G011| Recap of STEPS and B4Now for ESF, Hong Kong - With Tracey Chitty

Connection

You may have picked up Healing for Healers because you are supporting a colleague who has lost a patient to suicide. Do not forget to offer your unconditional support. I am here for you, you can call me any day anytime if  you want to talk things through or just a shoulder to lean on. Saying something doesn’t make it better, what makes it better is connection. If you have your own story to share, do so without making it about yourself. To be truly empathic one has to reach within and connect with that place that knows that feeling.

Everyone comes to work to do a good job. But sometimes bad things happen. When they do, its time to take time to H - E - A - L.

H - Hindsight Hurts
Hindsight strips away all the complexity and simplifies cause and effect. Thinking how did I not see this is unfair. Be kind to your self.

E - Event ~ Non-event
The significant event reminds us of the gravity of our work. Take time to remember the daily small wins when we steer people’s lives for the better. As “non-events” we generally take them for granted.

A - Accept, Affirm
The emotions you experience today are nature’s signal to you that you are a kind and compassionate human being, accept and affirm these feelings.

L - Look, Listen, Learn
Look after yourself, you cannot pour from an empty cup, listen to your colleagues, many have been on this journey and use this adversity to grow.

H - E - A - L your S - O - U - L is the combined wisdom of errors in judgement I, Assoc Prof Manaan Kar Ray, have made over two decades while supporting self and colleagues who lost a patient to suicide, mistakes you dont have to make...

Connect with Assoc Prof Manaan Kar Ray at https://www.linkedin.com/in/drmanaankarray/
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In the third recap episode for ESF, we cover the STEPS model, the Validity techniques of Shawn Shea, the Narrative method and the B4Now approach from PROTECT.

Connect with Assoc Prof Manaan Kar Ray at https://www.linkedin.com/in/drmanaankarray/
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In conversation with Tracey Chitty, the AWARE framework has been contextualised into the educational setting in this podcast episode.

The recap begins with a discussion on rational vs rationalising and then goes into each of the factors:

1. Anxiety
2. Weighting
3. Agenda
4. Resources
5. Experience

In particular the agendas of parents and principals are discussed in details. Clearly all parties want the same in terms of a flourishing young person, but their approach might be different and there are different balancing acts to be aware of.

Connect with Assoc Prof Manaan Kar Ray at https://www.linkedin.com/in/drmanaankarray/
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A special episode to mark the 10th of September - World Suicide Prevention Day.

Humor Heals #LOL @the Sound of Hope provides 3 exercises of therapeutic humour.  

• Pile ‘o Punchlines
• The Comedy of Complaints
• The Comedy of Contradictions

Its a collaboration with Mallori DeSalle and Lodge McCammon. By brining humour to one of the most serious of topics, "suicide", they are providing an avenue for people who work in mental health care to fill their cups. Supporting people in suicidal distress over a lifetime is a marathon, not a sprint, humor may be one of the answers to maintain energy in the long run and even a way to connect with a person in deep distress. Sounds risky, but is rewarding. Give it a try. I did...

A bit about our invited guests:

Mallori DeSalle, MA, LMHC, NCC, CMHC, MATS, CPS, CHP

Therapist, Trainer, Humorist, Indiana University

Mallori DeSalle is a licensed mental health counselor, an internationally certified prevention specialist,motivational interviewing trainer and a certified humor professional. As a speaker and trainer, she has sparked curiosity in both the young and young-at-heart. Her passion for creating a lasting impact led her to the public health field and for the past 14 years she has worked at Prevention Insights, a center within the School of Public Health at Indiana University, Bloomington.  Mallori works with people all over the world. She served on the Board of Directors for the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor and in 2021 became a TEDx speaker. Her credentials don’t impress her family, but occasionally her corny jokes do make them laugh.  https://malloridesalle.com/

Lodge McCammon, PhD

Humorist, Musician, Educator, Speaker

Dr. Lodge McCammon is a therapeutic humorist, instructional designer, author, musician, and international education consultant who provides professional services, including keynote speeches, workshops, curriculum development, and a variety of training programs. He works with school districts, universities, nonprofits, and businesses (e.g., Palm Beach Schools, University of the West Indies, Discovery Education, Microsoft, Amazon). Most recently, Lodge facilitated a month of therapeutic humor for the Nourished Teachers Community, which is a Facebook-funded initiative focused on helping educators cope with work stress and avoid burnout. He uses a program that he designed called “Laugh It Off!" to help his clients transform their daily frustrations into humor. https://lodgemccammon.com/

Connect with Assoc Prof Manaan Kar Ray at https://www.linkedin.com/in/drmanaankarray/
Follow us on www.progress.guide

In the second of the Recaps we go through the four chapters in the CORE module and pin down the key messages:

1. Care Compass - Risk vs Recovery - without risk there is no recovery, with the right care the person has more control
2. Optimise Pain Relief - Dig deep to establish the need and interests that lie beneath the position of dying, help them see that they want to be pain free and our role is to help them be pain free.
3. Risk Rethink - High - Medium - Low are static categories to characterise risk which is inherently dynamic, move to a more nuanced approach of thinking about risk in terms of longitudinal risk, cross sectional risk and unaddressed risk - that will help us formulate an opinion on clear and / or imminent risk.
4. Empathy in Action - Move from what's the matter with you to What matters to you, use the equation of Empathy in Action

Connect with Assoc Prof Manaan Kar Ray at https://www.linkedin.com/in/drmanaankarray/
Follow us on www.progress.guide

In the first of this sequence of guest episodes with Tracey Chitty, we share ESF's (Hong Kong) whole of school approach to suicide prevention after an intensive four days of training for school counsellors and teachers.

In the upcoming episode, we will be summarising the key messages from the training for the attendees to recap what was taught and how they could incorporate into their practice the theoretical constructs they have gained.

Connect with Assoc Prof Manaan Kar Ray at https://www.linkedin.com/in/drmanaankarray/
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A unique perspective to establish common ground between the Health Regulators and the practitioner under investigation is the basis for this episode. It builds on the previous episode of why Health Regulators need to be trained in Suicide Prevention and how Doctors and Nurses and Allied Health are an ultra high risk group when a notification happens.

In this episode, Manaan shares how the practitioner considers the Health Regulator to be the problem where as the Health Regulators consider themselves to be the solution. These positions are incredibly divergent and the interests are different too, but at the needs level the doctors or the nurse wants to be a doctor or a nurse again and the health regulators role is to help them be one and practice safely in the long run. There is common ground to be found but the role of the health regulator in an investigation needs to be clearly articulated. 

Connect with Assoc Prof Manaan Kar Ray at https://www.linkedin.com/in/drmanaankarray/
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Joiner's model of desire and capability is used to explain the high risk period that health practitioners face when they have had a notification to AHPRA (any health regulator for that matter). Manaan explains the training that is on offer for health regulators in this episode.

We also take the opportunity to welcome listeners from the English Schools Foundation in Hong Kong as we start a 12 month journey to support 22 schools embellish their suicide prevention pathway through skills training for school counsellors, Principals, Heads of Years and Teachers. 

Connect with Assoc Prof Manaan Kar Ray at https://www.linkedin.com/in/drmanaankarray/
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In the third of the 5 Critical Crisis Conversations, Manaan explores how the person's agenda of ensuring short term safety through admission may be quite different to the long term focus of resilience for the professional.

Both want safety but the route to it is different. Being able to show the similarity of the overarching goal amidst the dissimilarity of the immediate outcome is a critical conversation to have with the person in distress. If they are able to understand that the professional is not rejecting their needs or abandoning them and on the contrary is selecting a much longer harder route to walk with them one can bring the person on board for safety planning and taking charge of maintaining their safety. Or else a person with BPD will feel the pressure to prove the professional that they are in deep distress and the risk will escalate as the threats to harm oneself intensifies.

Connect with Assoc Prof Manaan Kar Ray at https://www.linkedin.com/in/drmanaankarray/
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The second of the Borderline AWARE conversations relates to Weighting (Diagnosis, Course, Social Causation - how these factors may influence the weighting that we put on a person's suicidality). The conversation is named Empowerment vs Containment. The episode builds on the Advice vs Action conversation and goes a step further providing the listener a thorough understanding of the different approaches to take and when to take those approaches.

Based on whether the presentation is acute, chronic or acute on chronic the professional needs to make an informed and mindful approach regarding the focus of therapeutic action. Essentially they need to answer the question, is this a situation that needs containment or is it one where my focus needs to be on empowering the person to believe that these suicidal urges can be navigated.

Connect with Assoc Prof Manaan Kar Ray at https://www.linkedin.com/in/drmanaankarray/
Follow us on www.progress.guide