SCOTT DUDLEY

Scott has been co-host, along with with Maria Wyatt, of “Let’s Talk About It” since the show’s inception in July 2005.

Scott was hired by Imperial County Behavioral Health Services in 1991 as a case manager at the Vista Sands Program, a school-based elementary behavioral modification program in the Children’s Division. Since then he has served in a number of capacities. Among the programs he has managed are CalWORKs, Proposition 36, the California Offender Alcohol and Drug Program, The Perinatal Program for pregnant and parenting women, the Adult Alcohol and Drug Program, Youth and Young Adult Mental Health Service Act Specialty Programs, and currently The Center for Clinical Training which focuses on Staff Development, Outreach, and Media Production.

Some of Scott’s favorite segments include a conversation with Leonard Knight, who crashed his homemade hot air balloon just outside of Niland, then built and painted Salvation Mountain at the site over a course of decades. “We asked him why,” Scott said.

“His explanation, now lost in the deep archives since this was pre-podcast, brought tears with its sincerity, humility, and spiritual profundity.”

Scott has lived in the Imperial Valley for 30 years. He said he enjoys the desert, hunting and gathering collectable rocks. He has written and self-published six books on the human condition.

“I don’t believe that anyone deserves to suffer from mental illness and I believe that much suffering arises from circumstance and context, particularly the impacts of trauma,”

Scott said. “I am optimistic that by building community caring, we can collectively reduce the trauma we inflict upon each other, breaking generational cycles of trauma and its attendant suffering.”