Ken Huey 0:00

Welcome to the Voice of Hope, where bold leaders and healers share how they're building hope, not just talking about it. I'm Dr. Ken Huey. Let's meet the change makers transforming lives from the therapy room to the boardroom. Hello and welcome to our show. We've got Shayna Jackson on with us. She is a chief behavioral health officer at Signature Health, a dedicated leader in mental health and trauma care with extensive experience supporting individuals, families, and communities through crisis intervention and recovery. Shayna, thanks so very much. Glad to have you.

Shayna Jackson 0:36

My pleasure. I'm looking forward to talking with you today.

unknown 0:40

Yeah.

Ken Huey 0:40

So maybe you could tell us what inspired you to pursue this career. Why behavioral health and trauma?

Shayna Jackson 0:47

Well, for me, when I was young, I actually was one of those people that was affected by a lot of those social determinants of health. So really grew up in a poorer neighborhood. I had lots of friends who had parents in and out of incarceral settings. And really many of those folks, as I continued to grow, really were experiencing many of those anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorders, and really would have benefited from having individuals who would be available for them to help stabilize through their journey of life. Because it's really easy to talk about the idea of, well, go see a counselor. But if I don't have transportation or I don't have healthcare or I don't know where to go, those things become far more challenging when at the same time, I'm not sure where I'm going to eat dinner tonight. And so at the end of the day, for me, I was pretty fortunate that I did have two working parents that helped kind of shield me from some of those things. But quite frankly, through luck and some other individuals and mentors, I was able to get access to some opportunities that the people in my neighborhood didn't have. And so I'm not going to sit on this show and say it was only through hard work. It really wasn't. It was really through some luck and some connections of folks that took an interest in me very young that helped me gain opportunities. I remember being in elementary school and being back in the day when kids were trapped based on their socioeconomic status and went to middle school. And my middle school English teacher was like, Why are you sitting in my remedial English class? I don't know. That's just where they put me. And her taking the initiative to call my mom and say, I'd really like to have her have a test on because I think she's in the wrong track. I think she can do different work than what she's been placed in based on the elementary school in the neighborhood she came from. Without that, that would have changed the opportunities that would have been open to me and various different aspects. So for me, it was really about my upbringing and seeing how I could make a difference moving forward and giving back to both my community and also to just hundreds and thousands of people out there that need help and need somebody to listen and understand what they're going through.

Ken Huey 3:22

So we've talked about ACEs on the show a number of different times. Your kind of why is similar to my own. I have a high ACE score of seven. And same thing. But I had a few lucky breaks, like you're saying. The great mitigator is one securely attached adult helping you and your life. And I feel like I got the same thing. So I love your wide. Talk to me about working with trauma survivors and how it has shaped your approach to healing.

Shayna Jackson 3:55

Sure. So working with trauma survivors, I've been working with trauma survivors for gosh, over 30 years. And when I first started working in trauma work back in the day, it was really a lot about only bearing witness to what occurred and listening. And what we have found as my career is evolving and as research has evolved is there's such a neurobiological component that goes along with trauma resolution and trauma processing that we didn't realize. And so you're seeing it emerge into the into both the consumerism place, you're seeing it in therapeutic interventions. At my place of employment, we have a number of therapists that are trained in what's called EMDR therapy or eye movement desensitization reprocessing, which is really about both talking and learning coping mechanisms or what they refer to as containment mechanisms to deal with trauma, but also through using neurobiological and biofeedback types of aspects to actually begin to reset those neural pathways that really what we know is traumatic backgrounds really change some of the way in which you see and process the world. And without actually doing that work alongside of talking about what you've gone through, the likelihood that you will fully be able to engage in the world and feel somewhat safe in that world is significantly diminished. And so I really enjoy that aspect of the work of thinking about, because oftentimes what we've heard in our society is if you just pull yourself up by your bootstraps, go see a counselor for a couple of sessions, you'll be fine. And what we know is a dysregulated brain can't actually take in the world the same way as an individual who has a regulated and safe brain. And what that has changed is the way in which we provide interventions for those folks that if we can't do that first, I can never establish safety for someone.

Ken Huey 6:12

Yeah. So you're kind of covering it, but I believe behavioral health officer. Tell me a little bit more about that. What's that role and where do you stand in terms of delivering care in the process?

Shayna Jackson 6:25

I mean, of course. So Signature Health is a large integrated behavioral health service. So the organization I work for is up in Northeast Ohio. We serve about 34,000 patients a year across a three-county area. We're based up in the Northeast by Cleveland area and actually touch that Northeast Ohio cus. And so we provide both primary health care, psychiatry care, case management, counseling, group therapy, residential care, crisis intervention. So it's all of those various levels. And my role as the chief behavioral health officer is to layer in those components of the mental health diagnosis, substance use disorder diagnoses, and how are we going to intervene most effectively with those folks? Now, what we do know, and one of the things that's evolving in behavioral health care is we cannot just treat from the head up. And so we can be the best counselors, who can be the best case managers on the planet. And if we have somebody who is dealing with uncontrolled diabetes, they are likely going to still present with exacerbated mental health symptoms. We also know that somebody, we could be the best counselors, we could be the best case managers, we could do all of those things. But if I don't have a safe place to stay tonight, the likelihood I'm going to really make profound impacts on somebody's life is diminished significantly. So the organization I work for is really about taking the mind, the body, as well as our environment and integrating those things together and saying, what's the whole person need so that you can stay in that wellness journey and making difference in somebody's outcomes.

Ken Huey 8:20

So tell me, Shane, what do you see as maybe some of the biggest challenges people face when they are trying to seek mental health support?

Shayna Jackson 8:29

Sure. I would say some of the biggest challenges. And so our particular organization, we actually are targeting individuals who are in underserved populations. So where the pay sources, we are primary folks who are receiving services from us, are usually covered by Medicaid. They may be uninsured, they may have Medicare services. Access to resources is a big problem. Access to transportation. And quite frankly, there are less and less people that are doing this work. Just statistically, at the end of the day, there are less and less counselors available. And so waiting lists become longer. Our organization took the standpoint of there are more resources available for folks that have some private insurance. And we really wanted to target those individuals that didn't have a lot of options out there and be able to provide premier services to them on a day-to-day basis. Every day I will say that I have a demand that is outmatching my capacity. So we've actually taken on a bold goal of being able to say we want every human who comes in through our doors to receive services, start their services with their long-term provider within seven days. And so we're running about 11 days right now. And we are continuing to encroach upon into seven days, but that has taken a significant shift of resources. And our organization is a little bit larger, as well as we're what's considered a federally qualified health center, which is we have an investment from the federal government that helps us be able to access some additional dollars in order to provide services to underserved communities. So those become big game changers in communities, not just for access to behavioral health, but also to decrease taxing on resources for our incarceral settings, for our first responders. Our mobile crisis team goes out and meets people in the homes. And so our goal with mobile crisis is to never have to have law enforcement involved. And hopefully we can have them contacting us soon enough in that crisis continuum that we can help them get access to services. And if they can't, we want to provide that bridge service until they can. And as well as when folks are leaving emergency rooms. Our emergency rooms are stacked. I mean, across our country, we have a serious behavior health problem in emergency rooms where folks are waiting for beds. In my state where I reside, trying to get a state hospital bed is a significant challenge. And so folks can wait days in the emergency room waiting for inpatient care. We've seen that for behavioral health services. We've seen that for medical services. So our role is to really try to do our best to intervene earlier in that trajectory, but it is hard work. The demand is out-eating the capacity, and COVID changed a lot of that.

Ken Huey 11:45

Tell me how families can support loved ones who are dealing with mental illness or trauma.

Shayna Jackson 11:52

Sure. I think one of the best things that families can do is A check in with your loved ones and ask them what's going on. And not asking them, why are you sleeping all later into the day? Or why haven't you done this? Because what happens is that creates a shame spiral for those folks. They want to do those things. But due to the biochemical imbalances that are happening, they can't. Many times when folks are really sick, we don't ask somebody to know how to access care when they have been in a car wreck. Somebody does that for them. But we certainly do when they're in a behavioral health crisis. Or we ask them when they're experiencing severe trauma. We say, well, just call somewhere and find somewhere to go. And we don't do that when we have folks needing other things. We make that easy for them. Family members are absolutely willing to take folks to the emergency room to doctor's appointments to those things. But behavioral health crises and trauma is something that folks who are not experienced that are struggle with understanding. And I go back to that biochemical component all the time. Kids knowing, checking in with your child when they're at home every night. What happened at school today? What's going on? Is your teenager showering? Have you seen a distinctive change in their behavior? Are they way too good, quite frankly? Because oftentimes you will see that as well. Mental health doesn't always show up the same way in every human. We know as folks age that depression symptoms typically present as agitation, not sadness. And so if my mother is at home and she's extremely short with me over the course of six weeks, which is not her typical personality, I have a choice to make. How can I be helpful? Tell me what's going on. And that becomes extremely important for family members who are oftentimes the first to see symptom changes. If schools are calling, we have this weird dichotomy going on in our society right now that we think our teachers are somehow not our partner. And if our child isn't turning in schoolwork or not showing up in class the way they need to, we need to partner with our educators, not work in against them as part of that. Because at the end of the day, if we don't, we miss a significant component for how our youth are at school. I will tell you that school bullying and cyberbullying and some of the various different techniques that I'm old. I didn't experience these kinds of things. But my 16-year-old son does. Being able to understand what Instagram is or what Discord is or how that looks becomes incredibly important to connect with your youth versus saying, Well, I didn't do that, so I don't need to learn it. But you lose a connection then with the people in your own home.

Ken Huey 16:20

So your job has you wading around in vicarious trauma, in people's people really difficult issues. What gives you hope when you live so much of your professional life in that? What makes you feel like it's going to be okay?

Shayna Jackson 16:36

I think what's going to be okay is as I've watched kind of the evolving culture that's gotten somewhat divided. But what I am seeing is folks starting to think about the human component that's in the middle of this. That it's okay to seek help. There's not a harm to seeking counseling. There's not a harm to reaching out to another person. And it's not a sign of weakness. I am super encouraged to see the generations coming up that have normalized counseling and normalized seeking services at a level that was unheard of years ago, which means that people are willing to talk about what their psychic pain looks like and not say I'm just going to stuff it away and maybe engage in some maladaptive coping mechanisms because there's not a space in which I can be that person. I'm watching peer groups be much more open about that. So that's encouraging to me as the field continues to evolve. I think we still have a long way to go. I think there are lots of bright ways to the answer, and that it's not one way for every person. We have to respect the uniqueness of each person that comes in our door and being able to say for one person that exercise and outside and those kinds of things resonate with them, and that's a really great strategy for them. The next person, it may be reading books, it may be medication, it may be something different, but we have to be flexible enough in the way in which we think about people and really respect quite frankly the human brain, which is such a fascinating and complex organ that we only understand a mere fraction of how it works. And it's just a very different type of medicine to practice. It's not a broken bone that I can put together and say, okay, it should heal in six weeks. I can have two people show up and have them have the same diagnosis of a trauma history and an anxiety disorder. And one may take nine months of intensive work, and the next one may take two months. And our upbringings and the way we process the world all matter in how we do this work. So I like that challenge. I like that I don't get to do the same thing every day. I like the fact that we have some folks that are with trauma backgrounds, we have folks with severe persistent illness coming through our doors. And one of the coolest things that I love about the work we do is hearing from our patients that they say, City Jobs is a safe place. I can come and hang out in their lobby and not be judged. Awesome. And if you don't even have an equal for the day and you want to come grab a cup of coffee because this is a safe space for you to do that, cool. I've done my job because judgment is easy. Compassion is hard.

Ken Huey 20:12

Well, I gotta say, Shane, you're out there doing things to directly impact our people, the people that have got this deep trauma. And I just really appreciate the work that you're doing, the safe place that the safe space that you're creating, and coming on and spending a little bit of time talking with us about it. Thanks so much.

Shayna Jackson 20:29

Of course, of course, my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

Ken Huey 20:33

Thanks for joining us on The Voice of Hope. If you were inspired, share the light. And remember, hope's not just a feeling, it's a force. We'll see you next time.