Best of Mental Health Awareness Month

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Mental Health Awareness Month brings together experts and personal stories to explore today's challenges from parental stress that hasn't returned to pre-COVID levels to the role of technology in therapy and concussion management with mental health considerations.

• Samara shares the deeply personal story of losing her son Anthony to suicide and how community support allowed her family to be vulnerable during their grief process
• COVID-19 created a three-year gap in children's social development, affecting their ability to learn crucial nonverbal and verbal communication skills
• The past decade has seen a boom in mental health awareness, partly driven by social media making mental health discussions more mainstream
• Technology is reshaping mental health services through telehealth and AI applications, though experts agree information alone isn't enough without human connection
• Physicians now recognize the importance of considering pre-existing mental health conditions like depression, anxiety, or ADHD when treating concussions
• Good sport technique and proper training are essential for preventing concussion injuries, with recovery timelines being highly individual

If you're struggling with mental health issues, reach out for help. There are resources available, and opening up about your challenges is the first step toward healing.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:17):
As you know, we're honoring May as Mental Health
Awareness Month and all monthlong we've got incredible guests
, and today is no different.
I've got my friend and.
And today is no different, I'vegot my friend and colleague, dr
Erica Lander-Miller.
She is the founder and clinicaldirector of the Behavioral Care
Center of New Jersey.
She specializes in the practiceof cognitive behavioral therapy
, which you've heard a lot of onthis podcast DBT, motivational

(00:40):
interviewing and ACT.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
I think we both feel really strongly about providing
good care and trying to helpsupport other clinicians who are
also interested in bringinggood, solid, mindful,
compassionate care.
I had an interesting training aweek or two ago, talking about
the intense spike up in stressthat parents experienced during
COVID.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
And the rates of stress have not returned to
pre-COVID levels.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
That's wild, because a lot of stuff has returned.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
A lot of things have returned.
Wow, that is.
One thing that has not comeback down is the intensity of
stress parents are reporting.
It just sort of has stayed atCOVID levels even now that the
world has opened up and we'rekind of getting back to life as
normal.

Speaker 1 (01:21):
And I'm happy to have Samara here because she's in
California and they're anamazing couple, her and Neil,
and they lost their beloved sonAnthony to suicide last year and
Anthony was an incredible youngadult with a bright future
ahead, and both Neil and Samaraare here to share their deeply

(01:41):
personal story with us.
So thank you, samara, for beinghere to talk about your son.

Speaker 4 (01:46):
Anthony.
Well, it's been raw and realand just kind of.
The way it happened was afterhe committed his suicide.
Initially he was resuscitatedand um and was then hospitalized

(02:08):
for nine weeks and during thattime he had sustained severe
brain damage and, um, we werepretty hopeful the whole time
that he would, you know, havesome quality of life.
And so what happened duringthat time was we were surrounded
with community and people gaveus a voice and, um, we were just

(02:29):
kind of cracked open.
And so I think often whathappens in suicide is that
there's so much stigma and shamearound it that people don't
talk about it.
And because of how it happenedwith his situation, we were kind
of, you know, exposed rightaway and, I think, given an
opportunity to um be vulnerable,but in a safe way, with a

(02:53):
community that was reallysupportive of us, and so it's
just been a continuation of thatjourney.
I mean, obviously there'stremendous pain in it, but
there's also this transformationthat's happened, um of turning
our pain into purpose andsharing that message and and
being vulnerable and and talkingabout it and finding um that

(03:18):
the authenticity and the youknow, the by the nature of us
coming out, that people are alsofinding courage to share their
stories and in that is where thehealing happens.
And we were also um part of theChopra center and so we had a
large community there.
My husband worked for TonyRobbins so he had kind of a you

(03:41):
know an expansive group from afew different networks.
We, you know, just within ourlocal community, from our, our
kids, you know involvement asyou do with, you know sports or
activities.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
But, as you know, it was not that long ago.
We had things like COVID andall this stuff was getting in
the way about the, the issues ofanxiety and depression and the
devastating effects that it'shad, especially with our little
humans.
And, uh, more research iscoming available and I've been
curious to see how this hasimpacted.
Dr Jules focuses onneurodevelopmental disorders and

(04:14):
she is specifically interestedin how teens have been impacted
by COVID, social media andexternal factors.
So we are going to learn allabout that today.

Speaker 3 (04:23):
Parents are concerned about their children's ability
to interact with other people.
Yeah, and some of the mainthings that we see in
neurodevelopmental differencesis that impact on social
communication.
Yeah, and so when we thinkabout social communication
succinctly nonverbal and verbalmeans of communicating and how

(04:46):
that impacts the way youinteract with other people, so
it's not just eye contact andit's not just verbal language,
but it's also body movements,it's also euphemisms and idioms
and sarcasm.
So there's a lot that goes intointeracting in person that

(05:06):
children learn, and we do nottalk enough about the fact that
there was a time span of threeyears.

Speaker 5 (05:14):
What I think that has happened in the last 10 years.
One of the things is it's beenlike a boom in terms of
awareness, right, like there'sbeen this influx of information
and knowledge and it'severywhere.
If you are on social media, youcan't you know, hit, you can't
scroll up many times withoutseeing something related to
mental health, and it's almostbecome like a badge of honor to

(05:37):
some extent to be able to sayI'm aware of my mental health
issues, which is, you know,great, because people are kind
of like, at least acknowledgingmental health is a primary part
of our lives.
And then you know and that'stied, I think, a lot to
technology and information,right, I think that the last 10

(05:57):
years, how AI, first, with thepandemic, this shift into, like,
just simply, you don't have tobe in the same room, right, the
telehealth just becoming like,almost like the norm for
delivery of services, at leastfor mental health.
And then, you know, ai, almostlike trying to play quarterback

(06:20):
or, you know, like to mentalhealth services.
Those changes have really arechanging the landscape.

Speaker 1 (06:29):
I had a client read like a chat GPT response that
they asked about strategies andI was like you don't need me
Like the response was prettydope and and then at a faculty
meeting we were using AI fortraining clinical skills, so it
was like a video and then itread your body language, it read
what you said and then it gaveyou a score and some feedback

(06:50):
for how you could do a better ormore effective intervention.

Speaker 5 (06:54):
Oh, let me tell you, scary.
I have a couple of things thatrelate to that One.
I'm in contact with someone interms of a collaboration where
they are trying to use AI tohelp couples therapy so that
people would talk to their chatbox throughout the week and then
prior to the session, it willprovide sort of a summary of

(07:16):
what are some of the main pointsthat they had some challenges
with or that came up Right.
And then to your point aboutlike people using chat GPT for
for advice.
I had a client share with me astory of someone who used
ChatGPT to ask for relationshipadvice and the advice was like

(07:38):
oh good, advice, right.
And then, and not only that,but then the person said to me
aren't you scared?
You're going to lose your job,and the funny thing about that,
right.
And I responded that I wasn't,and I tell you why.
I think AI feels like it's athreat to some people, but it's

(07:59):
really not right.
Information right.
And ultimately, you know thethe chad gpt just simply said
you know, in a nutshell, thisperson you're with is not, it's
not seeing your true values, notvalidating your emotional

(08:19):
experiences.
It feels like a toxicrelationship.
You probably are better off,you know, creating some
boundaries, and if this personis not able to respect those
boundaries, then you may want to, you know, make decisions about
distancing yourself from thisrelationship, which is, you know
, in a nutshell, but it's likepretty good advice, right?
So what did the person do withthe advice?
Well, they continue in theirrelationship and they ignore it

(08:40):
completely, right, and my pointabout that is that the
information and knowledge is notenough.
You have to understand howhumans function.

Speaker 1 (08:51):
So we are bringing you important topics related to
mental health.
This is my friend and colleague, dr Jason Kristofiak.
He serves as one of the teamphysicians for Rutgers Athletics
and he is the team physicianfor the football team there at
Rutgers University.
Yeah, and so you know you'vealways been great to work with
and what made you kind of thinkabout like mental health in the,

(09:11):
in the treatment of concussionor just under like did you see
in the athletes you weretreating that there was like
what?
Did you notice that we werelike, hey, I'm glad we have like
sports psychology to help uswith this together so much.

Speaker 6 (09:31):
You know how transparent I am, probably
sometimes to a fault.
Yeah, I go going back years.
I caught myself not optimizingthe care because I was
overlooking the behavioralhealth aspect of it a lot of
these individuals either hadsome form of baseline depression
, anxiety, sometimes evenbipolar yeah another comorbidity
is like adhd yes and I justinitially wasn't factoring that

(09:54):
in to the best that I could intotheir management plan and I
always looked at concussionmanagement um individually as
pillars um less than 40 of thoseactually feel comfortable
seeking, uh, mental health.

Speaker 1 (10:07):
You know support and so being.
May is mental health supportand so being May is Mental
Health Awareness Month.
Why do you feel, from yourperspective as a physician who
specializes in concussionmanagement, that there's been
this uptick in mental healthconcerns?
Why do you think?
What do you see?

Speaker 6 (10:21):
happening.
It's interesting on the ground.
I think people are being moreopen about it and complete
conjecture.
Covid allowed a lot of peopleto reset right.
Obviously a lot of individualshad very poor outcomes,
unfortunately, because of that,but a lot of people were able to
reset, have more time to thinkabout these things and say let's

(10:42):
, where are we, where is ourbehavioral health program
compared to other peoplenationally Right, that awareness
, I think, automatically allowedpeople to have safer
conversations with individualsthat they typically wouldn't
have.
So we look at all aspects ofwhatever that sport is and a lot
of the time it really boilsdown to just good sport

(11:03):
technique as just one thing totackle.
There are individuals that areso gifted and talented but they
just have no control of theirbodies.
They fly over the field orwhatever the sport is.
They're just flying around.
They're putting themselves atrisk.
So good sport technique isalways good, making sure you're
listening to your strength andconditioning coaches to make
sure that you're doing anappropriate level of strength
and condition and you're notoverdoing it.

(11:24):
It is an injury that can preventyou from playing sport and
that's a misnomer, right?
We always use the word returnto play, obviously for a
concussion so challenging togive a return to play.
We can give some ranges, butoften they're so individual.
Thank you.