beautiful people oh well come to the dr joy show your prescription for total wellness and i'm your host dr joy today's topic is on disaster mental health no i'm not the expert and i have an expert here but you know what we do on the dr joy show before we get started we take the reedy preps are you ready inhale exhale last one in handle exhale how do you feel i know i feel great i want to welcome my guest donna watson lads into the dr joy show thank you for being here and we're going to talk about disaster mental health tell me a little bit about yourself bars while i'm a wife and mother i've got four children four grown children  and looking thank you thank you very much i actually am kind of late to the field getting started on my journey took about thirty years to get my undergraduate degree and then i went on to pursue  graduate and then get licensed as a counselor and what are your license is because you have to i have i know i'm a licensed professional counselor ok and i'm a nationally certified counsel ok ok so that's my certification and i work with all different types of you know disorders or all different types of you know issues that people have however we do a lot of trauma and crisis care now why said to get there you look like you about thirty so why why mental health you know it's funny i didn't really seek out mental health but what i found was that my friends and family would come to me and they would talk to me and tell me their problems and stuff and i kind of just fell into it and when i was looking for something to go into at that point in my life people said why don't you do you know do psychology why don't you do counseling and i didn't really take it seriously but i started thinking about it you know when they said you know you help us all the time and so i kind of fell into it like that was like yeah i guess i do kind of do this you know great list of belly so how is mental health find i guess is a lot of ways to define mental health but i like to think of it like a pies so if there's a whole pie right then we have a piece for our spiritual wellness is a piece for your physical wellness psychological wellness emotional wellness so in a perfect world all of those pieces are going to be there it's not a perfect world but the goal is to try to maintain a certain balance in our lives so that we can you know we be mentally healthy so i know this show talks about is your prescription for total wellness right and we talk about the seven wellness elements and striking a balance across all seven  hard is that how hard is that it's very hard dr joye and i mean the world we live in now it's pretty complicated we've got social media we've got the political issue like going on exactly what you could talk about it yeah well i mean we've got a lot of stuff going on in the wealth of information out there can be challenging because it sometimes make its makes it seem as if there's a bunch of things that are beyond our control right one of the key pieces to and you know this very well is dealing with the things that we actually can control rolling that which we can't control but sometimes sometimes we forget sometimes for let me let me just read this fact and tell me what you think mental health problems are actually very common and this is actually come  in this is a statistic that was captured in two thousand and fourteen it says that one in five american adults experience a mental health issue one in ten young people experience a period of major depression one in twenty five americans live with a serious mental illness such as schizophrenia bipolar disorder or major depression your thoughts that's about accurate but the good news is that not because i don't want to lose the audience to believe that you know my gosh i'm going to wind up i'm going to be sick and you're going to be one of those statistics when we maybe we don't know but the good news is that there is much more research now there are lots of different types of interventions we also have alternative interventions that we utilize now so it's not like it's hopeless could it happen potentially but that doesn't mean it's the end of the road what are some of the alternative things that you said we have alternative well you know no you tell me i'm going to tell you because you you talk about them on your show all the time things like meditation and mindfulness and deep breathing so maybe yoga could be an alternative  means of treatment so mental how striking a balance i say that i mean it is my opinion right that the mind controls everything so if your mind is right then those other elements should fall in place hopefully well we like to talk about a mind body connection now there was a disconnect for a long time where it was like two separate bodies but right  understand that it's holistic everything goes together so yeah you want your mind to be in the right place but you also want to take care of that body because it's one machine it all works together we don't service the tires and then not service the engine you've got a service the entire vehicle that is right so we want to service that whole vehicle ok so now let's add another layer to the mix is this is a topic about disaster mental health  disaster mental health occurs or happens when there's an emergency some kind of event right and i'm just going to read this it's common for individuals and families in and around and affected region to experience distress anxiety about safety health and recovery so talk more about that well it's a situation where you i just said to you that we try to take care of what we can control so this is ourselves right so disaster mental health comes in and helps to start that grounding process so it can be as simple as just listening to someone offering immediate care a blanket because maybe it's cold they could be offering you a glass of water but that immediate human connection is so important during a disaster because maybe you've been displaced from your home maybe you don't know where your animals are maybe you're not even sure where your family is my chip yeah yeah that's that's a huge big deal when folks lose their pets so what are some of the symptoms their reactions displayed by some of the survivors of the disaster will heightened anxiety some sadness depression anger  know or blaming themselves i should have done something different there can be fear obviously because you don't know what to expect this is something totally outside of the norm i don't know what's expects i'm really afraid and not necessarily doing the things that i would normally do so maybe i normally take care of myself better but in this instance i don't know how so how does how how does the healing begin then donna how does it how does the healing for the survivors begin think about the people in puerto rico when when was that wow just a few months ago ok but they're still going through absolutely absolutely so this gus the need for disaster behavioral health capabilities it's hugely important in the last three years we've had i don't know how many laps of weather disasters oh yeah shooting plane crashes i mean you name it there's all types of disasters that we're dealing with now right folks who are just kind of out there so they need people like myself who can come in and just connect with them on the immediate mostly basic human needs just to talk to them and the biggest deal with this asked a mental health is to listen just to first thing is to listen to hear their stories because they just need to know that there's somebody there for them to go next them with other i'm sorry resources you know community resources because sometimes that everything's disconnected so they're going to want to know you know where do i go why do how do i even start this process and we help them with that as well so from the disaster there could be times when  come into play could you talk a little bit about that absolutely and that p t s d is something that wouldn't necessarily just affect the survivors of the disaster but as well as the first responders and the other people who are there helping to care  they are secondary you know they're exposed to this trauma so they could experience as well p t s d post traumatic stress disorder is something that could happen a few months out or it could even be a year or more out but the hallmarks would be that if the person has sufficient or a sustained decline and an inability to kind of function on a day to day basis heightened anxiety fear and inability to  remember the details of what happened and maybe they're becoming aggressive and this kind of is you see this present for more than say like a month or so then you want to start thinking about maybe getting help for yourself or if it's one of your loved ones maybe i want to kind of talk to my loved one about maybe seeking help talking to their family doctor there is a psychologist psychiatrist and it's not with someone with p t s d sometimes they say that well we know that it can happen to anyone but it's not a sign of weakness oh absolutely not ok so what if some of the symptoms that you talked about but will people with p t s d be able to get better yes yeah and with what type of treatment there's different types of treatment some of the most common treatments are going to be cognitive behavioral therapy one talk a little bit about what that is yes and it's a talk therapy but  a behavioral therapy if they can help you to think differently about the event also maybe the way i thought and i'm moving you in a more positive reframing that whole thought process so maybe i see the event as the end of my life and everything happened bad but let's kind of and work on how the resiliency piece how you were able to get through this disaster and you were able to you know reclaim your life and just looking at it from a different perspective so that's kind of how cognitive behavioral therapy works than i know that when we were in the green room you did share a little bit about you participating and lending your hand with regards to a disaster one instance of to two recent instances ok unfortunately there were disasters yes so you want to share both you know i'll tell you a little bit about my our original experience was back during hurricane harvey when i was deployed to texas and and where are you coming from i'm coming from pennsylvania where northeast p a i live and there was a call to go and serve there to do disaster mental health and i was blessed to be able to do that so i was down there for a couple of weeks and we did disaster mental health i worked as part of a team which was part of a much much larger team of folks who are going to do disaster and recovery and it was just an amazing experience working with people and being able to kind of help them in whatever little way we could  in that huge disaster so take me and the viewers through a day in the life on and being there with hurricane harvey what was it what with the daylight what was interesting because as the time went on in the waters receded then it kind of changed so how long after when did you at what point did you arrive i guess about a week was it a week i don't think it had been a week not quite a week after and how we come in is it has to be working around all of the dangerous areas because we don't we're not first responders so we don't go in to the dangerous areas we kind of work around it but we would go out into the community on a given day and kind of do assessments so we assess to see if folks are going to be people who are going to be more at risk if you already have mental health issues obviously than that's going to be more of an issue how do you know who has the mental health issue we talk to people and also i mean that's kind of what i do so my job is to know if you're presenting in a particular way i'm going to ask you questions ok i try to get a better picture but honestly folks are generally going to tell you if they're having some problems and for those who don't say maybe are not getting active help we can tell and we'll just talk to them about it but talk to them about their mental well being we would go out in the community and just try to connect them with the services in the area because they need to know who's doing what right now because they're disconnected from that get whatever information we can about their family members try to get them information about you know resources that were available like thema whatever resources that were available at the time so we did that we went into the shelter and we work with folks in the shelter we talk to them group mash shelter so sometimes we would speak to people individually sometimes you speak to a group it depends on how it you know how it goes but just sometimes laughing and literally letting them tell you this story so again listening so what's the second instance the second instance hit close to home because in march there was the terrible weather and where i live in ne be a we got hit pretty hard and a lot of folks were without power and they didn't have  water because these well systems right well what with electricity so we're talking about people who are in the freezing cold and don't even have water so they don't have a backup generator connected to their house where if they lose power then well here's the other piece you may have a generator shelter so i volunteered that thought i was going to be there myself if i didn't have power they are and how long did were people out of power in your area it varies depending on the area but i would say the average time there were people who were out for like five days or more that's a long time it is a long i know when hurricane sandy hit in new jersey and the shore people were out for a long time we were out well our area was out for fourteen days well but i had a generator but again the difficulty was gasoline because you're not going to store massive quantities of gasoline in your house that you know so my walking around the site the mat them then i'd talk to them i would you know again always assessment an assessment is not just the folks who are directly affected by the disaster but the staff as well so always assessing the staff to see whether the volunteer staff or the just to make sure that everybody's ok right i need to be so sometimes that means that i'm going to pull someone aside and say hey you know need a minute and we process together so i did that with staff and the volunteer unpaid staff as well as the folks that are in the shelter so again a lot of just kind of listening to folks here in the stories so there's somebody watching this show and they're saying wait i want to become a volunteer what's your advice i'm going to say that absolutely become a volunteer it's one of the most amazing experiences and it can give you such a sense of perspective we tend to think a lot about our situations but when you see people in these disastrous situations their resilience see the gratitude by it's it's a game changer so would you be able to recommend web site fill organizations that i would while i'm going to recommend the red cross because obviously they do international national work and on the google queen song and say just google the red cross fit if you go into the red cross has the volunteer walks you through it it's a very easy process and i'm going to use my little cheat sheet here because there is an organization that kind of monitors disaster volunteer organizations and it's a government web site and it's called the national voluntary organization active in disaster so w w dot and v o eight d dot org  and if you go into that website they can you know they have a list of organizations that they kind of approved and then you can start to get an idea from there but still do they look for volunteers with certain skill have that work it depends on the organization because every organization is different like this say there's a fire corps organization and they send firemen or doctors they have doctors and nurses and health care professionals but even that one they will and that one specifically would is that that is the medical reserve corps so if you google medical reserve corps they have civilian volunteers as well so there's folks who may not have medical health knowledge to help out but the best way to do it is honestly to go online and see what interest you the red cross has my gosh they have as many different volunteer positions as people have you know skill sets so whatever it is that you are interested in even if you're not proficient at that it's something that you could go there potentially learn how to do and they train you're absolutely ok so now let's switch gears and talk about what are some of the ways you maintain positive mental health oh boy good friends good friends good friends company family spending quality time with people as opposed to i mean i utilize social media but minimally yeah ok we you want to go there with social media like rose but a lot of time when the let's go there and that's a good thing because don't you think there's social media is because what what this is a i'm putting it out there i don't care what is shows a lot of people put up all the good stuff and so if there is a person that's actually scrolling through and looking and looking at the feeds and they're having a down day maybe they had a down day to down days three and days bad down turns into like thirty down days they start to compare themselves their life to what they're seeing in you know on their year social media what twitter ok so my my my social media outlets are to it or instagram and facebook and i have to facebook pages but i try to keep it positive because there are people out there that might be feeling down and they hope that when they look at my page they'll say that brightens their spirit is that of you know bringing negativity but the social media i think is a big part of why some people are a little that there might have some mental health issues well if you think it adds to it donna if we already are kind of struggling yeah and then we're kind of using face facebook and that's kind of what we're using to gauge what we should or should not be doing which is why i don't spend a whole lot of time on it no if you want to live your life right right unless you have something positive to share that's going to create a shattered glass impact meaning that something positive to share with others means somebody else can take it and they can run with it and it can enhance their life so you said refrain from social media you know limited limited balance in all things man i create a balance so you can make time for social media so certainly nothing wrong with it ok so when you said nurturing being around nurturing absolutely  spirituality spirituality is a big piece so spirituality doesn't necessarily mean you go to church every sunday right means that you're connecting with your higher power what about gratitude gratitude i can't say enough about it it's huge absolutely huge because if we can't be grateful when this nothing else really matters everything go thing anything else physical health maintain the vessel right yes so how do you do that because you look fabulous if you need to you thirty years you look very up doctor if you are i mean i work out i could work out a lot more but i do i do work out and i make time for that because i'm important so i make excuses and i go wait a minute donna you know plus i don't tell my clients anything that i'm not willing to do myself so it's really important for me to be genuine so if i'm sitting there telling you that it is in your best interests and for your mental health to exercise then i'm going to do it so ok what about saying no are you are you a big proponent now yeah yeah because that's goes back to looking out for myself so i'm not going to tell you that i'm going to do things that i'm going to regret or that i'm going to feel resentful about it's about stopping here and thinking about in the moment what's going to be in my best interest and not in a selfish you know like i don't care about you way but in am i really going to be fully there for you and for me if i tell you i want to do things that in my heart i know i don't really want to but that's good because then you're reducing your internal conflict and when you reduce your internal conflict you could be more then take and then the people that are around you get to see the real drama so what about forgiveness forgiveness because people get confused they think that you forgive folks for them but we forgive folks for us given this is for me so i can walk around being mad at dr joy for the next ten years how is it took my parking space or whatever but dr joy is going off and having her best life meanwhile i don and sitting there stewing so forgiveness is not for you because you have the time don't even know what happened is for me it's for us it's personal when it's like kind of connected to stress because you want to keep the stress level down and that's something we can control yes and it's a process it's not easy but to actively worked to towards forgiveness very important about living in the present oh my gosh i was having this conversation with my husband today that's so important because some of the anxiety that we experience now is we're so scattered that we can't even focus my husband told me that he ordered tea today person that was taking the other words of exactly likely not focused not in the moment hearing what he wanted to hear hearing what he thought he heard but that so much of us especially with all the electronics oh ok very decide what about let a lecture omics how do you utilize them to create balance in your life well dr drew i'm a work in progress like everybody else and that is an area where i struggle and my oldest son spanked me recently because i was texting him texting because i'm busy right i'm busy yeah texting texting and he reached out to me by phone and said look i need to hear my mother's voice oh it's talk to you wow so my thirty one year old son is like stop with the texting so even i struggle with creating a balance between you know the electronics year they're great but sometimes put them aside and make that human connection so so i work on wow so you said that you live on staff with forensic counseling associates and mount pocono pennsylvania and i'm going to give you the number to the office it's i have to read it as i believe it or not don't know what five seven zero four seven six seven seven zero four and that's five seven zero or six seven six seven seven zero four now do you do group therapy individual therapy skype kind of therapy do you do we don't do skype we do individual therapy and i also want to thank you for you lending your hands to people that are in need thank you dr joy many blessings ok until next time be blessed stay