Name: How Businesses Should Be Thinking About Addiction And Mental Health
Uploaded: 2019-12-12
Duration: 19 min 42 s
Description: Women with different professional backgrounds and experiences discuss addiction and what business leaders are doing to address mental health.

I would like to start out by asking we need a little stretch at this point anyway. So who in this room if you have been impacted by addiction with a close family member. With a colleague or an employee you oversee please stand up. If you are worried that this is going to happen to you and you want to know more, please stand up very few left Okay, thank you very much. Thank you, all right. So we're gonna start out with a very simple question. Kristen, Laura, Caitlin, why are you up here? Tell us why you're up here. Professionally, I'm the director of operations of the University of Southern California's Institute for addiction science And I got into this profession many years ago because my mother has an opioid use disorder that she's now in recovery from, and was an alcoholic. And so I see firsthand the devastation that addiction can place on your family, your community. She had issues with her workplace, and so Now I have the great pleasure to do this for a living, and to organize research around this very important topic. Fantastic, Laura? Well, a year ago I was sitting out there in the same chairs. And I would've been the group that stayed seated until the very end. It hadn't touched my life, I had no idea what an opioid really was. Until this past year, when my significant other who was very well known in the recovery space, he had his own journey of recovery from an opioid addiction stemming from trauma. He was a survivor of Columbine mass shooting 20 years ago, where he was prescribed opioids at 17 years old. And so he was on a very public platform, and unfortunately relapsed in May and lost his battle to addiction. And so when a year, my life has completely been transformed by his personal journey, by this epidemic, and so I am here to number one, reduce the stigma, And talk to you all of you about this because that's first step in changing the direction in this epidemic. And number two, to educate people about trauma and the correlation with addiction, and what we can do in that space, as well, which we'll talk about, later. Okay, great. Laura, thanks. Caitlin And professionally, I'm here I work for Cisco, which is an American multinational international company. It's a networking technology company. And we have a very unique culture. It's a conscious culture. And several years ago, our CEO Chuck Robbins Personally, I also come from a family of alcoholics. So I grew up around, around, you know, kind of sad stories throughout. And so that's why I landed in health care. And I landed in the world of helping people. So give us I'd love for any or all of you to just Share a few stats and facts that we should know that will be eye opening to us about the scale of the problem right now and how women in particular should understand this subject. Well Did you know that 100 million Americans every year are prescribed an opioid? that statistic alone is really staggering. This is a really good stage to talk about how addiction disproportionately and differently affects women. The rate at which women are being diagnosed with alcohol use disorder. [ UNKNOWN ] men is climbing exponentially, the gap is nearly closed. The way that women metabolize drugs and other alcohol and other drugs is different than men too and physiologically, their bodies are more damaged. They get disease more often. And I mean, if you look at addiction from a broader scale, which I think we should. Beyond just substances and think about behavioral addictions, and other addictive agents. Kids and their cell phones in digital media, they say that kids are upwards of 50 % of them addicted to their phones. And the changes of this happens within that person's, basically the reward circuit, is extremely damaging and cause of concern. And that's something that faces us too. I see all of us on our phones because we have things to do on our phones. It's unfortunate we have to live with our phones, just like we have to live with food, but food can be addicting. So it's just like a really interesting way to look at addiction than it could possibly just be a behavior that you do compulsively with negative consequences and I daresay without So okay, how does that register with you and the need for Cisco to step up and make mental health a priority? For years corporations have focused on physical health, wellness programmes, Now we need to look at the whole person, body, mind, spirit and heart. And that's why we're focusing on mental health. Because if we don't focus on it, our talent will suffer. Our families will suffer and our communities will suffer. So that is why we are taking strong initiatives to ensure we reduce the stigma. We train our leaders and our employees on how to recognize a performance issue from an addiction issue. We're also working closely with our health plans and our pharmacy carriers to ensure we provide excellent access to medical care. Behavioral health specialist by increasing our network by having Center of Excellence and from pharmacy controls making sure we put restrictions on how we prescribe. So for instance, if you're an adult, you can't get an opioid for more than seven days and a child three And in looking at our data and preparing for this event, children are really impacted today by addiction as you were saying. And that's where the cost of our claims are going is our dependents and not just our employees so For Cisco is treating the whole family and the whole person. And I believe that 7 % of Cisco's US workforce accesses some form of mental health or substance abuse treatment. And I just wanna say one other thing about Cisco, which, by the way, has been very supportive of most powerful women over the decades, He had the initiative, the idea to send an email to all of Cisco's employees worldwide and I read the email basically said, Hey, I'm thinking about you. Mental health is a real issue. We need to make this a priority and I think everyone was surprised that he got like Over 100 replies from people who shared their stories. And that is what we are doing today we are reducing the stigma by creating a global initiative for our employees to share their stories and to share their issues. We are creating support networks so our leaders feel comfortable and dealing with the issues as well. So, Laura, tell us about what you have learned about the relationship between trauma and addiction. Yeah, well, trauma and addiction go hand in hand and I learned that first through rosten story through watching what he endured as a trauma survivor. Of a mass trauma, public shooting and seeing how that trauma continue to come up every time that these shootings happens, happened and continue to happen. And after he passed away, I started to really dig into that subject and I really needed to understand why this happened. And I found that there was a underserved community, which is survivors of mass traumas that weren't being served, that they didn't have access to therapy, that they hadn't really dealt with the trauma. A lot of them had really moved straight to advocacy, which is important, but you really need to unpack that before you step onto that stage. And so over the past six months, I've been working with the on site Foundation, which is a leader in trauma informed therapy programs. And we've curated the first ever trauma informed program for survivors of mass shootings. So we'll be rolling that in that out in January and I'm not allowed to make the official announcement. But we'll be announcing partners and research partners who have come in to make that A reality. And in addition to survivors, we're also rolling out programs for people who have lost children, parents who have lost children, first responders. And that's because those people groups tend to be underserved tend to have higher percentages of PTSD. Because of what they see and what they experience in serving us as their community. And so we really need to make sure that they have the services they need to move forward with their life and not turned to addictive substances to cope with that pain. The. [ APPLAUSE ] Watch that space. You'll hear more about bars the program if you could just share because they are shocking and enlightening. Just a few of the numbers about what has happened. What has happened to the people who were either victims in Columbine at Columbine High School or. The responder, for the responders. Yeah, so with the first responders that went into the library, where most of the damage was done and the lives were lost. A majority of them, 75 % have lost their life to suicide or overdose. And so again, oftentimes we expect these first responders to be superhuman. They're just human like us. We're not prepared to see that none of us should be prepared to see that. In fact, this shouldn't happen. But it continues to happen. And so we need to provide solutions for people that have endured it Going advocacy is great to that. We also need to pursue that but we can't forget that forget about the people that have walked in to these situations that have walked in to schools or concerts or theaters or churches and In fact we have a Survivor Advisory Council that we put together. And so they've really advised us on building this program. A wide range of people who have endured many different types of traumas. Some of whom have dealt with addiction, and have turned to that as a meditator, but we're really giving them tools and solutions to find hope and healing. Who has a question, a comment, a story? [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Yes. Hi, Jordan [ UNKNOWN ] I'll try to do this without tears. We all cry. I was the cryer yesterday. [ LAUGH ] Lost my sister a year ago. To overdose, and you talked about just kinda differentiating between performance issues and then addiction issues. But addicts are very good at hiding what it is they're addicted to when it comes to drugs and alcohol. So how do you differentiate the two? How do you train your staff to understand when you're dealing with a performance issue versus an addiction issue? Very good question. Yes, addicts who are in denial are excellent at hiding. But eventually, something is gonna break But we do expect them to be conscious, we expect to know their employees, to meet with their employees regularly, and to even know their family. We wanna create a space where they're willing to open up and share. So if somebody is ready to say hey, I'm struggling That we're here for them, and if they do start recognizing behaviors that aren't quite right, they need to speak up. We have a tremendous HR department. They can go to HR anonymously and say, hey, I think one of my employees is struggling. We all see this, right, where you have employee get togethers where you might see somebody drink more than they should. It may be just social drinking, but Look out for that. People do do stuff behind the scenes, by they also do stuff right in front of you. So you just really need to be aware of behavior patterns. You may miss it, it may happen. But if you're not aware we'll never gonna help anybody. And that's what we're starting. Can I add into that? Sure. I was just gonna say, as I ran a company, as a smaller company 30 employees. But no matter what size company you're in, you can help by reducing that stigma. By talking about your story. And for me, walking in as the company leader, sharing my story, everyone in the company knew my story, but creating a safe place for that Company first let's, let's really normalize this, right if someone had lung disease or heart disease, we'd be running five K's and putting their faces on T shirts and raising money and posting on Facebook but someone has a problem with addiction. And we don't want to say why that person is out of the office, but support people who are willing to get help and step forward so that we can change that stigma [ APPLAUSE ] And I also think having company policies in place where if somebody did need to leave to go get treatment, they felt safe coming back and their job was there. I think a lot of people are afraid to mention that they are struggling with an addiction because. [ INAUDIBLE ] There is a period of time where they need to seek treatment and they will lose their jobs. And you see that in physicians a lot, and I think that making sure that there's company policies in place and you make a really good point that it's anonymous. And if you miss it, don't beat yourself up over it. I missed it with my own mother for 15 years. Until it blew up. So I know firsthand, it is very hard to miss. But like she said, if there are recovery groups within the workspace, even if there's allanon groups within the workspace, that would definitely begin to change the social norm around the fact that this isn't Anonymous. It shouldn't be anonymous. I understand that Alcoholics Anonymous is based on the anonymity principle, but we can't have that anymore. It needs to be an option to not be anonymous but still be safe. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Yep. Yes, right. Over here. What can we do- Wait, wait for the mic. We want to hear you. What can we do as individuals, as a society, to make an immediate impact and move the needle on addiction and mental health outside the workplace? [ BLANK_AUDIO ] One easy way to do is to give this, she has a nonprofit. I work for an organization that is privately funded at the university in addition to the university funds, but to give any dollar amount to begin to share your story openly. Yeah. Those were great answers. Laura, mention the book that you mentioned backstage, that for anyone who wants to understand this and sort of cope with this, what's the book you mentioned. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk has written a book called The Body Keeps the Score. The Body what? The Body Keeps the Score. Have an addiction in your families or you're not quite sure how to understand it. And it really kinda helped me understand why. Thank you, Kristen, and Laura and Caitlin for sharing your stories and sharing your expertise. We so appreciate this. [ APPLAUSE ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

How Businesses Should Be Thinking About Addiction And Mental Health

Health

Women with different professional backgrounds and experiences discuss addiction and what business leaders are doing to address mental health.