(gentle music) - Wyoming is known for the energy industry that we have here.

We turn the lights on.

(gentle music) - Gillette specifically, energy is the town.

So without coal, without oil, this town would not be here.

- We have that boom and bust economy here, and it's very much tied to the political scene at the time.

- What do we want?

(crowd responds) - When do we want it?

- Now!

- It's gonna wear on you every single day of your life, if everybody's talking that we wanna get rid of your job, that stress never goes away, it's always there.

- Is the mine gonna even be open?

What am I gonna do if the mine has to close?

- The Black Jewel Mining Company in Gillette unexpectedly shut down yesterday, locking out nearly 600 workers.

- At my lowest point, I felt if something wasn't done, I would drown.

You know, especially the coal truck drivers- - There is a mental health crisis amongst the energy community.

It's been brewing for a long time.

High rates of depression, anxiety, addiction, especially given the tolls of the job itself.

- But there is still very much that stigma of it's weak to go out and get help.

- [Brian J. Edwards] Our energy and coal mining community deserve all the help that we can provide them, and addressing what's going on.

(gentle music) - [Announcer] Funding for this program is provided by the Hughes Charitable Foundation, energized by love and faith, and inspired by the vibrant community around us.

Hughes Charitable Foundation supports organizations in helping those across Wyoming who need it most.

A private donation from Jack and Carol Nunn, providing statewide support for Wyoming citizens in body, mind, and spirit.

The John P Ellbogan Foundation, empowering the people of Wyoming to lead healthy lives in thriving communities.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Wyoming, proudly providing funding for education to raise awareness of the mental health crisis in Wyoming, and connect people to available care that promotes positive mental health and hopefully saves lives.

(birds chirping) (gentle music) (birds chirping) - Most people think, when I ask 'em a question of what do you think about Wyoming, say, "Oh gosh, there's Yellowstone, there's the Grand Tetons, and the Snake River, and that's about it."

But anything you can think of that has anything to do with electricity, energy, heating your home, a lot of that energy comes from Wyoming.

You can trace it back to us.

- Coal and other energies are the backbone of our infrastructure, of our tax base.

It's vital to the state, not just to Gillette and Campbell County, but to all of Wyoming.

- Gillette specifically, energy is the town.

So without energy, without coal, without oil, this town would not be here.

(gentle music) - You could probably throw a penny and hit 10 people who are in energy.

(chuckles) Gillette just created generations of coal miners.

- They've watched their parents or uncles or grandparents work in the energy field and industry and they want to be a part of that.

- The schools, the healthcare, the parks, all of that is money from coal mining.

It is the lifeblood of our community.

But for the energy industry and our coal miners, the job takes a toll after a while.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (train whistle shrieks) (train bell rings) - I've been in mining 20 years.

I started mining in 2004 as an operator, so just operating heavy equipment.

Now I am a training coordinator at Dry Fork Mine in Gillette, Wyoming.

Our mine is part of the Powder River Basin.

There are 10 mines within that stretch.

Powder River Basin runs all the way from Douglas, Wyoming, all the way up through Sheridan and into Montana.

Get here at 5:30, our line out meeting is at 5:45, so I always try to catch the line out meeting and just see what's going on in the pit today.

It doesn't change a whole lot, but it's good to know where people are at, what people are doing.

(gentle music) (people chattering) - Well good morning everybody, we'll get started.

Does anybody have any safety shares or concerns they'd like to bring out this morning?

- [Miner] Just drink plenty of water.

It's hot.

- And then one more thing too.

Engines are running hotter.

The oils are hotter.

The hoses, they're more likely to burst, so just rehearse what you're gonna do.

Nick, do you have anything?

- If your AC isn't working, shut it down.

Make sure you get it taken care of.

And then make sure you look out for each other.

Overall, mining in Wyoming, the type of worker that you're gonna get, they will put their head down and they will get the job done.

So whether that be for a shift, whether that be for a week, whether that be for the year, whatever that takes, that's the type of worker that you're gonna get.

- [Supervisor] Everybody have a good safe shift.

Be careful.

- [Nick Ullrich] Dry Fork Mine employs 69 people.

We run three daytime crews.

Each crew runs approximately 12 people, and then we have one night crew that runs, it's about half, and they run about six.

(gentle music) (engine humming) - Mining is one of the safer professions you can have.

We mine everything with loaders, front end loaders and haul trucks, but there are hazards.

This machinery is not forgiving.

If you have an incident with a haul truck, it is not forgiving.

But you can do this job very safely if you follow the processes and procedures that are in place.

- Safety is always considered number one, and as equipment evolves, equipment manufacturers are doing everything they can to make it as safe as possible for whatever tasks that you're doing.

So my job is anything that needs to be trained on, that's what I'm doing, or coordinating it to be done here at Dry Fork.

Nobody wants to go to work and get hurt.

- We're a surface coal mine.

We've been here since 1990 and we run a 24-7 operation.

(machinery beeping) (horn honks) - [Worker] 10-4, we've got one loader working... - When we get the coal, we just take the dirt off the top, we go down to the coal.

We don't go underground or anything like that.

We're a really small mine, comparatively.

If you go to those other mines, they might have 10 or 12 pits that they're all running at simultaneously.

- [Operator] 400 coal trucks, you copy will be in your traffic pattern for a little bit.

- This has already all been mined.

All of this has been reclaimed.

So the stuff on the right is all turned back over to the state.

So we just keep moving this whole thing all the way...

I mean, we're moving all the way to that road that we came in on.

- We drilled a lot of holes up there on the top overburden bench, which is our sea bench.

We have to blast every bench because our routers cannot dig this material without being shot.

- [Radio Operator] 30 seconds until shot - [Worker] 30 seconds.

- Nobody can be within 2000 feet in front of that shot or 1000 feet behind it, or to the sides.

(gentle music) - [Radio Operator] Fire in the hole.

(explosion blasts) (gentle music) (gentle music continues) (machinery beeps) (gentle music) (machinery rumbling) (gentle music) - At Dry Fork Mine, we mine about four million tons of coal a year, and about two million of that goes to Laramie River Station, which is in Wheatland, Wyoming, and the other two million goes just right across the street to Dry Fork Power Plant.

We mine all of our coal out of that one pit.

Production today, loading coal, loading over burden, gonna have the silos filled up soon, so when the train comes, we'll be ready to load it out.

That's the day to day.

- Some aspects of the job that can be challenging were equipment operation when I was in that field, because you're alone in a piece of equipment for 12 hours by yourself.

It's monotonous.

- They have contact on the radio with their fellow employees, but for most of the time, they are alone in that piece of equipment for almost all of the shift.

- [Nick Ullrich] The physical side, that's an easy part.

The mental side, that's a difficult thing.

- Sometimes you leave work with problems you didn't have when you got to work.

You have a lot of time to sit and think, and sometimes that isn't good.

- [Nick Ullrich] Coal mining, as far as mental health and what I think affects us as coal miners a lot, is the job and the uncertainty.

There is a lot of uncertainty with coal.

It's just this constant every day stress.

- I remember a time when someone could not drive more than three or four miles without seeing a coal mine where you'd be able to find work.

Now I have employees coming from as many miles.

One of them drives over 75 miles from the state of Kentucky.

- With the world as it is, they're facing the possibility of transitioning energy into new forms that's away from coal.

(gentle music) - A lot of the insecurity is that the doors are gonna shut in the future because they did shut in the past.

- Local workers are telling reporters with the Gillette News Record that they were blindsided by the sudden closure as they were being told to collect their tools and go.

- This is their career.

This is all that they know.

So that happening again, I think is on every energy worker's mind.

- If you're talking about you're losing your livelihood, right, it doesn't matter.

Every day, that's gonna be something that you think about.

There's a stress there all the time.

(gentle music) (shovel scritching) - Historically, in Wyoming, there are a lot of families who have depended financially on coal mining as an industry to provide for their families, generations of coal miners.

In some of these towns, there's nothing else to do.

There are no other industries.

There are no other jobs.

These families have strong, long lasting reputations in these communities, and so it's not just a negative view of you, but it's a negative view of your entire family.

- A lot of just self insecurities, am I good enough to go find something else?

Am I good enough to go to college because I'm gonna need to now somehow get a entirely different career field.

Those types of self negative beliefs starts to spiral down into depression, anxiety.

They just are overwhelmed by outside life bombarding in.

(gentle music) - State of Wyoming, we're right at the top, if not at the top of completed suicide rates.

The attempts are even greater.

We can go probably every couple months and we'll hear about something, mostly amongst adult men.

Underneath the surface this stuff is bubbling and it comes out.

It's just a vicious cycle.

And so if you throw on some alcohol or something else on top of that, it can be explosive.

- It's a challenge in not only just the energy field, but also in Wyoming in general and western states as well.

And that individualism, people think I should be able to help myself.

It's weak to ask for help.

It's like cowboy up.

Suck it up buttercup.

(laughs) You know, all those kinds of things.

And so reaching out for help when a person needs help, there's a lot of stigma against that.

- I had the same frame of mind that I think you find in a lot of coal miners.

You wanna figure that stuff out.

Even if you don't know you have zero idea, you don't wanna ask, right?

You want to figure that stuff out.

Like you want to be that person.

In 2016, that was a presidential race that I think had a lot of effect on what coal was going to do.

I mean, I sold my house.

- [Hillary Clinton] We're gonna put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.

(gentle music) - If coal goes away, Gillette goes away.

I started having relationship issues, ended up getting a divorce, and my dad passed away.

This was all in a stretch of what felt like three months, everything just came down.

(waves swishing) I was just in the throes of being in a rip tide.

Can't swim out of it, doesn't matter how strong of a swimmer you are, it doesn't matter what that is, you're not going to get out of that depression or anxiety or both.

Things got really darker for me.

It just felt like I could not handle anything.

Throw coal mining on top of that and everything was unraveling.

How do I fix this?

Like tell me the next thing.

In coal mining, tell me the next piece that we're gonna do and I'll get it done.

But that's not the way it goes.

And I was willing, at that point in time, to do anything.

I didn't care what the stigma was.

I gotta do something.

(gentle music) (door clatters) (birds chirping) - I grew up here most of my life and one of the reasons I came back to Wyoming was to give back to a community that really gave me a lot.

Good morning.

- Hey Brian, how's it going?

- Good, how are you guys?

- Good.

- The best way I could do that was just really open up our doors to this community that has been underserved for such a long time.

Catch me up on, business-wise, or... - If it's the first time somebody's coming in for mental health issues and they've never been to counseling before, there is a lot of anxiety and a lot of the anxiety comes from the unknown.

There's also some concern about confidentiality.

- There is a lot of apprehension in not wanting to be thrown medication to solve the problem.

I think people genuinely want to get to the root of it because they don't wanna keep reliving the cycle of it.

I don't know what's wrong with me, but I just can't be angry anymore.

And that' how they show up, and then from there, the work's done.

- The stigma behind it, and I think what people think is they think of the TV shows.

I'm gonna go lay down on a couch and he's gonna ask me all these stupid questions and we're gonna try to get to the root of my childhood issues and you know, they're gonna hypnotize me, and all that.

- Hey.

- What's happening?

- Hey, good to see you.

- You too.

Good to meet you.

- Welcome back.

- Thanks.

- Come on back.

I've not one time ever felt like I was in the middle of a therapy session.

- [Brian J. Edwards] There you go.

(gentle music) My industry, the mental health industry, has not done a great job in presenting how we do things, and we base a lot of things on what's wrong with you.

Yeah, so just check in with me around heart, mind, body, soul, where you're at.

The approach I tend to take is, I know there's some hard stuff going on and we definitely want to talk about that, but I also want to get to know you as a person.

I think about the relationship that I have with my sons.

What's it been like for you since he's been out of the house?

- You know, that first, let's see, it's been sucky along with everything else, it's kind of sucky.

So...

The therapy that I get and that I like is I get to go talk to somebody.

I think I get to hear myself saying whatever it is, whatever issue is going on, whatever I have that day or whatever, I get to say that out loud and talk about it.

The one thing that I would miss the most is seeing him every day, even if it was for 10 minutes at night when he's grumpy or whatever.

And it has helped me out of those really, really bad times.

I always joke with him that he just makes me solve my own problems.

- You know, these guys, men and women, they're defined by their professions, a lot of us are.

And so we try to take that into, tell me about you, besides your profession.

Okay, maybe there's more to me than just my problems in my job.

- I want coal miners to know, it can be like going and talking to your buddy who you know is not gonna turn around and say anything, (laughs) right?

Like, I can trust Brian 100% with anything.

I have not sought out medication to help me with anxiety or anything like that.

Therapy is what works for me.

- That comfort and connectedness of you and the person you're working with will help you keep going.

It'll help deepen your work, it'll help heal.

My hope for you is that there's a continuation of the things you've been working really hard on, really putting into practice, outside of these sessions.

- There had to be something that could get me back on the right track, from the first session.

- We're good then.

- All right.

And that started to turn things around.

(gentle music) - 32.9% of US adults experience both a mental health condition and substance abuse in 2022.

I think that's a pretty shocking statistic if you think of that many people having- We are a small enough employer, we are more like a family, and we genuinely care about all of our employees.

And I think as an employer, that's our responsibility to take the best care of them we can.

We really try to focus on mental health, especially in, I'd say, the last year.

In 2021, 51.7% of US women received mental health services while only 40% of men received mental health services.

Why do you think that is?

Why the discrepancies on the percentages?

- Men may not ask for help.

- Men don't wanna ask for help.

They're more likely not to, right?

We've got some great resources through our employee insurance.

We've got an employee assistance program.

That program is available 24-7, and one nice thing about it is you're entitled to five free visits a year on that.

Nothing is held against an employee for needing some sort of help like that.

It's treated the same as a physical condition.

- Far and wide, still the best form of referral and the way that we get people is word of mouth.

"Hey, my buddy came in, he got help.

I wanna get help too."

- From what Kelly talked about, I'm gonna go on and just talk a little bit more about mental health.

So mental health includes our emotional, psychological, and social wellbeing.

If it gets into mental illness, that's something that disrupts your mental state and interrupts how you feel, think, communicate, and behave.

Now what do you think comes to mind with mental illness?

- Depression.

- Depression.

What else?

Anybody have any others?

- Anxiety.

- Anxiety, right?

That's absolutely a big one, right?

The number one message that I want to have with why you guys are here and why I volunteered to do this is that I want my coal mining people to understand that therapy, it doesn't have to be the way that you think it is.

And I know how you think it is.

If more of us did it, it would take away that fear that then others have.

Most mental illnesses don't improve on their own, and if untreated, a mental illness may get worse over time and can cause some serious problems, right?

So if I can be the one to tell 'em that, "Hey, this helps," if that pulls somebody out of that spot where I was at, then perfect.

(gentle music) (people chattering) As far as life goes, not saying that there's not anxiety because there is.

It's every day, but if you don't have all of that stuff building on top of you, if you're only dealing with one or two things, it's a much better life.

(chuckles) I have had a lot of really good things happen.

I mean, me and my wife are back together, so that's a huge one.

I have one son, so that relationship is much better than what it was, and I think what it could have been if I didn't do anything.

If there's a reason that I miss two sessions, I feel it.

I can tell that I'm missing it, so I know it's doing good.

- The biggest positive outcome with working with people in the coal industry, they have found hope and a worthwhile reason for staying alive.

I've seen people be able to handle their anxieties better, repair relationships in their marriages and with their children, and that's always a huge win.

That's a victory.

- The folks who run the mines are coming around to a lot of advocacy for the mental health of their employees, whereas five years ago, that would've never have happened.

- [Kelly] I love working at Dry Fork because we have the best employees in the world.

I think we have a responsibility to have a positive and good workplace culture.

It makes them better employees if you take care of them all the way around their overall wellbeing.

- Now we don't have any sort of guarantee of the future and we don't know what the future's gonna hold.

A lot of times the answer is teaching and learning how to really be in the present and not put so much stock in your job, but pour into things that are longer lasting, like your family, your relationships, your sense of self.

The more that you can connect socially, the more you can be actually an involved part of your community, the more that you're going to feel grounded and your purpose is elsewhere other than this shifting industry.

(gentle music) - Our energy and coal mining community, they're salt of the Earth and all they want to do is just help and provide for their families.

I really hope that we can speak more on their behalf and do whatever we can to surround them with whatever kind of help they require.

(engine hums) (gentle music) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues)