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The Science Behind Recovery with Dr. Smita Das · The Trauma Therapist

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Trauma Theriver's podcast. My name is Gamiferson
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Speaker 1: and I interview incredible people who share the story of
0:07
Speaker 1: how trauma has shaped their lives. And a big thank
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Speaker 1: you for sponsoring today's episode goes to my guest and
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Speaker 1: our sponsors. So five, four, three, two and one, our folks,
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Speaker 1: welcome back to the podcast. Very excited to have with
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Speaker 1: my guest today, Doctor Smita Das Smita, Welcome.
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Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me today.
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Speaker 1: Doctor Smita is a board certified psychiatrist specializing in addiction
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Speaker 1: psychiatry and addiction medicine, and clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry
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Speaker 1: and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford with over twenty years of
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Speaker 1: experience in clinical care, research, and leadership, including her role
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Speaker 1: as VP of Psychiatry and Complex Care at LIRA Health.
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Speaker 1: She's known for bringing nuance and compassion to how we
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Speaker 1: talk about trauma and addiction. What sets her apart is
1:00
Speaker 1: how she addresses overlooked trauma, especially among high functioning populations.
1:05
Speaker 1: She's been leading voice and reframing motherhood not just as joy,
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Speaker 1: but as potential mental health breaking point. Doctor Dos explores
1:12
Speaker 1: how sleep deprivation identity rupture, promoto shifts, and the invisibility
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Speaker 1: of caregiving pain can mirror complex trauma, challenging the notion
1:22
Speaker 1: that maternal crises are rare. All right, Samita, just a
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Speaker 1: little bit about you, obviously, but before you go and
1:29
Speaker 1: share with the listeners where you're from originally and where
1:32
Speaker 1: you are currently.
1:35
Speaker 2: That's a great question.
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Speaker 3: I am somebody who originally came from a background of
1:43
Speaker 3: wanting to just do research in the area of public health,
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Speaker 3: and where I've ended up is in being a psychiatrist,
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Speaker 3: an addiction psychiatrist who actually works with very complex populations.
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Speaker 3: And I think that journey was very much influenced by
2:02
Speaker 3: the people and the stories that I learned about along
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Speaker 3: the way. During my research journey, it just became so
2:10
Speaker 3: clear that that this was an area that's underserved and
2:14
Speaker 3: uh and really needs needs more hands on deck.
2:18
Speaker 1: Okay, where are you from originally?
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Speaker 3: I'm sorry, I'm from I'm from San Jose, California. I'm
2:26
Speaker 3: from the California base.
2:27
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, okay, and you're still there. I'm guessing around there.
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Speaker 3: I actually I I went around the country for my
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Speaker 3: education and training, and then I ended up back here.
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Speaker 2: It's hard to it's hard to leave this place.
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Speaker 1: Yes, I know very well, all too well. All right,
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Speaker 1: so you said you started out interested in public health.
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Speaker 1: What as a young kid that happens or what?
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Speaker 2: That's a good question.
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Speaker 3: Actually, the funny thing is, I so I went to schools.
3:01
Speaker 3: I was just having this conversation with some parent friends
3:06
Speaker 3: at my daughter's school, and because we were all local,
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Speaker 3: we were comparing notes about about high schools and who
3:13
Speaker 3: went where, and I think I firmly established that I
3:17
Speaker 3: probably went to one of the more troubled high schools
3:20
Speaker 3: in East San Jose.
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Speaker 2: And there, in part.
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Speaker 3: Because we we were a high school that had a
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Speaker 3: lot of at risk students, there was a lot of
3:34
Speaker 3: interest in helping the students there. And so for example,
3:38
Speaker 3: Stanford University would come and do our local local university
3:41
Speaker 3: would come and do research studies with our student populations.
3:45
Speaker 2: And so one of.
3:46
Speaker 3: Them was to help prevent at you know, students in
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Speaker 3: high schools that are are traditionally underserved and at risk
3:54
Speaker 3: not go down paths so for example, addiction and and
3:58
Speaker 3: gain violence, A lot of things that were present present
4:01
Speaker 3: at my high school. So as part of one of
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Speaker 3: those studies, I joined as a student participant, and our
4:08
Speaker 3: task was to look at tobacco and tobacco anything having
4:14
Speaker 3: to do with tobacco, and so we actually the students
4:17
Speaker 3: as part of this project.
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Speaker 2: Again, it really wasn't for the content.
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Speaker 3: It was more to get us going in a in
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Speaker 3: a very positive direction and be a positive influence for
4:24
Speaker 3: our school. We studied how much retailers in the San
4:29
Speaker 3: Jose San Jose area were advertising tobacco and alcohol illegally
4:33
Speaker 3: to minors, and then put together a study and then
4:37
Speaker 3: went to San Jose City Council.
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Speaker 2: And presented the results.
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Speaker 3: And so actually, yeah, kind of as a kid, I
4:43
Speaker 3: was introduced to the area of public health, and many
4:48
Speaker 3: years later I got to actually meet the lead researcher
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Speaker 3: at Stanford who who had done that research study when
4:56
Speaker 3: I was.
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Speaker 2: Coo, when I was just a kid.
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Speaker 1: Oh cool, So you're impacted by this? You what? What?
5:04
Speaker 1: What does the path look like? You go? You go
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Speaker 1: to Stanford? Did you get?
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Speaker 2: I ended up going to Stanford for college.
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Speaker 3: Uh, and then I am actually to to just make
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Speaker 3: some money on the side as a student going to a.
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Speaker 2: Very expensive private school.
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Speaker 3: I joined as a research a research assistant in a lab.
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Speaker 3: But this lab happened to be led by doctor C.
5:30
Speaker 3: Bar Taylor Emeritus, who's now passed away, but he was
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Speaker 3: a leading researcher in behavioral treatments for for all sorts
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Speaker 3: of things, so everything from using cognitive behavioral therapy to
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Speaker 3: treat smoking use tobacco use disorder, to how to use
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Speaker 3: behavioral treatments to treat people who are in cancer or
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Speaker 3: cardiovascular UH programs. And then he also was doing some
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Speaker 3: research on UH digital treatment. So using technologies is in
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Speaker 3: early two thousands, if I'm going to date myself looking
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Speaker 3: at digital treatments for high school students on eating disorders.
6:09
Speaker 3: And so I just happened to work start working there
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Speaker 3: and then found a love for this type of research
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Speaker 3: and statistics, and then that led me to go to
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Speaker 3: graduate school and then eventually to go to medical school.
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Speaker 1: And how did your interest in addiction come about? That
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Speaker 1: and more specifically and more specifically psychiatry.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, so I was definitely going down this path of
6:41
Speaker 3: One of the main studies that I was working on
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Speaker 3: had to do with doing an intervention with people who
6:48
Speaker 3: were smoking and hospitalized. And what I didn't know at
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Speaker 3: the time is that I was actually delivering cognitive behavioral therapy,
6:55
Speaker 3: one of the gold standard treatments in psychiatry and psychology,
7:00
Speaker 3: to people at the bedside to help them quit smoking.
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Speaker 3: And I was sure that you know, this population people
7:08
Speaker 3: with cardiac disease and lung diseases, that that was the
7:12
Speaker 3: path that I was going to go down. But then
7:14
Speaker 3: I realized the common thread between all of them was
7:18
Speaker 3: one that this is an addiction that they're struggling with
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Speaker 3: that's probably impacting their life more than anything else. And
7:26
Speaker 3: then two that behavioral treatments were really effective, and so
7:31
Speaker 3: could we could look at the leading preventable cause of
7:33
Speaker 3: death in this country, which is tobacco use disorder, and
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Speaker 3: we could work with it with a behavioral intervention. And
7:41
Speaker 3: that was really eye opening that, you know, I could
7:45
Speaker 3: sit there and study a lot, and I still had
7:48
Speaker 3: to study a lot to end up becoming a physician,
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Speaker 3: but go down a path of looking at disease processes
7:54
Speaker 3: when the answer is actually already there in front of
7:57
Speaker 3: me that these behavioral interventions are very very effective.
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Speaker 1: Does your or did your belief a utilization of these
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Speaker 1: behavioral interventions? Does that presuppose that you had a feeling
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Speaker 1: one way or the other in terms of the disease
8:19
Speaker 1: model or you know, another model for addiction.
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Speaker 3: I interestingly have always had a viewpoint on addiction being
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Speaker 3: a disease model, and it's probably just because I got
8:35
Speaker 3: introduced to addiction through kind of experts who who really
8:41
Speaker 3: dive into evidence based.
8:44
Speaker 2: Theories and ideas, and so the.
8:46
Speaker 3: Idea that that addiction is a brain disease, as a
8:50
Speaker 3: National Institute of Drug Abuse helps us learn about through
8:55
Speaker 3: their resources, That's that's been with me for a very
8:59
Speaker 3: long time. It's not a choice, a moral failing. It
9:02
Speaker 3: is a brain disease and we need to treat it
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Speaker 3: as such and give it the same importance as well
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Speaker 3: as parity with treatments and access as we give to
9:14
Speaker 3: any medical condition.
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Speaker 1: So in the bio, I think we talked about your
9:21
Speaker 1: focus on what challenged, challenging populations or difficult populations. What
9:27
Speaker 1: does that mean to you? How do you define that
9:30
Speaker 1: and why that population?
9:35
Speaker 2: It's a really great question. So I think we're coming.
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Speaker 3: We've come a long way, especially through the pandemic, in
9:42
Speaker 3: terms of reaching people with a lot of general mental
9:46
Speaker 3: health needs, things like anxiety and depression of more of
9:50
Speaker 3: a mild moderate.
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Speaker 2: Sort of nature.
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Speaker 3: I think where we're failing still in mental health and
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Speaker 3: as a system has to do with people who are
10:02
Speaker 3: struggling with more than that. Maybe it is anxiety and depression,
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Speaker 3: but it's also a level of severity that may be
10:11
Speaker 3: considered more treatment resistant, or they're struggling with with those
10:16
Speaker 3: plus a substance use disorder which can't be treated independently
10:20
Speaker 3: and you can't do one and then the other, you need.
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Speaker 2: To really do both.
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Speaker 3: Or they're struggling with with trauma and another one of
10:28
Speaker 3: these diagnoses, or they are social circumstances that really make
10:32
Speaker 3: it hard for them to engage in care. And so
10:35
Speaker 3: for these populations, oftentimes the one who ones who are
10:39
Speaker 3: who are having to manage complex conditions there there there
10:44
Speaker 3: haven't been great solutions in public health to date, and
10:47
Speaker 3: so that was those These are the individuals, the patients
10:51
Speaker 3: that I see that that come into my office and
10:54
Speaker 3: and are trying everything, or or the ones that aren't
10:58
Speaker 3: even able to make it into my office because the
11:01
Speaker 3: complexity of what they're dealing with is just so high.
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Speaker 3: These are the individuals that really need somebody in their corner.
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Speaker 1: It sounds mind boggling to how do you approach with
11:14
Speaker 1: the understanding that every person's different, every case is different.
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Speaker 1: But how do you approach working with someone who's got
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Speaker 1: the weight of, you know, many challenges and problems beneath them?
11:30
Speaker 1: How do you start working with someone like that? And
11:36
Speaker 1: there's a part two to the question, which is why
11:41
Speaker 1: do you think you're able to do that? That's the
11:45
Speaker 1: second part?
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Speaker 3: All right, Well, I'll start with another question that I
11:52
Speaker 3: get often asked, which is why isn't it hard to
11:56
Speaker 3: be an addiction psychiatrist managing these very complex cases?
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Speaker 2: Is like, how is it that you go to work
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Speaker 2: every day?
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Speaker 3: And the truth is I go to work every day
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Speaker 3: and I am just excited to see the patients and
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Speaker 3: the individuals that I'm working with because they have taken
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Speaker 3: an incredibly brave step to seek help. There is so
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Speaker 3: there are so many reasons why they may not show
12:24
Speaker 3: up on my screen or in my office, so many
12:27
Speaker 3: reasons everything from stigma to barriers, to lack of access
12:30
Speaker 3: to not having resources, to just managing the complexity and
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Speaker 3: the severity of those symptoms of all of the conditions
12:39
Speaker 3: that they're trying to work with here, and the fact
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Speaker 3: that even with all of that going on, I will
12:49
Speaker 3: have somebody pop up on my screen for their first visit.
12:53
Speaker 3: The fact that they can do that is just so
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Speaker 3: humbling and so impressive and so inspire hiring that it
13:02
Speaker 3: makes me excited to be working with them. And I figure,
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Speaker 3: if they are putting in a million percent, because that's
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Speaker 3: what it's taking, then I can put in everything that
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Speaker 3: I have to help them along along their journey.
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Speaker 1: Specifically, when you're is it a matter of triaging. Okay,
13:27
Speaker 1: they're homeless, they've got mental health issues, there is trauma,
13:32
Speaker 1: there's addiction, they can't pay their rent, their stress. How
13:35
Speaker 1: do you literally begin approaching working with them?
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Speaker 3: Yeah, So the first thing is to really build engagement
13:46
Speaker 3: and alliance. And so whether I'm working with an individual
13:50
Speaker 3: or im I'm working with my team and they're they're
13:53
Speaker 3: in touch with somebody who's struggling, we first need to
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Speaker 3: get that hook, create that alliance, create that so that
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Speaker 3: even if this isn't the call or this isn't the
14:04
Speaker 3: visit where they are going to make X y Z changes,
14:07
Speaker 3: at least they feel comfortable coming back to us and
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Speaker 3: continuing that conversation because it is again very hard to
14:14
Speaker 3: take those steps to to start to engage in care.
14:18
Speaker 3: And then we take it one step at a time.
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Speaker 3: What's the thing that's that's most difficult right now? What
14:24
Speaker 3: what are you? What is what is getting in the
14:26
Speaker 3: way most or what is most important to you? It's
14:29
Speaker 3: very important to have a client centered approach. I may
14:32
Speaker 3: I may want them to do five things for their health,
14:35
Speaker 3: but if what they're really worried about is how they're
14:38
Speaker 3: going to get their kid to an appointment next week,
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Speaker 3: They're not going to want to talk about their five
14:47
Speaker 3: things that I have on my list for their health.
14:50
Speaker 3: I need to take their lead in terms of what's
14:53
Speaker 3: important to them. And again that's still that still helps
14:55
Speaker 3: build that alliance and that relationship to help keep them
14:58
Speaker 3: coming back.
15:01
Speaker 1: Are you working with a team of people? I e.
15:04
Speaker 1: Do you you offering groups, et cetera? Or how or
15:08
Speaker 1: how are you working with clients?
15:11
Speaker 2: Yeah?
15:11
Speaker 3: So I have two main roles in my academic role.
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Speaker 3: I work with a multidisciplinary team. And so, for example,
15:20
Speaker 3: earlier this week, I was in a room with an
15:24
Speaker 3: addiction fellow, a patient, and a social worker on our team,
15:29
Speaker 3: and we were just really brainstorming how to get somebody
15:33
Speaker 3: to and from our clinic and to and from an.
15:36
Speaker 2: A social activity.
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Speaker 3: So that's a team in my academic setting, and then
15:41
Speaker 3: on the LIRA health side, I work with a team
15:44
Speaker 3: of master's level clinicians primarily composed comprised of social work
15:50
Speaker 3: as well as psychiatry and psychiatrists who are are there
15:56
Speaker 3: for the again, the patients who are presenting with the
15:59
Speaker 3: most complex needs.
16:02
Speaker 1: Is there kind of an understanding in addiction treatment that
16:07
Speaker 1: again with the understanding that everyone's different, but is there
16:10
Speaker 1: an understanding that it's important for people to be involved
16:14
Speaker 1: in groups? Is this that most.
16:18
Speaker 3: Often help groups are very important. I never I never
16:24
Speaker 3: kind of make an absolute requirement for my patients that
16:28
Speaker 3: you have to do X, Y Z, because I want
16:31
Speaker 3: them to do some amount of treatment. However, we know
16:34
Speaker 3: that groups are very important because in addition to the
16:38
Speaker 3: content and the processing that can happen through groups, there
16:42
Speaker 3: is also the opportunity to have more structure in ondnesday
16:46
Speaker 3: whether it's depression or substance use disorder, alcohol use disorder,
16:50
Speaker 3: so on. Structure is very important, as is that sense
16:54
Speaker 3: of community and peer support. So with so much isolation.
16:58
Speaker 3: I think the Surgeon General UH a few years ago
17:02
Speaker 3: had done a couple of years ago, rather had done
17:05
Speaker 3: a report on on loneliness in the US with the
17:09
Speaker 3: amount of isolation that there is having that that group,
17:13
Speaker 3: even if it's a zoom group, and I, for example,
17:16
Speaker 3: I run zoom groups and I hold groups both at
17:20
Speaker 3: both of my roles. There there's a place for people
17:24
Speaker 3: to go to have some accountability, to feel some camaraderie.
17:28
Speaker 3: So very important, and we know from the evidence that
17:31
Speaker 3: that groups and peer support can actually be just as
17:36
Speaker 3: effective and in fact, for some for some populations, more
17:39
Speaker 3: effective than treatments like CBT, which I talked about earlier.
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Speaker 1: M hmmm, all right, let's let's let me just remind
17:46
Speaker 1: every when I'm speaking with doctor Sumita das we're talking
17:49
Speaker 1: about addiction, I also want to kind of shift gears
17:53
Speaker 1: a little here and talk about motherhood. How does that
17:57
Speaker 1: whole track come into play with you and your interest.
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Speaker 3: Yes, so I started my career before myself personally becoming
18:08
Speaker 3: a mother, and so I didn't I didn't yet have
18:12
Speaker 3: an appreciation until I went through the journey of being pregnant,
18:19
Speaker 3: having probably one of the most traumatic or difficult times
18:22
Speaker 3: in my life during that time period, and then and
18:27
Speaker 3: then coming out of it now you know, a decade.
18:30
Speaker 2: Later, and.
18:33
Speaker 3: The idea that I was talking about earlier about where
18:37
Speaker 3: when when somebody either shows up in my office or
18:39
Speaker 3: on my screen to see me for treatment, they have
18:43
Speaker 3: they have had to face so many barriers and reasons.
18:46
Speaker 2: To not come.
18:48
Speaker 3: I think that's very very true with with with with
18:52
Speaker 3: women and with mothers in particular. There's there's so many
18:58
Speaker 3: burdens and so much pressure, and so many reasons that
19:01
Speaker 3: they they they may not seek treatment, and and so
19:05
Speaker 3: I just I have so much, so much more respect
19:09
Speaker 3: and admiration for those who are managing that. In addition
19:13
Speaker 3: to whatever other disease processes, do.
19:17
Speaker 1: You work with women specifically or mothers specifically.
19:22
Speaker 3: In my practices, I've since especially since I've left the VA,
19:27
Speaker 3: which is whereas director of Addiction Treatment Services prior to
19:30
Speaker 3: these two roles, I have had a lot more experience
19:34
Speaker 3: and opportunity to work with women. In fact, it became
19:38
Speaker 3: such an important part of what we're doing at LIRA
19:41
Speaker 3: that we built a Center of Excellence for women's mental health.
19:48
Speaker 1: Because in the in the bio, I thought it was
19:50
Speaker 1: very interesting, you know, it said something to the fact
19:53
Speaker 1: that you're kind of shining a light on the nuance
19:57
Speaker 1: reframing motherhood not just as coifold experience, but as as
20:02
Speaker 1: a potential breaking point. Say more about that.
20:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think sometimes motherhood it's it's it's idealized in
20:11
Speaker 3: this way of of everything looks like as it is
20:14
Speaker 3: on TV or in a movie, and it's really so
20:18
Speaker 3: much more than that. Everything from just the purely biological
20:22
Speaker 3: process of the changes in the hormones and what's going on,
20:26
Speaker 3: to the social expectations and you know, and that can
20:31
Speaker 3: also overlap with cultural expectations and then and then even
20:37
Speaker 3: to just how somebody is living within their own body.
20:43
Speaker 3: I remember before I was pregnant, several years before, a
20:48
Speaker 3: colleague we were in a process group, uh for for psychiatrists,
20:53
Speaker 3: and and she was postpartum. And I remember her saying
20:58
Speaker 3: this distinctly because it came back to me later after
21:01
Speaker 3: I gave birth. She said, you know, we were we
21:04
Speaker 3: were all passing around her baby and helping her take
21:06
Speaker 3: care of the baby while we were doing this this
21:08
Speaker 3: psychiatry group, and and she said that her her body
21:11
Speaker 3: doesn't necessarily feel like hers anymore.
21:13
Speaker 2: And I didn't. I didn't understand what that meant, uh And and.
21:17
Speaker 3: I remember being like, that's an interesting thing to say,
21:21
Speaker 3: and then and then after giving birth, I definitely understood,
21:26
Speaker 3: uh what that meant, uh, and had had an appreciation
21:30
Speaker 3: for it. And so I think, I think there's just
21:32
Speaker 3: so many aspects of motherhood and that's just you know
21:35
Speaker 3: that that's just really the beginning. And then as time
21:38
Speaker 3: goes on. We saw this, especially in COVID, and I
21:40
Speaker 3: experienced this personally, the.
21:44
Speaker 2: The the mental load. Uh, it's just it's it's.
21:49
Speaker 3: I don't even know how to describe it because it
21:51
Speaker 3: is so heavy. And and during that time with all
21:55
Speaker 3: the schools and preschools and so on closed and trying
21:58
Speaker 3: to do it all, it was for me personally it
22:01
Speaker 3: almost became a breaking point of do I keep working
22:03
Speaker 3: or do I do I do I mom full time?
22:08
Speaker 1: It seems to me, you know, from from someone who's
22:11
Speaker 1: had kids, that motherhood is often, certainly the importance of
22:18
Speaker 1: it is to a certain degree dismissed. And when issues arise,
22:23
Speaker 1: when you know, just as you're talking about, when physical
22:27
Speaker 1: or mental emotional issues arise, there just not you know,
22:34
Speaker 1: it's just motherhood. You know, it's just not taken. It's
22:38
Speaker 1: gone of dismissed to a certain degree, to a certain
22:40
Speaker 1: degree not taken. It seriously, But do you feel things
22:47
Speaker 1: are changing the cultural view of motherhood and what mothers,
22:53
Speaker 1: what it means to be a mother, Is that changing?
22:55
Speaker 1: And where does this focus and interest that you have,
23:00
Speaker 1: does this come into play? How is it going to manifest?
23:04
Speaker 3: I think it is changing, but very glacially. I I
23:12
Speaker 3: know that we're we're giving more attention to the importance
23:18
Speaker 3: of motherhood, the impact of motherhood, that the toll of motherhood.
23:23
Speaker 3: And yet there's still i think an underlying cultural, any
23:27
Speaker 3: cultural even within Western culture, cultural expectation of well.
23:31
Speaker 2: That's just what you do.
23:33
Speaker 3: Uh and and and and in these interviews, for example,
23:38
Speaker 3: when you see an executive on stage, if if it's
23:41
Speaker 3: a woman, it's always you know, how do you balance
23:44
Speaker 3: having a family and being a business person? And then
23:49
Speaker 3: uh and then you see like a male sitting next
23:51
Speaker 3: to her who has the same role in same same
23:53
Speaker 3: family situation, but.
23:54
Speaker 2: Nobody asks him that.
23:57
Speaker 3: And so I think that there's still a lot of
24:01
Speaker 3: progress to be made to really and I'm saying two
24:05
Speaker 3: things here. I'm saying, on one hand, be more fair
24:08
Speaker 3: about checking in about how it is to be a parent,
24:12
Speaker 3: But with that also needs to come the fairness of
24:16
Speaker 3: how those responsibilities are divvied up in society, and we
24:21
Speaker 3: still know from the numbers, for example, that women are
24:25
Speaker 3: paid less for the same roles, that they have less
24:28
Speaker 3: leadership roles, that they have less of.
24:30
Speaker 2: A chance to advance.
24:32
Speaker 3: And so if there's somebody an individual who's struggling with
24:37
Speaker 3: mental health concerns and they're also in their own life
24:40
Speaker 3: and their own professional development having to face even more barriers, gosh,
24:45
Speaker 3: they're just they're really not set up for success. And
24:48
Speaker 3: so in my own work, trying to at least do
24:51
Speaker 3: what I can to address the mental health part of it,
24:55
Speaker 3: to really help women live their best life and feel
24:59
Speaker 3: common but so that they don't have to feel like
25:01
Speaker 3: as much that it's an uneven playing field. It still
25:05
Speaker 3: is an uneven playing field for sure.
25:09
Speaker 1: All Right. So as we as we wind down here,
25:13
Speaker 1: what's the best way for people to learn more about
25:15
Speaker 1: you and what you're doing possibly reach out to you?
25:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that a really easy way to find
25:23
Speaker 3: me is through my Psychology Today blog which is the
25:27
Speaker 3: Science behind Recovery, or on my LinkedIn there I can
25:32
Speaker 3: learn more about the work that I'm doing. Both at
25:34
Speaker 3: Lerohealth at learhealth dot Com are also my work on
25:38
Speaker 3: faculty at Stanford, and so those are probably the best
25:41
Speaker 3: ways to reach out to me. And I'd encourage folks
25:44
Speaker 3: to to you know, quote unquote do their research and
25:48
Speaker 3: learn more, especially if they're struggling with any of the
25:51
Speaker 3: things that I talked about. There's, especially in addiction, a
25:56
Speaker 3: lot of a lot of people are unaware of treatment
26:00
Speaker 3: and evidence based ways to start to feel better. And
26:04
Speaker 3: so so I'm hopeful for folks to learn more about
26:09
Speaker 3: about what we've talked about and learn for themselves.
26:13
Speaker 1: What, just quickly, what are some of those ways that
26:15
Speaker 1: people might not be aware of.
26:19
Speaker 3: I think oftentimes the misconception in addiction, for example, comes
26:24
Speaker 3: from just thinking that they need to tough it out
26:27
Speaker 3: and bite the bullet and just you know, take care
26:31
Speaker 3: of it on their own. And so really the evidence
26:34
Speaker 3: based ways that are available and are super underutilized include therapy, therapy,
26:40
Speaker 3: treatments like we've discussed, things like cognitive behavioral therapy, or
26:43
Speaker 3: even just talking to a clinician and engaging in motivational
26:47
Speaker 3: interviewing all the way to medications. Medications to treat substance
26:51
Speaker 3: use disorders, but also medications to treat of the overlap
26:55
Speaker 3: that often occurs between other mental health concerns like depression, anxiety, trauma,
27:00
Speaker 3: and substance use disorders.
27:01
Speaker 2: So there's there's.
27:03
Speaker 3: Both medication based and non medication based treatments for all
27:07
Speaker 3: of these things that are just really underutilized.
27:11
Speaker 1: In your experience, do you find there's a predominant like
27:17
Speaker 1: experience of trauma that's going on with people who are addicted?
27:23
Speaker 2: There is a lot of overlap.
27:25
Speaker 3: There isn't a specific predominant type of trauma that I
27:29
Speaker 3: would say I would classify into addiction, but I will
27:32
Speaker 3: say that there is a lot of overlap. And oftentimes
27:39
Speaker 3: individuals who have experienced trauma may may turn to substances
27:43
Speaker 3: to cope, and and so that's that's where we see
27:47
Speaker 3: a lot of the overlap. And so it's very important
27:50
Speaker 3: for someone who's struggling with both a substance use disorder
27:53
Speaker 3: and a trauma related diagnosis that that they get both,
27:57
Speaker 3: they work with both instead of just trying to do
28:01
Speaker 3: one or the other, because of what we know from
28:04
Speaker 3: the research is that treating both together results in better outcomes.
28:09
Speaker 1: Right right, Okay, all right, Samita, I appreciate you being here.
28:13
Speaker 1: We'll have all those linked up here at the show
28:15
Speaker 1: notes page at the Trauma Therapist podcast dot com. Very inspiring.
28:20
Speaker 1: Appreciate it. Thank you so much, Thank you all right,
28:23
Speaker 1: take care, take care,