Executive Board
Todd Thatcher, DO, FASAM
UTSAM President
Dr. Thatcher earned his undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of Nevada Las Vegas. He completed medical school at Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences, and psychiatry residency at the University of Kansas Medical Center. Then he completed a fellowship in forensic psychiatry at the University of Cincinnati. He is triple board certified in psychiatry, forensic psychiatry, and addiction medicine, and a fellow of the American Society of Addiction Medicine. He worked for 10 years as a certified medical review officer for Valley Lab.
He has worked for Valley Behavioral Health since 2009 and has served an executive role as Chief Medical Officer, and Vice President of Medical Services for the last 12 years, with executive oversight of the medical services, lab services, pharmacy, and data analytics department.
He is an adjunct clinical faculty at the University of Utah, and St. Mark’s Family Practice Residency, guest lecturer at Weber University, and serves on the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine at the University of Utah Office of Admissions Interview Sub-Committee. He serves on the Nursing Advisory Board for Weber University. He recently became a board member of CIT Utah which coordinates police and mental health worker crisis intervention teams across the state.
He serves as service missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in multiple capacities. He is a mission health advisor for the Salt Lake City West Mission, a first-call psychiatrist for the Africa South and Central America mission areas (71 missions) and is a member of the several committees in the missionary department: Psychiatry Committee, US Psychiatry Committee, Special Clearance Committee, and Pre-Review Committee.
He has taught mental health, substance abuse, and psychopharmacology for CIT and AP&P officers in Salt Lake and Tooele counties for 8 years and taught monthly substance abuse lectures for the CATS program in the Salt Lake County and Oxbow jails for 3 years from 2010 to 2013.
Steve Sugden, MD
UTSAM President-Elect
Steve Sugden earned his medical degree at the University of Utah School of Medicine in Salt Lake City, UT. He completed a Psychiatry Residency program at the University of California, Davis, in Sacramento, CA. He recently completed an MPH at the University of California, Berkeley, and an MSS at the U.S. Army War College. Dr. Sugden is board-certified in Psychiatry by the ABPN, Addiction Medicine by the ABPM, Disaster Medicine by the APPS, and Lifestyle Medicine by the ABLM. His interests include addiction medicine, lifestyle medicine, military and veteran medicine, disaster psychiatry, and education. He is an associate professor at the University of Utah, the Associate Training Director for the University of Utah’s Addiction Psychiatry and Addiction Medicine Fellowships, and the Addiction Medicine Consult Service director for the University of Utah Main Hospital.
Melanie Dance attended medical school at the University of California, San Franciso and subsequently completed her Family Medicine residency at St. Marks’ Family Medicine. Dr. Dance is currently the Medical Director and Assistant Residency Program Director/ Core Faculty for St. Mark’s Family Medicine in Salt Lake City, Utah. Dr. Dance has maintained an avid interest in addiction medicine starting in residency and extending throughout her practice including inpatient and outpatient treatment of all types of addiction medicine. She enjoys sharing her passion for addiction medicine with the residents in her program and with them has started an Addiction Medicine track to encourage increased awareness and treatment of substance use disorders of all types and encourage approriate treatment prescribing within the field of Family Medicine.
Mandi Spens, PMHNP
UTSAM Treasurer
My name is Mandi Spens. I am a psychiatric nurse practitioner. I currently live in South Weber, Utah. My first degree is in dental hygiene, which I use in providing oral health education to my patients. I have both a Nevada and Utah PMHNP license. Prior to working as a PMHNP, I have years of experience of working as a charge nurse on adult and pediatric behavioral health units at McKay Dee Hospital. I started working as a PMHNP in June of 2021. My career as a PMNHP began at Logan Daysprings, a substance use clinic where we offered methadone, suboxone, mental health medications, and long-acting injections. I had the opportunity to work with patients involved in IOP services. I also started Medication Assisted Treatment with a federal grant and Intermountain Health. I provide MAT to 6 different counties in Central Utah. I give monthly presentations to inmates at the Sevier County Jail. Any inmates that are interested in the program will then schedule an intake with myself while in the jail via telehealth, which takes place a few days before they were discharged. Inmates are then able to pick up their Suboxone prescription as soon as they were released from the jail. This program has been beneficial in preventing inmates from contacting former associates who had previously sold them illicit drugs after leaving the jail. Since then, Salt Lake County and Washington County have been added to my territory for MAT in Utah. I have loved meeting with the patients and members of the community during Safe Events. I have always been interested in psychiatry and broadened my interest and love for addiction medicine. I have seen so many change their lives and overcome so many challenges associated with mental health and addiction. I love to give patients hope and support, offering a non-judgmental environment so they are comfortable to trust me with their recovery from addiction. Aside from reaching their recovery goals, I hope that patients can also learn to believe in themselves and know they can accomplish their dreams. I am thankful to work in this field and find it challenging, but very rewarding.
Amy De la Garza, MD
Immediate Past President
Amy de la Garza is a double board-certified Family Medicine and Addiction Medicine physician who has dedicated most of her career to the treatment of individuals with behavioral health diagnoses including substance use disorder. She is an Institute for Functional Medicine Certified Practitioner. She is the owner of Heron Wellness in downtown Salt Lake City and the Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer of Nosis Health. Her expertise is the treatment of chronic disease management, including mental health and substance use disorder with an integrative approach using lifestyle and function medicine. Her clinical experiences also includes the care of patients in residential and outpatient substance use disorder treatment settings. She has worked in both clinical and research environments utilizing innovative approaches to behavioral health treatment including ketamine and psilocybin. She is trained in the 5-Needle Protocol. She is the co-founder of Utah Acudetox which provides training and community treatment with the 5-Needle Protocol and the recipient of a SAMSHA grant to expand training and implementation of the protocol across the state of Utah.
