Let's Talk UNLV

This episode hosts Keith and Renee (or hosts Dr. Rogers and Dr. Watson) are joined by UNLV’s Director of Social Work, Dr. Carlton Craig an experienced Social Worker, Professor and Trauma therapist. This episode provides an overview of Trauma, the effects of trauma on children and families in diverse/low income communities, trauma in relation to the pandemic, useful methods for healing trauma and a good ole Small Town showdown! 

Find out more and access the full show archive at https://therebelhd2.com/shows/letstalkunlv/

What is Let's Talk UNLV?

Rebels, tune in to 'Let's Talk UNLV' with Dr. Tanya Crabb and Dr. Sammie Scales. Your express pass to everything UNLV — campus highlights, programs, and the latest buzz. Join us weekly as we chat with student leaders, administrators, and faculty, diving into the core of what makes us Rebels.

The program brings guests from different areas of UNLV every week to discuss campus highlights, programs and services, research interests that are essential to being a Rebel. Let’s Talk UNLV places its emphasis on connecting with student leaders who represent the voice of students on our campus. Guests also include administrators, faculty and staff responsible for upholding the mission of the university, which is teaching, research and scholarship.

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0:00:00
Hey, welcome to another segment of Let's Talk UNLV on KUNV. You with co-host Keith and Renee. Renee, the weather is starting to cool off a little bit. We're now into this 110 and 115 and 118. I'm loving it. Where I got my family calling me like, see, this is why I'm not moving to Vegas.

0:00:25
I'm loving it. I'm loving it. What about you?

0:00:27
How was your weekend? What did you do this weekend?

0:00:29
So you know, this is a big gear up for the first day of classes, beginning with move-in and all of the Welcome Week events to get our students acclimated to the campus. I have a counsel that I advise. And so we had a retreat and help them get started in envisioning how they're going to be impactful to the projects and programs that they are doing. So it was a work weekend, but all good things so that we can have a successful first day of classes which I'm proud proud to report. Yes. All things considered we are looking good. Yes it's

0:00:58
always good to see the students back. You know I spent my weekend recovering you know in addition to my normal uber duties with my sons you know now you're getting back into the muscle memory of getting into the car because you know the you know k12 started last week. So, you know, just getting back into dropping off and picking up and running around and now you got some homework to do. So just getting back into that flow of school, which is great, which is great. But, you know, I'm excited, Renee. But I guess today we have Dr. Carlton Craig with us, who's a director and professor in the School of Social Work. Dr. Craig, welcome to the show. Thank you. And for the audience, could you share a little bit about yourself and how long you've been at UNLV?

0:01:42
Yes, I've been at UNLV since 2016. I came here as the director of the School of Social Work.

0:01:52
And I'm glad Dr. Craig is on the show, Renee, because as I was talking about, I'm a little traumatized with all this kids back to school, and so I'm looking forward to gleaning some of his expertise and hopefully he can give me some tools and strategies to get my way at home.

0:02:05
Yes, and Dr. Craig, share with us what brought you to UNLV, what do you like about our city, you know, what do you like most in your role in the School of Social Work as the director?

0:02:16
Sure. I came as the director for the director, but what was really desirable for me when I was, you know, going through and investigating, looking over UNLV was the diversity and the diverse student body and faculty, which was, and I've been right, it's really given me a rich experience as compared to, you know, past experiences.

0:02:46
And did, Dr. Craig, I also see that you had a non-traditional pathway to getting your PhD. Could you talk a little bit about your journey from maybe high school to undergrad, military service, to professor, where you are now?

0:03:03
Sure. I grew up in a little, very small community in Ohio. And it was a rural community and as a result, I went into the military, the Army National Guard to be able to afford to go to school. And so, I served six and a half years in the Army National Guard, Ohio Army National Guard, and went to undergrad at that point as well, and graduated from Bowling Green State University with a degree in psychology and sociology. And then at that point I went on to get my master's degree at Case Western Reserve in social work. And from there I worked at the VA hospital for approximately five years in psychiatric day treatment, which is where I really started working with trauma. Eventually I went back to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill after working for five years post-master's and got my PhD in social work. At that point I ended up being an assistant professor at the University of Kentucky. I was there, got 10 years as an associate and I was there for 13 years before I came here.

0:04:32
Now we have a lot in common. Me too. Growing up in the Midwest. Me too. Now Renee, we got a lot in common now.

0:04:38
No, Dr. Craig, we hit some points.

0:04:40
Go ahead. Well, let me hit mine first. Okay. So you said a couple buzzwords. Small town and I always have to do a small town challenge. When someone says, hey, I grew up in a small town, I always have to sort of show who grew up in a smaller town. So for you, what was your population?

0:04:56
They ranged from 110 to 125. How many stop signs?

0:05:01
Hold on, that's graduating class or that's your entire hometown population?

0:05:05
That was my hometown population. The high school I went to was a combination of two small towns and my high school class was 44 people.

0:05:18
Oh, Rene, I think I lost my small town title.

0:05:22
How many stop signs in these two towns?

0:05:26
In mine, I think there's one, two, at least four.

0:05:33
And see, my town, Midwest and Southeast Missouri, when I went to school, we were at our peak we were at our strength we had 300 now we're We're under 100 now when I go home to visit my mom I can see my title Yeah And then also having a military experience, too. I was also in in the Army Active duty then National Guard here in here in Nevada Renee. What were your connections to Dr. Craig?

0:06:02
Well, he was at UNC Chapel Hill. I am a University of Kansas Jayhawk. So, you know, we were kind of rivals in that basketball sport So we understand what it's like to be at big schools that have big sports programs But also I was in Kentucky I was at Kentucky State for four years and I was also at the University of Pikeville Kentucky so I'm very familiar with UK and its program. So let's get to like this business of trauma though. Tell us what is trauma, what specific areas of trauma do you specialize in, you know, is it in children, adults, and how did you come to be a part of that work? Was it through your military experience, personal experience? Talk to us about this field of research that you have.

0:06:50
Sure. Well, first of all, trauma is when someone either directly experiences, witnesses, or hears about a loved one experiencing a life-threatening event. And most of, you know, things, disasters, learning that your spouse or child has died of COVID-19 as a recent example. So you can actually be informed of someone that's really close to you, death, et cetera, and that can cause a trauma. Or you can actually go through the trauma yourself. Maybe you ended up in the ICU on the respirator and now you're out, you made it, but you're traumatized from that experience, you'd be traumatized from that experience, that's a direct experience. Or you may have witnessed someone dying at that point and that can also cause a trauma. Wow, and so what drew you to studying trauma?

0:07:56
It's a long, really long story.

0:07:59
I'm gonna try to keep it as short as possible. I've been studying trauma in some way, shape, or form for 30 years, since approximately 1991. And that's where I did a practicum in my master's social work at the VA hospitals. And I worked on several psychiatric wards where a large number of the veterans had post-traumatic stress disorder and other conditions associated. And so that started me off, you know, in 1991, I worked on what was called a dual diagnosis board back then where they were treating both the mental disorder and the substance issue. And then from there, I got into doing research in children's mental health when I went back to get my PhD. But before that, I went to the Detroit VA hospital and worked in psychiatric daycare for four straight years, which is, you know, we saw some of the worst cases of post-traumatic stress. individuals who were starting to actually experience psychotic symptoms as well from their PTSD. And so from there I went into research in the Children's Rental Health at North Carolina and I came out and I worked with them for 13 years where we wrote grants and provided assessment and trauma intervention and research for some of the worst child welfare cases in Kentucky. And some of the reasons that the resources that were originally put into it is at one point, one year, Kentucky was listed as number one in child abuse fatality. And so this is kind of where I started really getting, working with research part of it as well, and also getting trained in what we call trauma-informed evidence-based practices.

0:10:15
And could you speak a little bit about your experience sort of working with these diverse populations? You know, I know you talked about refugees and children, about some of that research, and maybe what some of your findings are?

0:10:29
Yeah, absolutely. As part of the research I did, especially starting out for the first 13 years of my life, I did two areas of research. I worked at the trauma center and did research with the children, and usually it was intervention research. Did this intervention work? Did this one, you know, not, you know what? If it didn't work so well, why? Was kind of the research. And then for, I also did research with adults and my adult research was predominantly with refugee populations. At the time it was Bosnian refugees, but we also did some research with Congolese refugees. And we were looking at the research that we laid out, me and one of my research partners, was that oftentimes when refugees come here, the emphasis is public health, you know, have they got their shots, are they, you know, and basically getting them a job in language acquisition. of times they really ignore the mental and behavioral health of the refugee. And a number of the refugees, like the Bosnians, had went through a genocide. And so we took a sample of Bosnian refugees that had been in, that had been resettled here in the United States for more than nine years, and we looked at their mental health and found that they were still significantly struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder, symptomology, depression. One of the findings we found most prevalent was that traumatic grief, long-term chronic grief, was more prevalent, was about 54% of the population. And we're talking about people who had experienced anywhere from three to four traumas during the Civil War over there. And what was interesting, some of the research findings we had, because I was also working with the children, and the kids that were coming in to the center, we would do a thorough trauma assessment, and a number of the children who were coming through had experienced about four traumas. So something that was always really kind of slapped me in the face as a researcher was that a lot of our American children who make it into the child welfare system and who are being abused and who are going through about the same amount of traumas as someone who's went through a genocide. The Bosnian refugees were an example. They were averaging about four traumas as were the children who were coming from and through child welfare.

0:13:23
Wow.

0:13:24
Four traumas.

0:13:25
I mean, so what kind of interventions or what kind of treatment would someone who has sustained four traumas receive from someone like yourself or another practitioner or clinician?

0:13:43
Sure. First, we did a very thorough assessment, including family. And one of the number one things that you have to determine is will the family or whoever the caregiver is in this case a lot of times follow up, get the child into the treatment. And once we had the assessment done and everything, then they would go into, at the time, one of three trauma-informed evidence-based practices. For the kids that were seven and above, they were normally put in what was called trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy. And for the kids who were usually younger, around three and four and up to about seven or eight, they were put into parent-child interaction therapy. Oftentimes, it was possible to have the child do both sometimes, you know, if they aged into kind of the trauma-focused CBT.

0:14:51
And is that approach different in how you, I guess, diagnose and treat youth versus adults or based on different types of trauma?

0:15:04
Well, the trauma-focused CBT, if that's the one you're asking about, has a set of modules that is geared for family treatment as well. You could do conjoint family therapy as you're working with the child, so you see the child for a period of time and then you individually see the caregiver or parent for a period of time, and then eventually you come together conjointly. TFCBT, there is an adult version, but the more specific evidence-based one is primarily for kids and teenagers. And the big thing that is, it's a form of exposure therapy and a way to desensitize the individual to the trauma. And the way that it's done is after about six or seven weeks of learning a set of skills, including deep breathing and other relaxation skills, effective modulation. We do a lot of psychoeducation with the parents and the child. And once they've went through these modules and mastered these modules, then we introduce them to what's called the trauma narrative. And the trauma narrative is where they tell their story. They write a little book, you know, and when we're talking book, like a chapter is like maybe two or three sentences, and they tell it over and over to the therapist. The whole idea is to eventually get extinction of the anxiety, and hopefully they become bored with the story, instead of, you know, crying excessively, and eventually, once there's control obtained, we have them read it to the family member, the caregiver. It comes back together, they come back together on that. And we try to make sure that the caregiver is in control and able to handle the reading of the story and everything because a strong caregiver is one of the big things you need for a resilient child.

0:17:20
So is the caregiver in therapy as well?

0:17:25
They no, they're not considered as being in therapy. They will be referred to therapists if they're having trouble, their own troubles with trauma, etc. But they do see the therapist for about anywhere 15 to 20 minutes, depends on, and it's really about the child, though. You know, the discussion is about the trauma of the child and having them focus on the

0:17:54
child to help the child get better, child or adolescent. How has 2020 and the pandemic impacted what you've seen or what's going on in the trauma discipline in these sort of distressed or diverse communities?

0:18:09
Yeah, I think, you know, one of the things, the reasons I went into social work was the social justice aspect and it's that neighborhoods, they have low socioeconomic issues a lot of times, often have more events that create traumatic stress. And certainly, one of the things that has happened was initially there was less gun violence going on during the first part of the pandemic, which was helpful. But recently, the gun violence has really ramped up. And so now we're seeing a big increase in that. The violence, the racial violence that was, you know, basically that manifested in 2020 was also, you know, a lot of populations were traumatized by that. And so all of these things can build up if you're in a neighborhood where there's a lot of crime or a lot of violence, your you've probably been exposed to more traumatic events than others. And then you experience COVID, you experience, you know, it's kind of a snowball effect. The more traumas you have, the harder it is to maintain that resilience. It doesn't mean that people don't. A lot of, you know, resilience is a very important thing and it's important to note that only about 10% of individuals in our society, it's anywhere from 8% to 10% go on to develop post-traumatic stress disorder, and about 70% to 80% of our population actually experience a trauma, index trauma in their life. So we're a very resilient society. Women tend to experience PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, two times more than men do. It's about 5.4% for men, about 10% for women. And so

0:20:39
specifically, what are you seeing in UNLV students as you serve as a

0:20:44
You know, we've had some losses, certainly, especially in the community. And a lot of times what gets missed is community loss. And so we've been trying to help bring our community together, the social work community is what I'm talking about right now, and let people process, you know, their losses. One of the things that really we need to focus on, we kind of sometimes get lost in post-traumatic stress and trauma, and we forget to look at people's grief and traumatic grief, and that's a very important thing to acknowledge and let people grieve and give them the chance to talk. So those are some of the things that, you know, and I've noticed that, you know, there are, you know, if they've had relatives that have been sick or were sick themselves, that they, you know, can, they still seem pretty resilient to me, but the ones I've seen that there are some signs of trauma.

0:21:57
a push to try to resume some sense of normalcy or return to in-person activity and events and a college experience that is typical, can that have experienced, you know, community loss, you know, students that have grieved because they've lost a loved one or they've lost a loved one either to COVID or to, you know, gun violence, or they've lost a parent to another illness or there's been financial loss, there's been loss regarding just very experiences that students couldn't capture in their last days of high school. And so are we somehow in a way creating more trauma or being not as mindful of how that

0:23:06
trauma can surface when we're trying to really push for a sense of normalcy? Yeah, it's really, it's a tough question, but we should, we very

0:23:20
much so should be acknowledging people's loss, you know, and sometimes people don't want to talk about it, right? You don't want to just completely push people in to talk about their grief in the middle of a class or something like that, but you know, instructors and folks who are in leadership positions and things, including the people that you're over as an administrator, you need to understand that people are going through an extraordinary time and probably do have a lot of loss. And a lot of these losses that you just outlined oftentimes are overlooked as part of the grieving experience. and administrators and faculty, whoever's got a leadership position, should acknowledge that and provide sometimes, you know, if they see someone struggling, some individual time, and let them talk about it if they so desire. But the main thing is to encourage people not to grieve alone.

0:24:22
Okay, we'll get you out of here on this final question. Is there anything that you think is important to share with the listeners about trauma or your experience or recommendations that we may not have asked or discussed so far?

0:24:37
I think people, places, things that remind you of the trauma. You're having maybe a flashback or you're also experiencing cognitive symptoms, memory problems, concentration problems, impulsivity, things like that, and it's starting again in the way of your functioning, in other words, working, going to school, family life, et cetera, then you should consider getting into therapy and asking about a trauma-informed evidence-based practice that would, a lot of times, cognitive behavioral therapy, prolonged exposure therapy, I'm with desensitization and reprocessing, it's called EMDR, is often recommended for trauma. But if you're experiencing symptoms that are getting in the way of your functioning, you should consider therapy. But there's a whole host of other things you can do, including even yoga and mindfulness. They're starting to have some evidence for treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder and maintaining an exercise regimen, trying to maintain a schedule that's as normal as possible. And if you have religious beliefs and things like that, continue to engage in those. Don't disengage. Social support is very important. And so you can have traumatic stress but not have post-traumatic stress disorder. That's a different thing. The disorder means you're having functional impairment, and you've had functional impairment for about 30 days.

0:26:27
All right, Rene, that was a lot of great information. Heavy. I was trying not to self-diagnose myself the whole time.

0:26:37
No, but really, I'm just glad that we have Dr. Craig on staff. I did not know about Dr. Craig or this resource that we have, but so many important points, as administrators and educators to allow staff and our students to acknowledge their grief. I think we're pressed to try to get to the next thing, to the next project, to the next initiative, but that can be very, very harmful, it sounds. those ways to provide support. Specifically, some of these things already exist in student life. We have our Student Recreation Wellness Center to provide yoga, and we have our health clinics to help with mindfulness and so forth. Just really good to know that we have these resources right here that students and staff that they can access. What was your takeaway?

0:27:32
Well, after I got over the loss of my small town title, you know, then I could refocus. It took me a little bit, you know, time to refocus. But, you know, some of the resources that you described I think are incredibly important. But probably the thing that was most surprising to me is, you know, just remembering Dr. Craig just reminded us how resilient we are in terms of, you know, as a population, you know, move forward and continue to be positive and actively engaged in what we do. So that was something that was incredibly surprising to me. And I certainly appreciate some of the recommendations and how to sort of stay active and come back, you know, through yoga, mindfulness, et cetera. So I'll definitely want to make sure I continue to employ those things as well. I know you say, Renee, as sort of supervisors, we're always thinking about others, but I think the other part of it is making sure we also practice some of those same practices for ourselves. It's incredibly important, too. Show your rights. Show your rights. We've got to replenish ourselves so we can come to work ready to give and deplete ourselves to a certain extent.

0:28:49
Thank you for tuning in to this week's episode of KUNV Let's Talk UNLV. For my co-host Keith, I'm Renee. Tune in next week, Wednesday at 12, on KUNV 91.5 Jazz and More. Tune in next week, Wednesday at 12, on KUNV 91.5 Jazz and More.

0:29:03
That's a wrap.

Transcribed with Cockatoo