October 12th, 2020 Transcript – Mental Health Moment 

Transcript by Google Voice Typing – Please excuse errors

Topic – Adverse Childhood Experiences and how they affect mental health

Welcome to the Mental health Moment. It’s Monday again and time to take a moment for your mental health.  I’m your host Joe Newman from Life Launch Centers, and this is the show where we talk about all things for your mental health.  We teach healthy coping mechanisms, discuss current situations that affect our mental health, and give you tips, ideas and resources that you can implement right now. Mental health is kind of a hot topic right now, probably because we’re seeing it affect so many of our youth and young adults.  And if you’re not familiar with Life Launch Centers is, that’s what we do, help families overcome anxiety, depression, suicide ideation, and a wide variety of mental health issues.  The first thing that helps families is to realize they are not alone in their struggles.  The stigma around mental health prevents families from seeking help.  Well through modern medical advancements, like brain scans and imaging, we’ve learned some amazing things about how the brain works physically in producing mental health disorders and what we can do intentionally to decrease intense emotion and things that we can do to cope in healthy ways.  That’s essentially what we do at Life Launch Centers, teach the emotional tools in a group counseling format to families.  Things like distress tolerance tools, mindfulness and how to build healthy human to human connection. These are all things we help families manage difficult emotion. So if anxiety, depression, social struggles, anything emotionally overwhelming has taken over your family, please don’t hesitate, give us a call.  The number is 833-803-3883

Speaking of families struggling, I’ve got a very special guest on with me today.  Kristy Pike, She is the director of the Children’s Justice Center here in Washington County and everyday she sees the hard things families face. Kristy thank you so much for joining me today. 

Thank you, I’m happy to be with you Joe.  You know you’ve bee on the show with me a while ago and I was just such a great opportunity because I love the resources that our community has to help families and that’s I think what we’re really trying to achieve on this show is to help families know they don’t have to struggle through this stuff alone can you talk about this is an important but right this is October is designated as domestic violence Awareness Month it is is that you’re not playing what you see in the Children’s Justice Center? 

Absolutely it does we eat most of what we saw last year were children who have been victims of sexual abuse but we also see kids who’ve been physically abused and we will also see you sometimes kids who have experienced domestic violence and what we also know is that all of these are can be there something called poly victimization and also might put them at risk for another type of victimization and domestic violence so those of us who work in this field work together we get together once a month and and spend that time meeting the resources in the community so we all know what everybody has where the holes are and we do and sometimes I get that confused with the court and yes from what I understand about the center this is actually the children’s Francesca Center here in Utah and that name is is set by State Statute by the legislature almost anywhere else in the country be called The Children’s Advocacy Center so do we have anything to do with work well in so much that we help victims navigate court and help prepare them for court possibly and sit with them in court if they need us to and let them know how their case is proceeding. piece that we offered we also do forensic interviews with children who investigators might need to know what has happened to this victim and we do it here and saw space is a home-like environment professional forensic interviewer that that coordinated team makes it so that the child doesn’t have to recount the victimization over and over Andre, ties so there’s to help minimizing the, our medical team have a special child abuse medical team here provided by Primary Children’s Safe and Healthy Families victim Advocates prosecution all work together so that the child doesn’t have to be from multiple different ways I can be so hard over and over and so it’s it’s awesome and really I think what we’re talking about here is that we got to pull our heads out of the sand like this stuff is everywhere I think a lot of people want to believe that you know not my family or not my neighbors or whatever but I don’t know you tell me how are you guys you guys probably don’t have much to do there that doesn’t really exist in our community write greeting every neighborhood it exists on your street so I see numbers tell us that one in four girls and one and six boys will be sexually assaulted before age 18 141 in 4 girls and 6 boys can you take any group of kids and they’re going to be at least one to two you know in group of particularly poignant to me I have seven I was thinking the same thing I was like oh my gosh and community and I think I’m major message we’re trying to push right now to help family realizes that this is affecting your family whether you know it or not it’s affecting our kids whether it’s them or not because if you have a teenager who has been sexually assaulted or is experiencing violence at home who were they going to tell they’re going to tell their friend some of these adverse childhood experiences and there’s this there’s an amazing study around this adverse childhood experiences Stantler they often use the acronym Aces and tell me a little bit about that what you know what the center does to help educate and help families so they kind of fall into three categories there are neglect there’s abuse and then there is just basic family dysfunction so that might include things like drug abuse domestic violence as we talked about earlier incarceration divorce and other other kinds of family dysfunction so what we found is that children who experience four or more of those kinds of adverse childhood experiences during their lifetime during their childhood then are much more susceptible not only two things like suicide and depression and and addictions as adult it also has an actual physical component as well and they’re twice as likely to experience cancer they’re actually much more likely to experience nine of the ten leading causes of death in this country mind-blowing to me when I was like Milton more likelihood of heart Tori disease also cancer suicide sometimes we pay more attention to the physical but Mental Health yes but the good news is that that’s that that’s not where it ends right there ways that we can mitigate and suffer the toxic stress really we got to pull our head out of the sand and realize that when either situation or subject their kids to these kind of adverse experiences it’s going to have impact on them and then what do we do to minimize that and what do we do to help alleviate some of the problem so I mean that was interesting to me was that they don’t have to have gone through the experience themselves like they don’t have to be physically abused even if they witnessed physical abuse especially of a apparent to the home that’s it it doesn’t have to be that they don’t have to be the one being hit watching their mother experienced domestic violence is an adverse childhood experience and it’s the kind of adverse childhood experience that doesn’t usually happen once right things that are on going to sign a lot of work in California how does adrenaline dump that we get the hormones that we get when we need to deal with a stressful experience which is great it’s how we’ve adapted and how we keep ourselves alive but that’s great when you meet a bear in the forest but when you come home to the bear or the bear comes home to you every night that’s that’s when you’re going to have the maladaptation of that stress response and it can cause issues you’re not familiar once again with 126 and their families who are struggling with anxiety depression other difficult mental health conditions of feeling really is the most effective form of therapy and if you feel like you try counseling and it didn’t work you need group that’s where gross really happened to come down and have progressed really quickly cuz they see that they’re not alone in their struggles and that’s the really able to connect with people the best part is that most insurance is actually covered treatment where in network with Select Health Blue Cross Blue Shield Medicaid PHP you know em all the all the big ones especially with our heads out of the sand realize it that we need to get our family just give us a call that number is 833-803-3883 and I will be back in just one minute 

Welcome back to the mental health moment I’m your host Joe Newman from Life launch centers and today I’ve got with me Kristy Pike director of The Children’s Justice Center in Washington County and Kristy thank you once again for joining me on the show today especially regarding some of these adverse childhood experiences that people have in their life the mental and physical implications of that has if anybody’s not familiar with that study jump on the internet and just search Aces or adverse childhood experiences there’s a lot of information about that so great videos out there I’ll probably even put some of that in the league on this on this podcast but you guys think I’m interested to ask Kristy you know what what do parents do to minimize, in our kids life so it’s not always going to be something we can do right I develop some resilience and build up those those muscles if you will then there are events that can be really traumatic could fall into that category are the ongoing really bad things that are not medicated those those those are something that we really have got hopefully these are things like this is the kind of trauma we want to help our kids a boy whether it not necessarily you know what you’re talking about it we don’t want to make life too easy like in order to build resilience they have to do a hard thing but not necessarily true, right obviously we want to avoid the trauma when trauma occurs that’s not the end there are so many things we know about resilience now about buffering tossed toxic stress about things that really have been proven their evidence based methods to make a difference in kids lives one thing honestly is it parents need to recognize that their kids might be going through something and so often are teenagers are so good at hiding right I might not know so one thing that we do here is all of those all the kids to come through who were old enough we will do a screen or with them that will scream for ice cream for suicide for suicidal ideation and honestly it asked questions about sleep it asked questions about anxiety parents are often done to know that the kids they thought they had great relationship with really are struggling they do know. Parents realizing maybe they can relate to this from their own childhood your child lies to you just so you know children lie children will tell you what they think you want to hear yes it’s kind of overly stressed or whatever but I mean let’s be honest like who didn’t lie to their parents growing up like everybody does and you have to realize that you are going to do that and you got to look at their behavior to know whether or not they need help like approach so if your if your child is happy if they’re grumpy if they’re just really edgy ask them some questions about their sleep are you sleeping all right because you know what we’ve learned is the best the first is sleep anything else if the child is exhausted all the time they need their sleep so so asking the questions and honestly the number one thing to do to help buffer the number one suffer for anyone kids adults anyone is to have connections to have good relationships so every minute that you spend with your child every dinner you have together every Drive in the carpool every every wash around the heart think we’re going to come to them and they ongoing relationships and connections and letting them know that you can be trustworthy not hyperventilating and overreacting when they bring you something hard but but sitting down with them and coming up with answers and results and and being the grown up in the room adults to do that important friendships or family in a relationship and sometimes my younger siblings are awesome but but yeah seeing that connection for someone is is so big and the other thing that we’ve learned I was listening to a podcast called 1 and 10 are needed something that they have to do with values first of all they have to have purpose right you have to know where you’re going and why and and then those connections are our group counseling counseling format because I need a lot of people anything about counseling it’s a one-on-one you no spill your guts to somebody and see if they have some wisdom to share and that’s a really important for some getting things off your chest but the practice and the ability to connect you know what these emotional tools we talk about is done in group or is done in building relationships with other people and so are the rest of your family or whether it’s time we we have grants that allows to provide therapy for victims of crimes not only for the kids parents and siblings as well I tried therapy I don’t like therapy I tell them well you know what I had a really bad haircut once getting haircuts try something new for you because therapy is such an important is another way to connect right like in our world today we just have so many things that are drawing us away from Human connection or you know they digital interactions that promise connection but but really we don’t feel healing through you know these digital interactions I mean we are putting a digital interactive the point is is take these principles and discuss it face-to-face that’s where the humans going to happen and and be parallel rather than face-to-face sometimes that can that can help people open up The Walker Drive yeah yeah again Well Kristy I got to wrap it up here but it has been so awesome and thank you so much again for being on the show with me today how do people get in touch with the Children’s Justice Center to report child abuse I’m going to give the the number for that it’s 855-323-3237 and that is how you report child abuse and that is most most of our clients either come through Child Protective Services or through law enforcement so it’s it’s 855-323-3237 and everyone in the state of Utah is a mandatory reporter if you have reasonably child is being abused you by law need to report that once again for joining us Kristy thank you ideas about how to help your kids avoid adverse childhood experiences and and know what to do and what help is available your family doesn’t have to struggle through this alone that’s what I love this community is so tight in there so many resources available so if you or a loved one just overwhelmed anxiety depression 3883 this is Joe Newman signing off from Life Launch Centers until next time keep those kids safe and keep your sanity.