Who Am I?
My Journey Toward a Therapeutic Profession
My full name is Jason Dax Hays. I was born in Fort Smith, AR in 1974 and have lived in the neighboring town of Van Buren for pretty much all of my life. I graduated from Van Buren High School in 1992 - uncertain as most people are as to "where to go from here..."
Back in the 90s after originally pursuing a major in English and then dropping out for a time, I re-entered the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville with a renewed intent to finish my bachelor's degree in Psychology instead. I was a part of one of the first programs there which offered a minor in Religious Studies as well.
A big part of my decision to focus in psychology was helping my father deal with his mental illness. I slowly watched as the loving parent who raised me and had retired successfully from a job as a school principal descended into the depths of a psychotic mental illness. As time went on (and to the present day), I helped to guide my father's affairs and to get his symptoms under control. He helped me as much as I helped him during this time to grow in understanding and compassion. We had bonded strongly in my early life, and due to this good fortune I think he was able to see through some of his paranoia and reality test to a greater degree. By that same good grace, it was that much easier for me to be with him through the bad days.
Another part was the job as a convenience store clerk I had chosen for the year or two that I dropped out of the University of Arkansas. With this job, I had time for self-reflection but also it gave me the opportunity to engage with many average people on a one-on-one basis. One might easily dismiss such employment as a "slacker's" chore or something done by someone to just get by, but for me it became an integral lesson in "learning" people. You must understand that up until this point, I was a very shy and introverted individual. This early structured experience of encountering total strangers to sell them cigarettes and sodas from the store brought me out of my shell.
I graduated from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville in the year 2000. For the next three years, I worked in an unrelated profession doing data entry work for a now permanently closed company called LOISlaw (LOIS = Law Office Information Systems) in Van Buren. This was again an opportunity for introspection and perhaps most importantly where I was to meet my significant other Jennifer who I am still with to this day and later became my wife. While there, I heard through word of mouth from a close friend about a mental health agency called Perspectives Behavioral Health Management.
In January of 2004, I decided to leave my data entry work to try and apply some of the knowledge I had gathered heretofore from both college and life experiences to become a Mental Health Paraprofessional (MHPP) through Perspectives. My first task for them was to work with chronically mentally ill clients in Ozark at an assisted living facility called Mountain View Lodge. Though I would only work at this one site for about a year and a half (January 2004 to about May of 2005 when the living facility was shut down), it would continue to influence me throughout my career to date. This place had been described by some as "a psych hospital without walls". I became the team leader of the "Mountain View Evening Treatment" crew - going in at the early afternoon and working through the evening up until about 10 pm. On one hand, I was able to see human beings at their absolute worst - and at their most extreme - in this scenario. Violence was commonplace there, and psychotic thinking drove so many people to do (to use a euphemism) "very unusual" things. On the other hand, I was part of a team of mental health workers from whom I learned the art of crisis stabilization and so very much more. I recall how Dr. Max Baker asked me to sit in on one of his physician med management visits and would also educate us paraprofessionals during staffings. He as well as many other professionals have been valuable mentors.
After Mountain View Lodge closed, I moved to a child / teen day treatment and continued working as a paraprofessional with children who were emotionally disturbed. I had been bitten by the bug, so to speak, of working in mental health - it felt right! This is what I was meant to do! I then made the decision to go back to school for my Master's degree and to ultimately become a therapist. John Brown University had (and still has) a Fort Smith branch (as their main branch is in Siloam Springs). I continued working for Perspectives full time during the 5 years that I took night classes there and eventually emerged with a Master's of Science in Community Counseling in 2010. This was another wonderful journey for me as my professors presented so many different ideas and perspectives while giving me tools for my trade. I often tell others about the presentations we had to do with every semester class. To me, these were especially important because in doing so I learned to think on my feet and engage small groups of people - skills which are invaluable when it comes to running group therapy.
With Perspectives, I have worn many hats and been able to see and learn many sides of the mental health field. For about a year and a half, I was a Site Coordinator (an entry-level administrative position which amounts to an office manager) of their Greenwood Adult Day Treatment. I was entrusted to act as a go-between to coordinate our psychiatrist, our therapist, our staff nurse, our paraprofessionals, and the facility staff of the Greenwood Retirement Center toward the greater good of our clients who were most always residents of the retirement center. Outside of that up until about May of 2011, I was a Mental Health Paraprofessional in day treatment settings, doing everything from assisting therapists with their groups, running Rehabilitative Day Services, seeing clients individually for MHPP Interventions - even taking clients on field trips in the early days. I did work with children and adolescents for a time, but most of my work there as an MHPP has been with chronically mentally ill adults. Through all of this, I gained a working knowledge of psychotropic medications and the symptoms they treat which was only addressed in one of my graduate-level classes. Therapists don't write prescriptions or even suggest medications, of course, but this kind of experience was especially helpful in understanding the full clinical picture of any particular client.
In May 2011, I was finally granted my LAC (Licensed Associate Counselor) by the Arkansas Board of Examiners in Counseling. I had several supervisors who each imparted their own wisdom to me based on their own philosophies, attitudes, and experiences. My work continued with Perspectives, but now as a full-time licensed professional. I worked at several of their sites (and still do by the way), but to date I spent the longest time at their Clarksville, AR location. I was a therapist there for about 6 years until early in 2017 when I was notified of an opening much closer to my hometown of Van Buren in Greenwood - back to the location where I had been an MHPP and Site Coordinator so many years before! It was not until 2017 with that move that I started making preparations to go out into private practice by getting on different insurance boards and partnering with Dr. Monty Atchley at his Stonehaven Behavioral Health and Wellness location. Dr. Atchley has been an excellent mentor of mine throughout my professional life, and it is great to be able to work with him! Presently, I am working full time at Stonehaven - as Perspectives finally closed its doors in December 2019.
