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 changemakers transforming lives from the therapy room to the boardroom. Hello, and welcome to the voice of hope. Today's guest is Amy Rice, Associate Director of Specialty Behavioral Health at Gardner Health Services. Amy is a licensed marriage and family therapist who works closely with children, adolescents, and families to support meaningful growth, healing, and long-term well-being. Amy, welcome.

Amy Rice 0:34

Hi, I'm so happy to be here.

Ken Huey 0:37

Yeah, we I'm always interested in what lands people in their chosen profession. You know, what's your why? How did you start a career as a therapist?

Amy Rice 0:46

I think there's been a couple touch points in my life. I think for me, it was the opportunity that I had to participate in therapy myself. I was 19 and underwent a lot of anxiety and stress in my life with a loss of a grandparent and then just going into college my first year. And it was a scary time. And this led me to get a recommendation to a school counselor who was also just a grad student trying to get her hours. And it showed me the opportunity of how to help somebody through that. And that propelled my desire to do the same.

Ken Huey 1:25

All right. That personal inspiration, I love that. We had this therapist that tried to help my parents stay together and not get divorced, didn't work. But he helped our family out. And I just loved his life, what he was doing, the way that he was attentive to his own kids, the way that he worked with me. And he became a real inspiration for me. So I also was inspired by a therapist that that kind of got me started. So all right. So let's talk a little bit about Gardner Health Services. What about Gardner Health Services brought you to them?

Amy Rice 1:56

I got hired here 12 years ago, and I started in our criminal justice department with adults. And I kind of stumbled upon them. I had put my resume out to a lot of different agencies in the area and got fired here. And what I liked about Gardner was that we do all the age ranges, all the way from zero all the way up to older adult. And so you have a lot of opportunity to grow and work with different populations, and you can kind of find the one that fits you. I spent probably the first four years in the criminal justice and adult world, and then moved into the family and children world a little bit more. And then now I'm overseeing all the programs. And so it's allowed me to kind of move around throughout the different spectrums.

Ken Huey 2:47

Give us a quick picture of the criminal justice side. What about that was intriguing and what did you learn?

Amy Rice 2:53

Yeah. The criminal justice program is a big movement that's been in Santa Clara County for a while. Of it's better to help somebody get the support that they need, maybe with mental health or substance use, rather than just leave them incarcerated where they're not going to get the support that they need and they're just going to end up cycling through our system more and more. And so this program looks at people who have high mental health or high substance use and helps them to get the support that they need. We pick them up from jail. We move them into housing. We make sure that they start on their meds right away. We help them to get the case management that they need. A lot more of what they need is case management. Before we're going to delve into any therapy, we need to make sure that their needs are met, that they're attending their probation appointments, and making sure that all of their goals of trying to get off of probation are being satisfied. I think for me personally, I knew that I had family members that would have fallen into this program if it had existed in other counties. I have family members that have high mental health, high substance use, had been cycled in and out of incarceration. And this program ended up tying a lot of that in for me and seeing how it can really change somebody's life.

Ken Huey 4:19

Talk to me a little bit about children and adolescents. What are the challenges they're facing relative to mental health right now that you're seeing?

Amy Rice 4:27

Yeah, there's so many things I feel like our kids and adolescents are facing. I think that there is an immense amount of pressure that they face that many have not faced, whether it's from social media or just the expectations that are placed on them in school. I think a lot of our kids and adolescents today have a lot more anxiety than many of us grew up with. That comparison of, oh, I have to be better than this person, or I have to get these grades. It's no longer okay. And for some families, just to have a 4.0, they need to have the 4.5 or whatever the highest is with all these honors classes and getting into the right schools and performing the way they need to perform. And I think there's a lot that causes them to then cycle through anxiety, stress, and then that can turn into other behavioral problems.

Ken Huey 5:26

What can families do better to support their children, you know, relative to these issues that we're facing these days?

Amy Rice 5:33

Yeah. I think one of the key things that families can do is provide just the opportunity and the platforms for family discussion. That can be as simple as having a meal together each day where you're kind of doing icebreakers and you're just building that conversation with your kid. Having a natural platform doesn't mean we have to sit down and have this deep, deep conversation. But having this conversation where there's that ability just to talk. It can be as simple of some fun, like two truths and a lie or something, just to get them talking with their parent. Because I think a lot of times as adults, we feel like we have to go to the deep end right away. But sometimes we just have to foster the relationship and help them to be able to understand a little bit more. That like, hey, we're here, we're a person as well. We want to kind of meet you where you're at. And then there might be an opportunity to have those deeper conversations after that trust is built, after that regulation is kind of put into the place.

Ken Huey 6:35

All right. What do you do to help kind of foster self-awareness with your clients?

Amy Rice 6:42

That's a really good question. I think when I was working with clients, I did a lot of kind of helping them reframe kind of their goals. One of the tools that we utilize a lot in our agency is called the narrative summary. So after the 60 days that it takes to write an assessment or something, you kind of summarize their entire like clinical story, everything that we put into clinically, all that clinical language, we put into a story for them that tells their journey of how they got here and then how they want to move forward. And that can be a really beautiful moment for the client because this is the probably the first time that they've heard their story out loud. And it helps them to kind of take that step back and be like, oh wow, I have been through a lot and I'm still here. Or you're right, like this has been a hard situation and this is what I want to do about it. The story never ends because we're just getting started, but we put some goals at the end of the story together to help them to be kind of mindful of this is what you've been through and this is where you can go. Um, but it's completely guided by the client.

Ken Huey 8:00

Amy, is there an interplay between early intervention and mental health outcomes?

Amy Rice 8:07

Absolutely. I think the earlier we get involved in situations, the more foundation there is. Even the basics of just being intentional with talking to kids around mental health or behavioral health issues. We're not putting intervention in place, like full-on intervention, but just talking about anxiety, just talking about what that is and talking about our feelings is in fact an early intervention because it helps kids to recognize, hey, this is how I can learn how to express myself. One of the things that we kind of always say here is that all of our programs, for the most part, are in this an early intervention because we're always trying to prevent the next thing. We're trying to prevent the worst case scenario. So taking those times to lay the foundation, especially for our kids, is important.

Ken Huey 9:04

So we'll have some kind of beginning therapist watching this. What can they do to build trust with younger clients?

Amy Rice 9:14

It's a great question. I love working with younger therapists who are just getting their feet wet. My biggest thing is meet a client where they're at. Don't rush into the theories and being overly complicated, but kind of just meet them where they're at. A lot of times when I'm working with a kid, depending on the age, is we play a game first. We get down on the ground, we start with some kind of activity, we do a lot of side-by-side play. Maybe it's doing Legos or something like that, where the conversation just again becomes natural. So they build that trust of just talking out loud with you sitting next to them. And then slowly you start to ask those questions. They can start off really simple of like, hey, tell me what was the best part of your day? And then they might dive in a little bit more of like, hey, why was that your best part? Or tell me what was the worst part of your day? And you go in a little bit deeper. But just learning how to sit next to a kid and just talk and meet them where there is to me the first school.

Ken Huey 10:19

What are some of the misconceptions that you see people have about therapy with adolescents and families?

Amy Rice 10:25

I think one of the big misconceptions that's out there sometimes today is that kids have to do this kind of on their own. And I'm not saying this for every single family, but a lot of times therapy needs to involve the family and it needs to involve the parent as well. A lot of times for our kids, what we see is they're coming in because they're having family issues. They're having maybe they're having school issues that are also impacting school as well, but it's a lot of behavioral because a lot of our kids, that's how they express their emotion is through a behavior. Um they're yelling or they're doing getting violent at school. And a lot of that is somehow uh dysregulation. And usually what happens is as a parent or a caregiver, you're trying to figure out what's going on as well, but you yourself aren't regulated in that moment. And so it ends up in a family fight, ends up in our office. And a lot of what we see is that the parent's coming in and wants to fix the kid, but we need to do a lot of family work as well. We need to take a step back and see how can we help this parent support their kid. And a lot of what we it's called collateral of collateral services is because we're helping the parent to be the regulator, to be the person that's regulating the kiddo to reduce that anxiety or that stress or that depression and help guide the kid because a lot of times the kid can't do it always on their own. They need somebody to support them. And the parent is the first line of defense a lot of times there.

Ken Huey 11:59

So, you know, you work a lot with individuals, with families. What gives you hope in that work?

Amy Rice 12:07

That's a great question. I've been in the field here at Gardner for 12 years, and there's definitely been a lot of sadness and a lot of moments of like you feel complete, like, oh, I'm not making that difference. But then we do get those cases where our staff get to see a glimmer of hope. And it can be something really simple we have a group going on, and we had six families show up for group, and these are parents that are taking time out of their week every week to come in and come to a group. That means something. It can mean somebody showing up and teaching a new mom how to check on her baby and recognizing that this baby needs a lot more help than what they intended. And so it saved that baby's life. Those little moments, even though they're little or they're major moments in these families' lives, like they are ongoing and they're going to have a ripple effect.

Ken Huey 13:04

Somebody listening today who wants to support a child or a loved one and doesn't quite know what to do, what's one actionable step they can take to help?

Amy Rice 13:15

I think sitting down and really listening to what the need is. Sometimes it's just showing up for the person. Doesn't mean you actually have to do a whole lot. Doesn't even mean you actually have to say anything. It's just sitting with them through the pain. A lot of times we have people in our lives that just show up and we know that we can lean in on them in those hard moments. They didn't maybe do anything specific, they showed up for us.

Ken Huey 13:42

Very fair. Amy, on the front lines, doing the work that you're doing, I so appreciate you taking a moment to spend some time and talk to us about mental health and working with families. Thank you.

Amy Rice 13:54

No, thank you so much.

Ken Huey 13:56

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.