. It's a very torturous space to be in.

So they'd be pretty high risk for self harm or.

They are absolutely, yes, yeah, those kinds of things. Much higher risk for suicide than they are for hurting other people. And that's very consistent in the epidemiology of the illness, is that there's a high rate of Much higher rate than the tip, you know, than the non ill population for hurting themselves or killing themselves. Suicide.

Yeah. When I worked at the hospital, when we were, when I was working on the inpatient, they had an inpatient and then they had a locked unit where people that were actively psychotic, they'd put them back there because they were more likely to be harmful to themselves or someone else. And they had more hands on supervision, you know, someone watching them all the time. It was a smaller unit. I think there were six, six rooms maybe back there. But then they also had an isolation room where sometimes people were actually needed to be whether they needed it or not. Sometimes they were restrained, you know, to actually used to tie to a bed that would keep them from harming themselves or harming someone else. That didn't happen very often, but it did happen occasionally. And I always felt like, oh my God, this is like cuckoo's nest. You know, it's just, I don't know if they, I don't know to what extent that still happens.

It's much lower. And those things are tracked now. Those are huge markers that are tracked by Medicare Services CMS to kind of indicate the quality of treatment for somebody who's in inpatient. So it's something that the hospital hospitals inpatient units track. And it is monitored pretty, I mean it's a heavily monitored. And so the goal is to reduce that to, you know, as much as low as possible. And there's benchmarks that, you know, people work with and it certainly happens, you know, in very extreme cases, but it's after a whole lot of other stuff has been tried to, you know, kind of mitigate the situation without having to do that.

Yeah, I would think that staffing, I mean if you could put someone in a one on one one situation with somebody to help them de. Escalate and do a little reality testing or helping them just to relax, you know, just to relax and to breathe with somebody, you know, that kind of thing.

Well, and I think another important thing, you know, is this, these are members of our families and communities and, and so people live with the illness and are, you know, in our area and we have social networks to you know, to help and to, to, to attempt to, to aid those in our community. And so, you know, you and I have talked about St. Lawrence that is, you know, historically the psychiatric hospital in Lansing area.

We're gonna get sued now.

Oh, why do you say that?

Well, no, that's, that is this, that's where we, that's where we worked.

Yes, yes. Well, St. Lawrence was a standalone.

There's a lot of stories, like, trying not to tell.

Sounds like some paranoia going on there.

I'm just saying.

Yep, yep.

They've been watching me.

St. Lawrence has been, you know, it was an independent hospital. Currently it's part of Sparrow Hospital, which is now part of University of Michigan or Michigan Medicine. But St. Lawrence up until what the 90s was, was this was their own hospital separate than Sparrow.

Right.

And it was the place for behavioral health that was like the behavioral health place for both inpatient day programs. I think they had a lot of just outpatient, you know, and they also.

Had outpatient as well. Yeah, so they had outpatient, partial hospitalization, and then the inpatient, they had a whole floor that was all psych, and then the floor above was for substance use. And when we were in day treatment, when I worked in day treatment, we had some epic volleyball battles against the people that were in the substance abuse unit. And we were. Would beat them. We were very proud of our status. I thought I was good at volleyball until I went out and played with people that weren't highly medicated.

Well, and it brings up, you know, when you're in a community like ours, which is, you know, not small, but it's not humongous. It's not, you know, like a metro Chicago or whatever. So, you know, the people that work in psych kind of tend to know each other. And then a lot of times people with serious mental illness are connected with the people that work with them. So it's kind of own little community in a way. And so I liked that about working at the hospital is you get to know people, you see them out of the hospital, you see them.

Yeah. And you would see people on a pretty semi regular basis, at least at one time. When I was working there, it wasn't unusual for someone to check into the hospital and be there for weeks and sometimes months. Months. And the insurance would pay for it. You don't see that anymore. That's pretty rare. But you'd often see the same people coming back after a series of months or year after year to get stabilized. And that again, not something you probably see as much anymore.

No, there's a lot of different programs. And the other piece of this is community mental health. So community mental health is a huge network of programming and workers that is county by county. And the money is dispersed through the federal government and then also through the state government to help and assist with the care of persons who need a lot of care, which is people who are Severely mentally ill.

But they don't have anything on site. Do they have something on site?

They do over on Jolly in Pennsylvania is, you know, the main.

I mean, a place where they can go in and they have what's called.

A crisis stabilization unit. And so for people who are in crisis, they can go there if it's something that is more acute or needs more intervention, then a lot of times they will be brought to the hospital from the stabilization unit. But they do have a place for. For people to present if they're having, like, problems. Interesting. And then they also, you know, they do have offices and things, you know, programs that are there, although I'm pretty sure, yeah. But they also have other buildings throughout the community for like, geriatric services. Like Tri County Office on Aging is through cmh. I'm not exactly sure where that is, but that's a huge. Is that through cmh? It's connected with CMH for people with aging, related psychiatric issues, dementia, things like that.

Okay.

Yeah. So it's a network of services that's pretty vast. A lot of persons with serious mental illness are connected through them. And then I guess I would also say NAMI national alliance on Mental Illness has a very strong chapter in Lansing for both persons with mental illness as well as family members, because it really is a family illness. Because people frequently are, you know, they remain connected with their families and ideally their families can be involved in their life and in their care, but sometimes it's not available, but just depending.

And that'll carry over into part two of this program, which will be Treatment a Psycho Delicious Conversation is meant for educational and entertainment purposes only. It is no substitute for therapy and should not be treated as such. If you feel a need for real therapy, you should consult your local provider, Google Therapy or therapists in your area. Check with Community Mental Health or a suicide hotline if you are feeling suicidal.

Mike and Morgan welcome your questions, feedback or dilemmas. Feel free to send us an email at a psychodelicious conversationmail.com that is a psychodelicious P S Y C H O D E l I c ious conversationmail.com.

The views expressed on this podcast are solely the opinions of Mike Stratton and Morgan Bowen and do not reflect the views or opinions of any site broadcasting this podcast. Replication of this podcast without written permission is strictly prohibited. This is WLNC Lansing. You're listening to LCC Connect, a weekly program that features the voices, vibes and vision of Lansing Community College. To find out more about LCC Connect programs or to listen on demand, visit us at LCC Connect. LCC Connect Voices, Vibes, Vision.