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Hope Illuminated Podcast: Helping the Helpers Bring Light to Life’s Darkest Moments

Hope Illuminated Podcast: Helping the Helpers Bring Light to Life’s Darkest Moments

Written by: Dr. Sally Spencer-Thomas
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Welcome to the Hope Illuminated Podcast, your source for the stories, science and strategy of suicide prevention, mental health promotion and resilience where we live, learn, and work. I’m your host, Dr. Sally Spencer-Thomas, and I am on a life mission to empower communities with solutions that help people overcome isolation and despair and rekindle a passion for living. Each episode we’re joined by international experts who inspire hope and offer real guidance. Welcome to the show! I am so grateful you are here.Dr. Sally Spencer-Thomas Hygiene & Healthy Living Psychology Psychology & Mental Health
Episodes
  • The Addiction No One Saw: Gambling, Suicide Risk, and Finding a Way Back with Saul Malek

    The Addiction No One Saw: Gambling, Suicide Risk, and Finding a Way Back with Saul Malek
    Oct 14 2026
    I have seen gambling addiction up close in my own family, and I know how hidden, how isolating, and how dangerous it can become. That is exactly why I was so grateful when our mutual friend Cal Beyer introduced me to Saul Malek. Saul is a nationally recognized gambling-harm prevention speaker and a young man in long-term recovery - more than five years abstinent from gambling - who now devotes his full-time professional life to educating young people, schools, behavioral health organizations, and communities about what gambling addiction actually looks like from the inside.What Saul has lived through is not a story about bad luck or poor impulse control. It is a story about a kind of addiction that hides beautifully behind sports fandom, financial ambition, intelligence, and an outwardly normal college life. It is a story about how secrecy and shame can spiral into suicidal despair. And it is a story about how recovery becomes possible when the truth finally has somewhere safe to land.In this episode, we go through his full journey - from fantasy baseball at age 11, to sports betting in college, to the escalation that consumed his finances, his relationships, and nearly his life. We talk about what the science is now telling us about gambling and suicide risk, about the explosion of online sports betting, and about what recovery actually requires beyond just "stopping." We talk about Gamblers Anonymous, about the families who are harmed alongside the person gambling, and about what clinicians, pediatricians, schools, and communities can do differently starting now.Gambling has been called the next opioid epidemic in America. After this conversation, I think you will understand why - and what we can do about it. For more information on this episode go to https://www.sallyspencerthomas.com/hope-illuminated-podcast/171
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    1 hr and 7 mins
  • Zero Overdose: Why Overdose Safety Planning Needs to Become the Standard of Care with Dr. Virna Little

    Zero Overdose: Why Overdose Safety Planning Needs to Become the Standard of Care with Dr. Virna Little
    Oct 8 2026
    When I think about the parallels between suicide prevention and overdose prevention, nobody articulates them better than my guest in this episode. I first met Dr. Virna Little at the IASP Asia Pacific conference in Tokyo -- we were both there as Zero Suicide faculty -- and her work immediately struck me as something every mental health and substance use professional needs to hear about.Virna is the co-founder and CEO of Zero Overdose, a national nonprofit bringing the same rigorous, system-wide thinking we apply to suicide prevention directly into overdose prevention. She is also co-founder of Concert Health, a behavioral health medical group delivering Collaborative Care across 21 states. Her credentials span a doctorate in psychology and a master's in social work, and she has presented on suicide prevention at the White House.In this conversation, we talk about what it actually means to build an overdose safety plan -- not just hand someone a Narcan kit and send them home, but sit with them, understand their specific risks, identify their trusted people, and create a living document they can return to. We discuss the populations at highest risk (including people leaving incarceration, new mothers, and workers in trades like construction), the critical importance of EHR integration, and what it looks like when first responders in Massachusetts started using overdose safety planning in the field.If you work in healthcare, behavioral health, public health, or policy -- this episode will change how you think about overdose prevention. For more information about this episode go to https://www.sallyspencerthomas.com/hope-illuminated-podcast/170
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    37 mins
  • The Invisible Veteran: Why "Thank You for Your Service" Is Not Enough

    The Invisible Veteran: Why "Thank You for Your Service" Is Not Enough
    Oct 1 2026
    In this episode of Hope Illuminated, I'm joined by Alicia Scovill, Air Force veteran and founder of Scovill Consulting, whose work sits at the intersection of veteran well-being, construction industry culture, and suicide prevention. Alicia brings something rare to this conversation: not just lived experience of military service and transition, but years of intentional research into the veterans who are most at risk, and most often overlooked.The episode opens with a framing I find both urgent and underappreciated: veterans are dying by suicide at higher rates than the general population, and the ones who surprise us most are not the ones carrying visible wounds of war. They are the invisible veterans, those who served without combat deployment, without visible injury, without a story that matches the Hollywood version of military service, and who carry a quiet, corrosive belief that their struggle is not legitimate because their sacrifice was not dramatic enough.Alicia unpacks three root causes she has identified through her research and her community: veteran imposter syndrome, the belief that one's service was not significant enough to warrant recognition or support; unfulfilled mission, the grief that emerges when a veteran has lost a friend or colleague to suicide and carries a painful sense of personal responsibility; and failure to adapt, the underacknowledged brutality of learning to operate in a civilian world that makes no sense after years of structured, mission-driven military life. The paradox of choice, the absence of hierarchy, the relentless smallness of daily civilian decisions after years of high-stakes clarity: all of it can be profoundly disorienting.The conversation turns to the construction industry, where veterans are heavily represented and where the cultural overlap with military values, toughness, mission, hierarchy, and loyalty, makes it both a natural fit and a particular risk environment. Alicia offers specific, practical guidance on how to engage veterans with authentic gratitude and curiosity: what questions open doors, what questions close them, and why a brief but meaningful acknowledgment of the oath itself, not just the service, can change how an invisible veteran experiences their own worth. for more information on this episode go to https://www.sallyspencerthomas.com/hope-illuminated-podcast/169
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    45 mins
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