BTM178 - Robin "Phoenix" Johnson - Healing Veterans through Humor

Behind The Mission

Show Summary

On today’s episode, we feature a conversation with Retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Robin Johnson, CEO of the Best Medicine Brigade and Executive Director of Heal*arious a nonprofit offering therapeutic humor programming for improved psychological performance.

About Today’s Guest

Lieutenant Colonel (Retired) Johnson served over twenty years in the U.S. Army before making her transition into the entertainment industry and veteran support space. Her career highlights include five deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq, commanding at the company and battalion levels, and serving as the Special Assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

After retiring from the Army, Robin discovered her new mission to heal people, organizations and communities through humor. A strong suicide prevention advocate, Robin founded HEALHARIOUS, a non-profit offering therapeutic humor programming for improved psychological performance. She works in collaboration with mental health clinicians to develop customized programming for veterans, first responders, athletes, and corporate audiences worldwide.

Robin is a Level III Certified Humor Professional through the Association for Applied & Therapeutic Humor and teaches “Problem Framing Through Humor” for the Institute of Defense & Business at Duke University. She is also an internationally touring stand-up comedian, TEDx speaker, and has been featured on USA Today, Fox, and ABC.

Links Mentioned in this Episode

Heal*arious Web site

PsychArmor Resource of the Week

This episode’s PsychArmor Resource of the Week is the podcast episode where we featured the Armed Services Arts Partnership, Episode 83 with the Executive Director of ASAP, Brian Jenkins. In that episode, Brian shares about how that creative community provides free art and comedy classes to members of the military affiliated population.

You can find a link to that episode here: https://psycharmor.org/podcast/brian-jenkins

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Episode Partner:

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Theme Music

Our theme music Don’t Kill the Messenger was written and performed by Navy Veteran Jerry Maniscalco, in cooperation with Operation Encore, a non profit committed to supporting singer/songwriter and musicians across the military and Veteran communities.

Producer and Host Duane France is a retired Army Noncommissioned Officer, combat veteran, and clinical mental health counselor for service members, veterans, and their families. You can find more about the work that he is doing at www.veteranmentalhealth.com