What is Trauma? Understanding Trauma and Trauma-Informed Care

The word trauma is everywhere, but what does it really mean? This episode defines trauma, explores how the term evolved, and examines its real impacts, both mental and physical, on individuals and communities, and how it might relate to suicide risk. Listeners will also learn about the trauma-informed care offered at the David Farber ASPIRE Center and how building resilience can help protect against its lasting effects.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Unsilent, candid Conversations about suicide prevention podcast is brought to you by Jefferson Health and the David Farber Aspire Center. The following podcast discusses mental health, depression, suicide, and other sensitive topics. This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you are experiencing suicidal thoughts or in crisis, call or text the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988. Hello, and welcome back to Unsilent Candid Conversations about Suicide Prevention. I'm your host, Amanda Blue, Education Director of the David Farber Spire Center. These are my co-hosts, Dr. Matt Winterstein, Center Director, and Dr. Lucas Zulu, Clinical Director. On today's show, we're going to talk about trauma. We now hear phrases like trauma-informed care, even trauma-informed yoga instruction. These were not part of mainstream vernacular 20 years ago. Although we try not to get overly clinical, Matt, I'm going to invite you to frame it in a little clinical definition so that we aren't confused by what familiarity we might have with PTSD.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

PTSD is a clinical diagnosis, post-traumatic stress disorder that has existed since, in theory, since 1980 and really emerged after the Vietnam War and traumatic experiences that people were having in combat and combat veterans returning home and the symptoms that they were experiencing as a result of what they had witnessed and had been a part of. It has evolved into civilian life and how that then translates into traumatic experiences that one could have here. And over time the diagnosis has changed from there has to be a specific event that has occurred that leads to then specific uh symptoms afterwards to allowing for there being a range of events that may occur in someone's life. So living in a community where there's a lot of community violence that's occurring and so on. Because in the past it would be, well, you had to have witnessed that event occur, whereas being a part and surrounded by those things can now lend itself to a diagnosis. But PTSD is a clinical diagnosis. It is not simply an experience that somebody's had. It has very specific symptoms that occur afterwards, things like avoidance and sort of hyper-arousal and stuff like that that occurs. I don't want any of our listeners to get confused to think that experiencing some traumatic event and then having those symptoms results, then you must have a PTSD diagnosis. What we know is there's a lifetime prevalence rate of about 8% for a diagnosis of PTSD, but there's many, many more people who've experienced traumas in their life.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

Lucas, I think this is a good opportunity for you to address trauma on a different level, right? The non-PTSD version of trauma that I think is what most people really are thinking about or talking about, whether or not they recognize the difference.

SPEAKER_03 2:56

As you mentioned at the start, there's now this terminology of trauma-informed care. It's by really giving validity to experiences that maybe we didn't have as much on our radar as professionals, as clinicians. Because when we say trauma-informed care, what we're doing is we're widening the definition of what should be on our radar as something that's potentially distressing to individuals. For example, when we talk about trauma-informed care, we talk about the trauma of racism or homophobia or navigating a healthcare system that can be really very challenging for people of underserved and underrepresented backgrounds. But when we say that definition of the word trauma, what we're describing is an event of some kind or an experience of some kind that really is above a person's ability to cope. And that can be their own emotional resources, that can be the resources of their support system, that can be due to experiences that they've had in the past that makes them more vulnerable to having an experience that is especially distressing. And I think as Mao is really saying, people can have a host of traumas, a host of experiences not have PTSD. That is, can be really due to someone's resilience. And it can also be due to kind of the constellation of factors that impacts their interpretation of the trauma, of the experiences that for some person, it is a trauma. For someone else, it isn't a trauma. And for someone else, it's maybe even PTSD. And so really being able to note that difference and that distinguishing between those different uh outcomes of a of maybe even the same event.

SPEAKER_01 4:30

But also that trauma is a very individual sort of experience. And so that's a really important point when we're talking about trauma, is understanding how individual it is. I don't know if you have thoughts about this, but is it because of the elevated awareness in a clinical setting that we are now talking about trauma so much?

SPEAKER_03 4:50

I I think there is definitely the language in clinical care that is more mainstream, especially I'd say, uh in the past 10 years, even more in the past five years, because I'd say even as a clinician myself, when I was in graduate school, I didn't hear about this. I really heard trauma is almost, I say to my colleagues, like it was three boxes that we essentially were charged, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and emotional abuse. That's trauma. And I actually didn't really learn to expand that until I joined the NCTS and the National Child Traumatic Stress Network that really says trauma-informed care is essential to evidence-based practice and best practice in suicide prevention is trauma-informed. I'd say it's impacted the mainstream in a similar way is that we're now having more validity to people's experiences. We're saying that, you know, this is something that happened to you for me. It wasn't that bad. But for you, maybe it was really tough. And maybe this is a chance for me to support you, connect you with resources, and to say, even though I didn't experience this of trauma, a friend, a colleague, a loved one might have, and to have more empathy and validity to their range of lived experience.

SPEAKER_00 5:55

That's the important part of this. It has to do with the experience, the validation of the experience and the recognition, acknowledgement that I may not see this as being something that would have been challenging for me to manage, but it may be something that would be challenging for somebody else. And so you have to kind of acknowledge that that's that's a piece of where this all is in a similar aspect to what you talked about before. We could all go through the same event, but have very, very different reactions to it. And those things are based on lots of different factors. But by and large, it's a recognition that we all experience life from different lenses.

SPEAKER_01 6:26

So I'm gonna insert a little quote in here, which is one of my favorites when we talk about trauma. It is uh from trauma expert Gabor Mate, who says children don't get traumatized because they get hurt. They get traumatized because they're alone with the hurt. What I like about this is that it doesn't assume that everyone will have the same response to the trauma, having the support in your ability to cope and resilience, which is, I think, a big topic when we're talking about trauma.

SPEAKER_00 6:57

You hit the nail on the head there with the resilience kind of piece of it, is it we've all been through different things in life. And if we sat, we we can't just chalk them up and say, okay, well, Lucas been has been through this and you've been through that, and I've been through this. So who's experienced the most trauma? That's not what it's about. I think that quote's a fantastic one because it reminds us that it's not what happened. It's how we had to manage and live with what happened in the context of our own experience, our own personality, the support system around us, the environment around us, the community around us, all of those kinds of things impact the way in which we then uh move forward on things.

SPEAKER_03 7:33

It's so interesting, as Matt was noticing, to say that it can be the same event, but people can have such different experiences and interpretations, which is why I really see the time after this event as a really critical window to really wrap the support around someone, to really be there as a community and also really connect them to services. Because I think where I've seen unfortunately things happen is, you know, again, people all can be experiencing the same thing. And you could be connected to a provider who is not trauma-informed and who is not equipped to support them through that situation. And it ends up being a diagnosis of PTSD, or it becomes a longer-term struggle than it needed to be. And that's really tough for me to see as a provider.

SPEAKER_01 8:14

Because we've already acknowledged that resilience is a key feature in someone's ability to move beyond the trauma that they experience. Can people learn resilience? Um, or is this something that you're either born with it or you're not?

SPEAKER_00 8:30

There's probably a little bit of a both and, right? I mean, you're you're certainly born with uh certain personality characteristics and traits that would contribute to being more resilient, but that personality gets developed within the context of a home where there is support and acknowledgement and all those other things that help to build a sense of resilience in the first place. Now, for somebody who perhaps doesn't have a high level of resilience, could we train somebody and teach somebody to be more resilient? I think the answer to that's yes, but there has to be a motivation for doing so. There has to be this, you have to work at it. It's not something that just comes naturally to you. And there's a lot of work that goes behind doing those kinds of things. And so it's kind of making sense and organizing your experience. You have to deal with the fact that if we're talking about trauma here, you've been through this before. How do we make sense of that? But you want to build skills and resources and all those tools, which again are a cornerstone of the work that we do here at the David Farber Aspire Center. We build those cornerstones and pieces in place, which then starts to amplify the resilience piece a little bit more, where the goal is you've been through X before you've come in. We've built some skills, some resources around you to help enable you to manage these things, both your past experience and moving forward, such that if something happens again, you are prepared. There's a level of resilience that didn't exist before that's there now. But you really have to be motivated to kind of make that change and push in that direction.

SPEAKER_03 10:00

Matt was talking about resilience being, you know, an intrinsic trait, which we are learning it is. We have data and research on that, is that this is something that you're you're born with. It's related to your temperament. But we're also seeing the critical importance of teaching skills that promote resilience, even for people who don't have that innate uh component, is real. And I think it shows the real worth of uh teaching this in schools, teaching this in families, having this before someone arrives at the David Farber Aspire Center, has a trauma, experience of thoughts of suicide, so we can get to it before they need to use these skills. And at the same time, I want to also inspire hope that if you do go through this trauma, get to the point of having thoughts of suicide, that is something that can be taught. To Matt's point, you do need to have a commitment to care, a drive to learn these skills, try these skills, even when it's an uncomfortable. It's harder after a trauma has happened. It is harder when you're having regular thoughts of suicide, but it can be done. And I just really want to know that both are opportunities to learn. I'd say the upstream is the easiest and most uh opportune time to learn, but that just because a trauma has happened does not mean resilience can't be done.

SPEAKER_01 11:10

Your comment about upstream just makes me think that as a parent, these are some of the things that we do that we're not necessarily aware. Oh, let me teach you this thing about resilience, right, when we're raising children. But it is kind of helping them understand how to deal with disappointments and all the things that they will inevitably encounter as they're growing up. And our willingness or the kind of awareness and attention to how they manage those things and kind of helping them to manage going back again to the support, the connection, the conversations, et cetera, that kids have when they experience the smallest of things to the largest of things. And that's how as parents we can help them. Of course, I think there's probably plenty of parents out there who might struggle with that themselves. And so it might be a harder lesson for them to teach to impart on their children.

SPEAKER_00 12:04

Well, this is also where you have sort of the hindsight's 2020 kind of piece of this, right? As a parent, you sit there and go, okay, well, I've been through a lot of stuff when I was a kid. Um, you know, my kid's going through something now. The the place where you don't want to fall into is to sit there and say, hey, don't worry about it. Everything's gonna be okay. That's not the most trauma-informed response for your kid in that particular moment in time. So, yes, they've experienced something, and you might sit there and think, that that may not be the biggest deal. But what we want to do is approach them with a lens of instead of saying, hey, get over it, it's not a big deal, to tell me, like, help me understand how you're feeling about this kind of stuff and then provide them with some tools to kind of think through this, talk about it. And well, what can we do if we start feeling this way? You know, these are they're simple skills. I know most parents, that's not the direction you're gonna go in. But it's if we can learn to take that step, I think we we hopefully raise kids that have some tools that they may not otherwise have.

SPEAKER_03 13:01

And I think also modeling it. Yeah. I think one of the best ways to teach is to model is that they're gonna watch you as parents go through tough times. Bad things are going to happen in life. It's about how you respond and you show them, yeah, this bad thing did happen to me. I have the skills to navigate it, and I can get through this. We can get through this.

SPEAKER_01 13:22

If you or someone you love is in crisis, the David Farber Aspire Center is available as a resource for all areas of suicide prevention. You can reach us at jeffersonhealth.org slash aspire. While we're on the subject of young people, I want to bring up something that uh I think uh most of our listeners may have heard of, if not be a little bit familiar with, and that is the adverse childhood experiences survey, known as ACES, was done in Southern California in the mid-90s, I think 95, 97. And it was pretty groundbreaking in terms of what it uncovered in the lives of young people and the things that they experienced and the long-term outcomes. You want to talk about that a little bit, Matt?

SPEAKER_00 14:05

Yeah. So the the thing I think that made this the most groundbreaking is it was looking at what they were defining as adverse childhood experiences wasn't necessarily the things that we had talked about related to PTSD, for example, before. This was not that you were in the middle of a war zone and trying to figure out how to navigate those things as a child. This was not that uh community violence was occurring around you and you'd step outside and there were gunshots. It was not, that was not the adverse experiences that people were talking about with the study. It was focused on things like living in a home where your parents were separated or divorced, um, food or housing insecurity and a variety of things that that were along those lines, which again, at the time we weren't talking about as being trauma quite the way that we're talking about it in this conversation here. And this study went on to define basically 10 different areas of adverse childhood experiences. And the survey accounted for each of these. And what they found was the more of these things you experienced in your life as a child, the shorter your lifespan was predicted to be, the greater the outcomes of behavioral health problems, health problems, suicide risks. So, for example, if you had four ACEs, the chances of making a suicide attempt was 30 times greater. That's astounding. You don't see this anywhere. It was the first study that really said these things that kids went through growing up lead to defined negative outcomes, both on the health side, on the physical health side, and the emotional mental health side of things.

SPEAKER_01 15:41

For me, when I heard about it years ago, I I thought, like, I couldn't imagine why we weren't screaming about this everywhere, really banging the drum as loudly as possible about this. Um, any follow-up comments about ACEs for you, Lucas?

SPEAKER_03 15:56

Yeah, I mean, just to build on Matt's point is, you know, we see so clearly the long-term impacts of this. And we've also seen that checking these boxes like as a clinician or as a provider, does not automatically mean that this person has BTS. If these factors did occur, they may have long-term impact. But again, it relates to their experience and how it manifests clinically on whether or not that diagnosis is appropriate and applicable.

SPEAKER_01 16:23

We've talked before about the fact that um I I mentioned, I believe, my personal experience in talking to therapists who, when they are are made aware that I've had two suicide losses, immediately assume that that's why I'm there, that I'm, you know, that that's my struggle. It could be any number of other things. But those assumptions based on that trauma, to your point, um, are troubling because, again, not everybody has the same experience. Uh, not everybody is unable to or struggling with managing those experiences.

SPEAKER_00 17:00

It goes back to the idea of we want to start by being curious. So we look at these kinds of things and we say, okay, you've experienced these things in your life. How do you understand that? Let's talk about that a little bit. We don't want to assume that that's going to lend itself to being a problem. The interesting side to that statement, though, is the data, you go back to the ACES study, the data says no one was talking about, hey, how did you experience this? What was this like for you? It was like, you checked the box and you checked more boxes, therefore, the problems are greater. So I think clinically, you're absolutely right. We do need to have a conversation about this. I think, you know, anyone who's working with uh individuals who've been through adverse childhood experiences, is having a conversation about it's important, being curious about that. How do they make sense of it, organize it, et cetera, assuming that it is a PTSD-esque kind of trauma, um, I think is a fallacy. And we we need to avoid that.

SPEAKER_03 17:52

And we also see clinically, it's a phenomenon that's documented in the literature too, is post-traumatic growth. Is things can go in the opposite direction, is people can have horrible things happen to them and they say, I'm gonna turn this into a strength of mine. They do amazing things, they can make create nonprofits, they have initiatives, and they say, I took this and I'm gonna make this something that's not holding me back, but is gonna help me to really succeed and help other people.

SPEAKER_01 18:17

Lots of people who have done things similar to that, and I've watched other people stand in awe of like, how did you do that? How did you take this terrible thing and make it something different? And that speaks to their resilience, learned or otherwise. While we're on the subject of trauma-informed care, I want you, Lucas, please, to address that as a part of the evidence-based care that we provide here at the David Barber Aspire Center.

SPEAKER_03 18:42

Definitely. I think it really is very the foundation of how we approach care. Because I'd say older models of care that, you know, I was trained in for sure really focuses on maybe one or two main factors, like what are these thoughts, these cognitive distortions that are getting people stuck? That's totally valid. Or maybe what's the emotional response or what's the behavior that's getting someone stuck? Again, that's valid. But what we do is we really widen the lens of how do we conceptualize what's going on, is maybe what's driving this due to housing insecurity, food insecurity, a history of maybe domestic violence, for example, because things like thoughts and behaviors and suicidality don't occur in a vacuum. They just don't spontaneously arise. So if we're able to really better understand where all this is coming from, how it's being sustained and maintained, then we can have a more complete picture of what to do about it. And now we can really intervene and support someone as they navigate how did they get to the point of having thoughts of suicide? Well, it's complex. It's not a straight line. And so our clinicians are able to see all of these dots, all of these factors that are impacting this, and then address it. When I think about trauma-informed care, especially as it relates to the services at the David Farber Aspire Center, there are two key components I really want to highlight to listeners. Is there's promoting psychological safety and there's resisting potential re-traumatization? And these two components are essential. The first one is does the person feel safe in the room with you? Is are you taking the time to make sure they feel safe opening up to you? Are you able to answer questions about confidentiality? Do they understand the limits of confidentiality, their rights, for example, but if they share thoughts of suicide, are they immediately going to be sent inpatient, which we know is not going to happen? Are you taking time to use correct pronouns, for example? Are you able to make sure that the space is conducive to them feeling like, oh, this is someone who I can trust? So promoting that psychological safety is essential to trauma-informed care. The second, and the one that I feel people overlook is resisting potential re-traumatization. When someone sees you for the first time, they carry a history of potential traumas. And those traumas are impacting how they're viewing you. And what I always say is when someone looks at you, what do they see? Are they seeing someone who looks like you as a title like someone that they've seen before, maybe literally as a badge like someone they've seen before, who acted in a way that was supposed to help them but hurt them. And so are they, when they see you and they're a little maybe quiet that you are fearing, viewing their defensive, they're on guard, are they afraid? Are they anxious? And so that when you respond in a way that again is maybe well-intentioned, you're reminding them of what happened. And examples that I always like to provide is I once was speaking to a trainee. She said, whenever someone discloses thoughts of suicide, my first thing is to say, Thank you so much for telling me, she steps out of the room. And the reason she steps out of the room is she wants to consult with her supervisor because she wants to make sure I'm responding in the right way. And I say to her, Well, what do you think is going through that patient's mind? I messed up. That person is now calling security. They're coming to get me. And I say that is well intentioned. You want to make sure you're getting support. But that is potentially re-traumatizing the patient. Similarly, had people say, you know, oh, call 911. This is before 988. If you're having thoughts of suicide, just call 911 and law enforcement will help you. We now know very clearly that is not a trauma-informed recommendation. And so we're able to say, I remember in the past, I've told myself patients, just call 911 if your son is having thoughts of suicide. I once said to a mom, I would never do that. I would never call the police if my child is potentially at harm for hurting himself. That's the last thing I would do. And that was me re-traumatizing a parent because I was not considering the full scope of what that trauma looks like. So we as providers need to have both of these in mind when we think about trauma-informed practices.

SPEAKER_00 22:44

We do not know the experience of the other when we walk into the room to meet somebody for the first time. You have no idea what they've been through. Part of our job, I think, clinically is to understand that through their lens the best that we can. But if they feel unsafe in that room with us to begin with, you already are starting with a wall in place that you have to navigate and work through to get there. And that's easier said than done sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 23:08

I mean, it seems to me that it could be, uh and this is a little bit based on my personal experience, but it it could be as simple as you're the eighth person I've seen about this trauma, right? And everybody else has either been fill-in-the-blank, dismissive, um, whatever, in in some form or fashion, unhelpful, ranging from there to harmful to me by re-traumatizing me, etc. So I I could see very easily how somebody walks in and sits down in a room with a therapist and starts sizing them up immediately, like, how's this gonna go? Trauma aside, I know multiple people who have gone to many, many different therapists just trying to find the right fit, not even because of some particularly negative experience.

SPEAKER_03 23:54

They are bringing assumptions to the the clinic space which are based on their past, and it's our responsibility to address those assumptions.

SPEAKER_01 24:02

So as we wrap up, uh I'm gonna give you both an opportunity, if you'd like, to provide any final thoughts about what might help our listeners in identifying either the impact of trauma in themselves or loved ones or how to navigate uh finding help with that.

SPEAKER_03 24:20

We're all gonna have experiences that are really hard. And we're all gonna have experiences that maybe do reach the level of trauma. If that trauma does happen to ourselves or to our loved one, I think it's important to say, first of all, that if this happened, it's gonna be very normal for you to feel differently afterwards. But if that response starts to impact your daily functioning to a point where you feel like it is an incredible effort for me to get through the day, or you feel like this sadness, this worry, this is really at a level that doesn't feel right. It's not going away. I'm getting stuck on this. That's a really nice time to reach out for help. That's a really nice time for you to see and observe that shift in your friend and say, I want to be here for you. Maybe I can connect you to professional services. Because again, it's very normal for you to feel upset about what happened. That's human, but it's impacting you at a level I'm a little worried about you. And I want you to get some additional support.

SPEAKER_00 25:14

I I think that's fantastic. I think the I want to sort of end with thinking about resilience a little bit. I think it's it's our part to kind of give people the grace to be resilient, not make assumptions about their experiences, ask questions, be informed about it, be curious, but be compassionate.

SPEAKER_01 25:31

So that wraps up our conversation about trauma today. Thank you both for a great discussion. And as usual, we'll leave you with a hopeful story. And until we see you next time, stay safe and stay connected.

SPEAKER_02 25:43

Hi, I'm MK, and this is my story of hope. I started therapy with Dr. Winterstein in my 20s. I think I was at a surface level of stability in my early 20s, and then kind of started the spiral, and then went through this journey of being able to not just have stability, but be able to address certain things in life, such as family dynamics, um, a long history of family suicides and substance abuse and trauma, and not make that part of my story anymore. So when I first started seeing Dr. Winnerstein, um, within the first six months actually of seeing him, uh, with like the anxiety symptoms and just some of the depressive symptoms that I had going on, we had another family um tragedy, unfortunately, of another suicide. Um, and this person I was very close with, I grew up with them. Um, and it was kind of a derailment for me. It was serendipitous that I was seeing Dr. Winterstein during that time since he did work in the field of suicide prevention. He worked um with those interventions. I would call the treatment was triage and stability um to kind of make sure I was able to kind of get through a lot of these life experiences that were going on. Um, we started integrating mindfulness practice um at that point. Um, and we took that over um when he moved over to the aspire center. It became a big part of I think our time together. It's something I still utilize now. When I first went to the Aspire Center, um, I'm I'm seeing a lot of these posters, I'm seeing a lot of these suicide prevention pamphlets and handouts and things. And at first I actually didn't want to like even look at them because I'm like, yeah, that has nothing to do with why I'm here. I don't think I really wanted to admit that I had the same, you know, symptoms or same thoughts as people that were going through these things. I certainly didn't want to associate it with, you know, people in my own life that went through these things. I didn't want to be the same. I think growing up in a family that it was very taboo to say these types of words, I felt ashamed of being associated with words like the rod on suicide, feeling suicidal, being depressed, things like that. I just I didn't want that to be who I was, even if it was. And it kind of just it it it like ripped the band-aid off in a way. It kind of forced me to realize, like, okay, like yes, this does apply to me. It's okay to say these things. I think what really worked for me with this specific type of intervention was Dr. Winnerstein did a lot of education about how it was going to work for me and how I could utilize it on my own. So, you know, we take it from the therapy room to being able to do it on my own, which was really important for me for somebody that really was just at a desperate point of wanting to have control over everything. I got that small building block to kind of start from. As I kind of grew into therapy and started participating more, he started explaining, you know, hey, this is gonna be like kind of like a trauma exposure of like us talking about these things. Um, you know, we're gonna work on some some skills, which I assume would be like CBT skills, um, you know, to apply into my everyday life. I started hitting this point within like the past year or so where there's a sense of calm and inner peace that I have the capacity to kind of face life and walk through it. And it's just it's nice. I know things are not gonna always be perfect. Some things are gonna happen in life. Not gonna say that they're gonna be the most pleasant thing I go through, but they are gonna be things I can handle going through, which I think is important. I got to see the world the way I wanted to see it instead of the anxiety of everything going on with me, with you know, with the loss of in our family, with the generational trauma. Everything was kind of seen through the that lens. And then I got to change that lens. I still have a relationship with most of my family, um, but on my terms with my boundaries. Um, I don't expect people to change if I'm gonna make the change. I do expect them to respect my boundary about it, and I expect myself to respect my boundaries about it. I never thought I would have kids, be married, and just be okay with like who I am now. I do want to thank Dr. Wernerstein. Um, he didn't do this for me, he did it with me. And I I do think that there's an important difference that the people should have expectations of therapy that somebody's gonna walk alongside you and then they're gonna let you walk forward past them at a certain point. And I think that's the real point of therapy sometimes, um, especially when it applies to, you know, pretty much saving somebody's life in all different ways. You know, you're you're applying interventions that I didn't know I needed. He gave me skills that I was able to not only just take with me, that I was able to build from, and it's now my own voice. And that was so important to me to have, and I didn't know it. And I have a really good life. I have a very calm center, and it it meant something, I realized, like working with him. For me, sharing my story is what it means to be on silent, speaking out instead of holding it in and reminding others that there is hope. I'm MK, and this is my story of hope.

SPEAKER_01 30:48

We'll leave you with that story as a reminder that there is help and hope. Remember, suicide prevention is a community effort. Each of us has the power to listen, support, and save lives. If you or someone you love is in crisis, call or text the Suicide in Crisis Lifeline at 988. Counselors are available 24-7. The David Farberspire Center is available as a resource for all areas of suicide prevention. You can reach us at jeffersonhealth.org slash aspire. Until next time, stay safe and stay connected. Stay in touch with us at the David Farber Aspire Center. You can find us on Instagram, Facebook, or our website at jeffersonhealth.org slash aspire. This podcast is brought to you by Jefferson Health and the David Farber Aspire Center. Our hosts and executive producers, Dr. Matthew Winterstein, Center Director, Dr. Lucas Zulow, Clinical Director, Amanda Blue, Education Director, our producer, editor, and audio mixer is Chandler Kilgore Parshall, our Director of Photography is Lydia Ruth Connor, and thank you to the many members of the Aspire Center staff who have connected us with our hopeful stories and continue to support us.