Building Bridges in Mental Health Education with Patrick Ripberger

When you're on the brink of starting a venture without a penny to your name, the challenge can be as daunting as it is thrilling. This is the essence of the journey Patrick Ripberger and I dissect as we unravel the story of Mezzo Solutions and the philosophy of 'show up to help.' Nestled within this episode's heart-to-heart, Patrick shares insights on fostering a debt-free operation—a testament to the grit and determination that has become the bedrock of their mental health education and support initiative.

Join us as we weave through the transformative tales of resilience and dedication. From my own battle with mental health and an early exit from high school to achieving a master's in public health, this episode is a tribute to the power of showing up—for ourselves and our community. The narrative takes unexpected turns, exploring diverse educational adventures and recounting an influential supervisor who steered me towards public health. Patrick's anecdotes about his father's service to fellow veterans poignantly highlight the core values that drive Mezzo Solutions.

But we're not just looking back; we're casting our gaze forward to a vibrant future of community collaboration. Our dreams for the community are bold—we see it burgeoning into a nexus for continued education, nurturing local businesses, and sparking employment. The joy of securing meaningful grants and making a tangible difference rings through as I share advice for those eager to contribute. As we wrap up, heartfelt gratitude is extended to key supporters like my wife, Megan, and the impactful work of our contract therapist, Amanda Girten, setting the stage for exciting collaborations on the horizon.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Welcome back to another episode of our community. I'm your host, local real estate agent, alfredo Diamond. I'm here with a special guest, co-owner of MesoSolutions, patrick Rittberger. Welcome, patrick. Hi, thanks for having me today. Hey, thanks for being here. I'm going to jump right into it. Patrick, tell us about MesoSolutions. What is MesoSolutions?

Speaker 2: 0:24

All right, yeah, thanks. So MesoSolutions is an organization that my wife and I founded a few years ago here in Richmond, indiana. We got the idea for it and we're actually sitting at Fifth Street Bagel having some coffee in the morning and we were talking about how it would be great if we had the opportunity to provide mental health education and support to the teams that we were supervising with the nonprofits here in the community. But, as you may know, as a manager you don't always have time to do that. So what we wanted to do was create an opportunity to provide the education on a large scale. So we decided to form MesoSolutions and at the core of it, we wanted to teach the concept of show up to help to individuals in the helping profession, and when I say helping profession, I mean people like social workers, human service professionals, people in the service industry looking at government workers, looking at anyone who has to go to work every day with a kind of aligned purpose to serve, so helping those individuals.

Speaker 1: 1:25

What do you mean?

Speaker 2: 1:26

by show up to help. All right, yeah, definitely. So show up to help is an idea that had been kind of rolling around in my mind since I was a teenager, which is something that I started to develop just before I learned from my own parents about how to engage with your community and engage with other people.

Speaker 2: 1:45

My father was a Vietnam veteran and he spent a lot of his extra time outside of his day to day job helping other veterans. So he had this really strong sense of brotherhood when it came to serving those who had served, and I was usually kind of dragged along with them to help with these adventures. You know, we spent a lot of time in kitchens, you know, cooking large meals for veterans, a lot of fundraisers and things, and from him I really believe I learned this idea of show up to help, and originally it just meant show up and help. But you know, as my father got older, I started to see how, when you don't take care of yourself and all you do is pour out of your own cup into someone else's, wow, a lot of negative health outcomes can hedge your way. So as I got older, the mantra kind of became show up to help, as if you're going to be a helper which is important for us to have helpers in the world you got to take care of yourself.

Speaker 1: 2:43

Yeah, lead from the front being example.

Speaker 2: 2:44

Exactly.

Speaker 1: 2:45

Exactly that's powerful man. I love that. That's what I love about that. Where are you got? Where exactly are you?

Speaker 2: 2:50

located. So we're located here in Richmond, indiana, on Main Street. So it's 814 East Main Street. That's in the Richmond Main Street Resource Center.

Speaker 1: 3:00

Patrick, what, what made you decide? You want to decide to start your business here in our community?

Speaker 2: 3:06

Right. So we we've been planted here in this community. Megan, my wife and co founder of Meso she was born and raised here in Richmond. I'm kind of a transplant from the far away land of Connorsville, so a few towns over, but I've been here for over 10 years. So 10 years and I've worked primarily in nonprofit organizations that were focused on serving individuals who need some mental health support. So all I know really in the professional world is nonprofits and serving individuals who serve, and all of my jobs have been here in Wayne County and I found it a great place to kind of grow, grow, grow a business, but also grew a dream for what we envisioned.

Speaker 1: 3:54

I'm so excited for you, man. You just seem like it's just a wonderful person and giving back and wanting to see the good others do better and better with themselves. So that's amazing. I love that. What so, speaking of your business? So what every you know people admire and want to start a business and it looks good on the outside. But you know, everybody has a story. What's your story? What challenges have you faced? How do you overcome those challenges? You know, how did you get to where you are right now? Right, right.

Speaker 2: 4:19

So I would have to say that one of the most helpful things that we had starting our business was a lot of mentors to lean back on. We um we were lucky to find a lot of good organizations to align with and work with. We actually started the organization with no seed money, so we were able to pay for our filing for our LLC with our first real gig or service that we provided. The next gig paid for our first printer so we could stop printing at UPS, and from there we just kept building up and we've been able to be a debt-free company from the beginning just by slowly building it up and making some good strategic moves when it comes to how we run the business. But now we went from having one office in our current building that we shared with some other tenants to having three offices and actually adding on a contract worker to help us with some of the mental health services we're providing.

Speaker 1: 5:26

You said something that's very powerful that stuck out to me. I'm a business owner and starting my business. One thing that I was conscientious of was my budget starting out. I see so many people that jump out. They wanna go to the media. They'll try and take out a loan or use an LLC to try. It doesn't really work like that. So tell me, why was it so important for you to start out and not have a lot of overhead, a lot of debt, right?

Speaker 2: 5:47

so I would have to say the core of it is I don't really come from any kind of financial backing my life's kind of a fresh start. I was on my own when I was 16 and started to build up my assets and what I have from that age and with that I guess it's kind of elaborate. I lost my mother and my father when I was 16. So I was out with my older brother living in an apartment after being evicted from our family home because we didn't know how to pay a mortgage when we were just kids. So from there I just had this mentality of I don't have much but I can make it work, and then also, I think, paired working with nonprofits. I was used to working on a shoestring budget when it came to a business, so I kind of knew how to make it run when there wasn't any money. So I think that really helped with that model.

Speaker 1: 6:44

You got firsthand experience and it's just amazing things that we go through in life, take us down certain paths and then, all of a sudden, you're in a role you have now where you can help others. So talk about that. That's a tough thing. You lost both your parents at 16. How did you get through? How did you get to move on, continue with your life? Where did I go?

Speaker 2: 7:05

Yeah, no, I mean it was a long process. I definitely struggled with mental health struggles and I experienced firsthand what it's like to have that extreme loneliness, that anxiety, that stress but actually led to me dropping out of high school. And here I sit today with a master's in public health just thinking about how I had to keep moving forward and just that mantra kind of rolling around my head of show up to help and just like I say, I care of myself so I can take care of the family and take care of essentially my community. That I was able to fall back on. That helped lift me up.

Speaker 1: 7:41

We share some common things. You know my father would always tell me this stuff stuck in my mind. It still doesn't today. Take care of business first, then play. Don't play and then do business. Take care of your business first, and that sticks with me every day so that's pretty cool. So you got your master's degree. Let's backtrack. So high school where'd you go to? High school, where'd you go to?

Speaker 2: 8:00

college, right, right. So I took a stint at Connorsville Middle School that lasted until, I think about maybe a little past freshman year, and then I left there and I decided to kind of find myself. For a bit. I worked as a freelance writer and I helped kind of ghost write some books and things which, because I wanted to be a writer when I was younger, I thought that'd be a good way to pay the bills Didn't make that much money at it, all you know and from there I had a friend connect me to the idea of working in emergency medicine. So I became an EMT.

Speaker 2: 8:43

I went to an academy, learned a lot there that I still use today and a lot of the classes I teach, and not the medical side, but just the theories of if you're working in the back of an ambulance. You got to make sure you know what you're doing, because if you get in the way, someone can get hurt. If you don't know how to help someone properly, if you work out of your scope of practice, somebody can get hurt. And I translate that so when I work with human service professionals now. So you know, hey, stay in your scope of practice, there's time to learn new ways of helping people, but you really got to make sure that you are doing what you know and not just guessing, because you got to really help people when they're in these difficult moments. They're there with you, they want your help to walk through life, but you got to make sure that you're showing up to help with your knowledge as well. Right, wow.

Speaker 2: 9:29

And then from there I went to Ivy Tech, got my associates in general studies. After I kind of bounced around, there was some criminal justice, there was some medical assisting, there was some human services professional that I was looking at. But one day my advisor was like hey, like you have a lot of credits, have you heard of general studies? And I was like, okay, I could dig that. Yeah, I'll get you out of here.

Speaker 1: 9:52

Exactly. Yeah, I'll be right back.

Speaker 2: 9:54

I get it, I get it, and at that time I was working full time in community mental health and I was a manager of a unit that worked with children and families who were experiencing mental challenges. So that was a lot of great experience. And then I went over to IU East, got my bachelor's in psychology and then I went up to Purdue and got my master's in public health Wow, man, good for you.

Speaker 1: 10:17

That's amazing and I talk about it to the youth and things and it's just amazing that the experiences that we have take us down certain paths and finally it clicks for us. I didn't know really what I wanted to be you know what I mean but finally, just certain experiences start clicking for me. I'm like man, I like that, I like this, I really like this position. So what was that moment for you where you're like I got it. This is me right here, right.

Speaker 2: 10:44

Well, actually it was a supervisor that I had who I didn't see eye to eye with and if she hears this she's probably laughing right now, because she knows who she is, because I've had this conversation with her. But she told me one day you know, maybe you should look at working in public health, maybe you should explore this idea because you want to make a big impact on the community, you want to work on these big community initiatives, maybe you should look at public health. I'd never really heard of a degree path in public health because my original thought was I'm going to become a therapist and I'm going to do counseling for people. But she saw kind of what I was interested in and gave me that idea and I was like, well, I should maybe look at it.

Speaker 2: 11:27

Wasn't happy about it because I didn't want to do it at the beginning, but she saw something in you, yeah, yeah, but she was right and she knows she was right and she's probably smiling now.

Speaker 1: 11:37

That's awesome. Yeah, so we're going to go into a segment, have a little fun. I'm not sure if you've seen this segment online or not, but just kind of. We call it the Roe City Hot and Ready, cold and Steady. Okay, all right, so just basically. I wanted to shout out a couple of different sentences to you, or topics like Favorite Park, you said, or Favorite Piece of Place, and kind of, let us know what comes to mind in a while. Okay.

Speaker 2: 11:59

Okay, now, all right, let's do it. Favorite Park oh, glenn Miller, why? I like that. There's trails in it, now that you can go take a little hike behind the one of the bench areas on the side, I think it's like next to the playground, towards the back, but they have some trails now you can take a hike in.

Speaker 1: 12:24

Cool, cool. You mentioned a couple different local colleges, so we got, I think, of Erlen Ivy, tech, iue comes to mind. Which one comes to mind real quick?

Speaker 2: 12:33

Oh, Ivy Tech.

Speaker 1: 12:34

Why.

Speaker 2: 12:35

Well, I'm an adjunct there now with the Human Services and they helped me get my start. They, actually they directed me when I first walked into Ivy Tech. Like I said, I was a high school dropout, I didn't have a high school degree, and they said, hey, go get your your GED real quick, down the street at Richmond Education Center and I was like, okay, I'll go do this, but they still let me enroll and they, they welcomed me in and they really helped me give that, get that start with a higher education.

Speaker 1: 13:02

Wow, wow, shout out, ivy Tech there. Yeah, so if you could tell so, if you got, you've got someone that you know one of your friends is relocating to, or they might relocate to, richmond area. And you're like, hey, come on into town. And they're like, hey, you know, patrick, what's a? What's a good place, what's a good night? Look like for us to go on a date for with, with our, my spouse. What does that perfect night look like? Where would you, where would you recommend for them to go?

Speaker 2: 13:24

Man, if you're looking for food, I would say Taitara. That that's probably the hidden gym here in Richmond. Taitara is amazing, or Goals are. So if you like, if you like that type of food, they have a good buffet on the weekend too. And just saying this, that's pretty good.

Speaker 1: 13:39

All right, thanks, patrick, a little fun there. So what? What's a one? We're shifting gears here, so what's one thing about our community that you would share with someone looking to relocate here?

Speaker 2: 13:49

I would say that if you are interested in joining a community where you can find a place to not just plant your roots but also find a passion, you know to work on different initiatives, this is the place that you can do it. If you're interested in social causes, there's tons of those you can get behind. If you're interested in helping build up a community, this is a place you can come, because we're always looking for innovative ways to, to help improve really the, the I don't know how to, how to put it. We're always looking for ways to Our local presence, yeah.

Speaker 2: 14:34

We're always looking for ways to improve just the the experience for people, I think, in the community.

Speaker 1: 14:41

I agree with you there. It's a great way to put it. And so, just going down, man you, you might sign up to be my co-host or something because you just leave me right into the next. So you think about local business and growth, education, employment in mind. Where would you like to see our community within the next five years?

Speaker 2: 14:58

Well, I think mine.

Speaker 2: 14:59

My question might be a little selfish when it comes my industry, but I would really like it to be a place for um, a continued education for people who are looking to be in the helping profession, and what I mean by that is, uh. It'd be great if we were able to host, uh, you know, conferences here that look at educating uh employers but also people who are in the helping profession to uh to do their work, but at a uh a higher level. You know, learn, learn new techniques, um, uh, when we're looking at helping profession, there's a lot of conferences and Dayton, a lot of conferences in uh, indianapolis, all over the state, and a lot of the professionals you have to travel around, but I feel like we have so many universities here and auditoriums that this could be a hub for continued education to to help us and even outside of the mental health world. I don't want to be super selfish, but we have the opportunity to, to host educational opportunities to to help us all become empowered and and then just keep learning and being curious.

Speaker 1: 16:06

And you heard that everyone and these professionals are going to need places to stay restaurants, entertainment. Why, why can't we get this going? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 16:14

Because if we're attracting your talent, they're going to need continued education too. So just thinking about that, that could be a good benefit.

Speaker 1: 16:20

Absolutely, patrick. What's one business that's currently not here that we may have had in this community, but it left, or something that you might go to, like Cincinnati or Indianapolis, that is your favorite store. Okay, what would you like to see here? That's not here?

Speaker 2: 16:35

Um, well, this goes. This goes back to food again, cause you know we we like food. Yeah Right, um, and I'd have to say a Mediterranean restaurant. I don't know if you've been to Mediterranean or getting like some like falafel or some like shawarma. That would be amazing to get in town. I know we've a lot of restaurants, but there's always room for shawarma. There we go. An opportunity.

Speaker 1: 16:54

You're listening, Uh. Could you share a memorable moment or experience from your involvement in the community?

Speaker 2: 17:02

Yeah for sure, um, uh. So I've had a long history of working with drug-free Wayne County partnership Um, and I'll give some history on what that is. It's an organization that is the local coordinating council for Wayne County and every county in Indiana has the local coordinating council, and it's this, this great group of people, who can come together and they can help distribute funds that are um provided to the group from the police departments, and these funds are collected through counter measurement fees or arrest arrest fees that are associated with certain um substance use offenses. Okay, and we can redistribute these funds to nonprofits to help in the world of policing, education and treatment and looking at finding ways to make an impact on substance misuse locally. Um, through these funds, but also through this gathering we have monthly called the drug free Wayne County partnership meeting. That was. That was a mouthful Um, but my most memorable um piece of working with that group is um.

Speaker 2: 18:02

I had the opportunity to serve as the um interim director quite a few years ago, um, after we received the drug free community's grant, which was the really huge grant um that we were able to get from at the time, the CDC and the White House, and what it did was it helped us find local solutions to local problems where we could engage the youth with finding ways to reduce substance use. We could engage employers look at policy change, um and it was just a great opportunity to build momentum around this idea of we're a community but we can also help solve these problems we're having. And it's memorable because when we announced we got the grant there was so much excitement and the excitement hasn't left. Yet you know, we're five years down the road, the grant funds ran out because it's a timed grant, but the excitement is still there. The power of that change is still there.

Speaker 1: 19:02

Wow, you've had your hands on a lot of things, man.

Speaker 2: 19:04

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 19:05

It's inspiring. So there's someone out there I'm sure that's sitting back like man. How can I help? What can I do? I mean, what would you say to that person that just doesn't know where to jump in and go? Be a part of trying to just be more active in the community to help our organization. What would you say?

Speaker 2: 19:23

to them? Yeah for sure. So this actually works out, because one of the classes I teach at Ivy Tech talks about finding organizations that align with your values and your beliefs and learning more about them, and that's something you can definitely do here in Wayne County. If there's something that you're passionate about, you can find a group that's also passionate about it. It could be anywhere from historic preservation to LGBTQIA plus rights to looking at. Even the one that I've always been interested in haven't had a chance to really dive into. It is cemetery preservation, right? So people who like clean up gravestones- Interesting it's a very.

Speaker 2: 20:01

It's an activity that can be very. It's a good activity and I don't know. I just think that'd be a cool thing to look at. But what I'm saying is there's so many associations and so many groups here in Wayne County that you can get behind anything looking at help. If you're like the animals, there's help the animals. If you wanna help youth, you could always volunteer with, maybe, the Boys and Girls Club or Birth to Five, future achievers Future achievers yeah, definitely so there's. If there's something you're passionate about, you can find another group of people here who are there with you.

Speaker 1: 20:36

And I visited your office about a month ago and I think I asked you this question there. But who is one person or organization that you would like to partner with or collaborate with on a project that you haven't done so yet? Who would it be and why?

Speaker 2: 20:52

That's a good question. Let me think about that for a second. All right.

Speaker 1: 21:04

Well, you probably already work with everybody, patrick.

Speaker 2: 21:07

Yeah, I'm thinking like who have we not had the opportunity?

Speaker 1: 21:10

to work with.

Speaker 2: 21:11

If you asked me a month ago, I would have said the universities. But we've been able to work with universities and our work has taken us to Indiana, ohio. We've supported initiatives down in Florida and New Mexico. So I, I I welcome all partnerships, I guess, is what I would say. So I'm not, I can't pinpoint one, because I'm always happy to have that conversation. Um, and I don't think I super touched on exactly what we do at mezzo.

Speaker 1: 21:39

If I could, absolutely yeah.

Speaker 2: 21:41

So, uh, the the core services that we provide at mezzo solutions is focused on helping the helpers. So, uh, the one of the main things that we work on is providing um in-person or virtual education to the helping professionals around that model, or show up to help, or we can teach them about things like self-care, mindfulness, um person-first language, um looking at stress management, um understanding, uh community trauma what that looks like where we can provide workshops to organizations by coming in or having them come to us and then providing that, and we we do those a lot, so we're always looking to do more. So if anyone's interested in those, we can always get that scheduled for you.

Speaker 1: 22:26

Am I allowed to do this on? Put you kind of put you on the spot. Can you share a stress relief tip that forwards maybe?

Speaker 2: 22:34

Okay, is that?

Speaker 1: 22:34

appropriate. Yeah, yeah, I could totally do that. Yeah, so you know you're having a bad day at work, or just what was. What would you recommend someone?

Speaker 2: 22:41

All right.

Speaker 1: 22:41

So everyone's different, so I'll just start with that, okay, so that's.

Speaker 2: 22:44

It's tough to kind of pinpoint what exactly you could do, um, and, and typically, you know what makes you feel good, right, you know, you know, you know what, what could be healthy, what could be unhealthy for you. When it comes to feeling good, um, you know, if you're, if you're mobile, um, taking a walk is always a great way to get some physical activity, clear your mind, get your muscles moving, kind of shake it out, for sure. Um, if you're not so mobile, um, you know, we always, uh, we always encourage journaling, so journaling is a great way to sit down and reflect.

Speaker 1: 23:14

I just started doing that. All right, I'm not being consistent with it, but it's what my mind to do it is.

Speaker 2: 23:19

It's tough, yeah, we um, uh, we encourage everyone to to try to journal at least once a day. Right, and it's it's tough to do to put in our schedule. But once you get used to it and once you get in the routine it helps to kind of dump those thoughts in your journal and kind of process and think about you know where have I been today, what do I want to, what do I want to do tomorrow, and help you really reflect on that and my phone didn't.

Speaker 1: 23:41

I'm iPhone did it update and it's got a new Apple mirrored from Apple called journal.

Speaker 2: 23:44

Okay.

Speaker 1: 23:45

Yeah, it's pretty, it's really sweet. You should check it out, yeah, we were.

Speaker 2: 23:48

we were doing a workshop with the um Indiana recovery network, which is a group from mental health America. Okay, and they were telling us that all their iPhones got that new journal.

Speaker 1: 23:57

I love it. I love it. I was getting a groove with it, but, yeah, I see the impact of it. Yeah, it's good, it's good. So, thinking about our community, if you can give our community a letter grade on a report card a through F, okay, what would that letter be and why?

Speaker 2: 24:14

Oh, okay, I mean, I would say a, b for sure. All right, you know, we we have a lot of support for people, we have a lot of opportunity, but we can always do better. There's always opportunity to do more. Okay, I agree.

Speaker 1: 24:25

Very fair response. We're just wrapping up here. Is there any any one or any, any organization out there that you'd like to give a shout out to for supporting you or anyone on your staff? Anyone you want to give a shout out to today?

Speaker 2: 24:39

Um, yeah, I may like to give a shout out to my wife and co-founder, megan. Megan has been a great support. She's the the, the mind of all the mental health education that we really create. Um, uh, but also, uh, our our contract therapist, amanda Gertin, who joined us uh quite a few months ago. She's been making a lot of uh, a lot of ground and a lot of connections and, um, she actually had her first uh community event this past weekend. Uh, couples and cupcakes, where she she brought couples together to to help them uh just learn about relationships but also have a pretty intense uh cupcake decorating contest. Sounds very fun to you. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 25:17

That's awesome, man. It's been a pleasure having you here and I hope to have you and your wife back next time. Yeah, and maybe we can share some best tips or dealing with stress management and things like that. Yeah, that'd be great. I look forward to continue to grow and much success. Thank you, my friend. Thank you, appreciate it.