Dr. Lauren Chapple-Love, PhD

Consultations are a great way to learn about therapies and create a collaborative treatment plan with a psychologist or therapist. They allow the person getting the therapy to explain what kind of therapy they need and give the professional insight into their lived experience.
 
Transcript: "I think that we as human beings can get really tempted to run to the internet to start typing in different types of therapy and start trying to self diagnose almost, right? Like, oh I don't know if D BT is right for me, maybe this other form of therapy like C BT is more effective and what's evidence based practice. It's really easy to fall down that rabbit hole if you will. I'm a huge fan of something called a consultation. This is something I do in my practice, right? A free consultation, meaning like a 10- 15 minute conversation with a person which is meant to serve a couple of different roles. One of those is I want that person to better understand what therapy with me would look like. And more importantly, this is an opportunity for that person to explain a little bit about what type of therapy they're looking to get, not specifically and not naming all the fancy words, but [saying something like] I'm just looking to talk to somebody or I really just want to tell my story or I just really want someone to listen to what's going on for me or I really want someone to challenge me or I've got a really hard decision to make, but I don't know how I'm going to go about making that decision. Any and all of these statements help the therapist or the psychologist or whomever it is professionally that you're attempting to speak to better assess what's going on. Then there's something called a collaborative treatment plan process that means that I the psychologist and working hand in hand with the person that is attempting to get therapy in that respect. It's really common for me to say, hey, I think this type of therapy will be effective for you. This is based on my expertise but you the person in the room, the person trying to get the therapy are always gonna be the expert in your lived experience and in that way you can collaborate and talk about. Yeah, I think this might be effective or no. Let's try another one."

Deep breathing or “paste breathing” is a great way to build a habit of managing anxiety. It can be done in the morning, middle of the day, and right before bed. There are also apps that remind you to take a deep breath at random times throughout the day.
 
Transcript: "I conceptualize paste breathing or deep breathing as a way to build a habit. And by that, I mean, it's typically more effective what we see or what we, we tend to anecdotally experience is to build a new habit in a moment when I'm calm. And so I love when people start talking about proactively managing anxiety ahead of the anxious moment, right? Because that might be something that I can't control or I might not even know when the anxious moment is going to be. So as a result, if you're building something into like a daily routine, make a habit out of it. So this is once in the morning, I'm gonna do five deep breaths. Once in the middle of my day, I'm gonna do five deep breaths or perhaps I'm going to do five deep breaths right before I go to bed or all three of those. There's also apps out there, feel free to pick one. Uh It always tickles me when I hear them out in public. It's a, a bell ringing or a ding and it's a particular chime that I, I know now because I know about these apps and it reminds you to take a deep breath. So the app will make recommendations just based on random times throughout the day. And when you hear that particular chime coming from your phone, for people that are able to do that, then they know to take a deep breath. So that always makes me smile when I see when I hear that if I'm just out in public somewhere."

Adaptive risk factors can contribute to a person committing another crime if they lack access to basic needs like health care, ID, insurance and other resources. Without those needs, people may experience desperation which may lead them to commit another crime.
 
Transcript: "Absolutely. So when you're thinking about what types of adaptive risk factors might contribute to a person, committing another crime, here's the kicker. You think about a person as, oh, I don't know, a whole live human being that has needs in the same way that you another human being or i another human being might have them, right? So this this concept, I'm I'm explaining it in kind of a satirical way, but really this needs to be attributed to how we start to view people coming out of the incarceration system. So my favorite example to utilize is access to health care. What would your life be like? And your life literally might be like this, I'm not sure. But what would a life be like if you had a toothache and no way to get dental care, what would your life be like if you had mental health medications that helped you remain stable or helps you return to a baseline, whatever that might mean for you and you get dropped off in a downtown area of a thriving metropolis and you have three days of meds and what happens then if you have no ID and you have to get ID to be able to get the medication, to be able to get the doctor's appointment and then who's gonna pay for that? What happens if I don't have insurance? All of these types of questions, they tend to snowball, right for a person. And in that respect that I think is where you see people start to experience desperation. I would, I can wholeheartedly say that we see decompensation as something that tends to get blamed on the person. And in reality, what that person is experiencing is something that's rather normative when we don't have the things that we need, that's how adaptive or changeable risk factors contribute."

Give someone space to be who they are and recognize that mental health symptoms do not define them as a person. Be there with them, sit in the room with them, and let them know that you got their back and offer help if they need it.
 
Transcript: "A million percent give them space being able to support somebody through depression, especially if it's a loved one, somebody, you know, I'm not talking about somebody you just met at the post office, you're standing behind them in line, but somebody, you know, you care for, they know your stories, you know, their stories, being able to give them space. Now I don't mean just let them go sit in a room by themselves for six months or something along those lines, but being able to show up for them by not expecting for them to have a mask for them to present in a particular way, give them the space to just be who they are or how they are feeling in that moment. It's important to start to separate and to help that person recognize, you know, who you are does not necessarily mean like this depressed person. It's not a EO or a situation, right? That's a children's cartoon, but being able to recognize that mental health symptoms do not define us as human beings. Okay. I'm going to say that again, that mental health symptoms do not define us as human beings, that you can have that loved one and still recognize that maybe they are experiencing less interest in things that they once used to really like. Maybe they are feeling sadness. Crying comes more easily. There may be a bit more irritable. It feels for you, the person trying to support them a little harder to be around them maybe in that circumstance, right? So giving someone space means that you recognize that they might be going through something and for them that they know they don't have to present in a particular way for you, that they can be the person and they can just live in that experience with you. So be there with them. Sometimes you just sit in the room while it's burning with them and say, Hey, I'm here. And I got your back and let's get you help if you need it."

It is important to recognize the need for therapy if life starts to feel overwhelming, but deep breathing exercises can be a quick and effective way to calm down when feeling anxious.
 
Transcript: "So I think to answer this question, there is a definite need to ensure that people are being mindful of. When do I need therapy? Am I able to keep myself safe as a really important question and other people safe? Is life starting to feel overwhelming for me? Other things along these lines might really help, you know, do I need to take it to a therapist if that is not the case? And you're maybe just looking for something to reduce some anxiety. You don't necessarily always need a therapist for that. You can engage in something if I had an opportunity to give every person on the planet one skill and one skill only like I had one shot at this, right. It would absolutely be some type of paced breathing. So deep breathing exercises are one of the quickest ways that we have that we know about that can teach your body in a very literal sense to calm itself down and being able to slow and calm down your body's reaction to things specifically related to anxiety. This can help if you're getting ready to have a speaking engagement or some other big thing or if you just maybe need to take a second to slow things down, it is important to be able to recognize that past breathing can look like whatever it is you need it to look like. I definitely know folks that have more advance, they're breathing in for five seconds and holding for seven seconds and breathing out for 11 seconds. And I know people that engage in box breathing, breathing in for four, holding for four, breathing out for four, holding for four. So you really can take it your own. It's important though that you recognize that you want to breathe in through your nose for a shorter amount of time than you are breathing out through your mouth."

Studies have found that people tend to focus more on external factors related to the crime, such as the presence of a weapon, rather than the person's face. Additionally, interracial identification patterns are 1.6 times less likely to be reliable.
 
Transcript: "Oh, see, now I'm kind of a psychology nerd y'all. So bear with me as I geek out over this question. So there are a host of psychological studies that talk about the impact positive and or negative of an eyewitness's ability to identify a suspect either in a lineup or usually these studies will do something like show them a movie and say, hey, what did you see, what did you notice about that person? Namely, there are a few different things, some of them are physical attributes relating to the crime or the commission of the event in and of itself. For example, if there's the presence of a weapon. So if there is the presence of a handgun, for example, we know from these studies that people tend to in the majority anyway, tend to look more at the weapon, especially if it's alarming or scary for them as opposed to the person's face. There are also other factors related to the individual themselves. So there's both external, something having to do with the situation, like the presence of a weapon and internal factors. Something having to do with the person's own cultural or diverse identity factors. And so what that means is there's something called interracial meaning between races, greater reliability. So we recognize and a study from maybe 10, 20 years ago, talks about interracial meaning between race identification of eyewitness lineups and or testimony related identification patterns is I think 1.6 times less likely to be reliable. Meaning if I'm trying to identify someone outside of my own self identified race, it's harder for me to do so. So there's a host of different things that impact it, but that's just too, for you to chew on for now."