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Introductions and Assessing Prior Knowledge

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Introductions and Assessing Prior Knowledge

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Hello everyone!

My name is Sabrina Sanchez, but I mainly go by my middle name “Danielle”. You can call me Dani!

This is my first semester in the Mental Health & Wellness counseling program. I graduated with a BA in Anthropology back in 2020 and have been working in higher education ever since, first as a Registrar and now as a Certified Academic Advisor at my local community college. I’m still pondering on whether I want to continue with the LPC bridge program upon completion of my current program, but I do know that I intend to seek a higher position in Student Success once I finish and receive my M.A. from ASU.

Outside of higher education I love to read fictional romance, write fictional romance, and watch fictional romance! (I love fictional romance, can you tell?) I have two children (Both age 6!) and two cats, one whom I co-own with my best friend (The cat, not my kids!).

My biggest goal for this course is to learn more about mental health and the traumas I might encounter with the people I meet, both professionally and personally. As someone who has lived with trauma and poor mental health, I know how important it is when I feel heard and understood. I want to be able to be that person for other people and avoid doing more harm than good. I hope to learn to recognize and act when I encounter situations that require aid.

Prior Knowledge Assessment_

For my quiz I took the one hosted by the CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/mentalhealth/quiz/index.htm

I did not realize that suicide is the 2nd leading cause of death for people aged 10-24. I felt the air leave me in shock when I read that.

The experiences I have with mental health stem a lot from my own trauma from early childhood to adulthood and the friends I made along the way. I found that sharing trauma with others was a way to bond and learn about the struggles others faced, and in a way I feel that it helped shape my empathy for those living with poor mental health because I was living it and seeing it every day. The biggest takeaway from those experiences is that togetherness was a vital part to becoming healthier mentally. I wouldn’t be here today if not for people that cared about my mental health. I feel that this is why learning that suicide is the 2nd leading cause of death in young people hit so hard. That’s reality.

With that in mind, I’m excited for this course and looking forward to learning more about the topic because I work one on one with students everyday – the same young people that fall within that age bracket above. Regardless of my future role in higher education, the skills I learn in this course are going to be invaluable. By having the knowledge to assess, acknowledge, and apply what I’ve learned in this course I hope that I can touch at least one life and make them feel cared for.

Independent Research_

In my independent research I found a peer reviewed article published on the National Library of Medicine: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4527955/

I chose this article to talk about because I work closely with college students and their mental health is something I’m particularly interested in. What I liked most about what’s included is that not only do they discuss the typical college student within the article, but they also mention non-traditional students and the struggles they face in addition to studies. As a community college a large part of our population of students are non-traditional and have responsibilities outside of education such as family and work. Their struggles are different than the average 18-year-old freshman that has just graduated from high school and the approach you take with them isn’t going to be the same. I appreciated the holistic view in that each student is individual and their lives can impact their mental health differently. It was disheartening to read how prevalent poor mental health and crises are within higher education, but also uplifting to know research has been conducted to identify these issues so that we can begin to create solutions. I plan to keep reading about this!

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Reference Guide for Mental Health Disorders 

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Reference Guide for Mental Health Disorders 

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Reflection: What I enjoyed most about this assignment is that it provided me with a good resource to locate mental health disorders, but I was able to put it all in one place for myself. I feel like this will be helpful in the future if I need information on a specific disorder, especially because it includes links to valid resources. One takeaway in particular: A lot of the disorders have overlapping symptoms so it was interesting to see what made them unique.

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Reflection: This assignment was an eye opener for me in terms of realizing how many individuals suffer from trauma. It's one thing to know that trauma exists, but a completely separate thing to know the statistics and numbers. I myself was surprised to see my own ACE score. It made me feel bad, but at the same time I believe having knowledge is to have power, so I'm choosing to be positive about it.

The documentary I chose to watch was Athlete A - wow, is my biggest reaction. Hearing directly from the survivors was powerful. I truly hope that they can find peace moving forward.

The information I learned from this assignment will help with my current and future career thanks to the resources I was provided and was able to locate after research.

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Group Project: Human & Sex Trafficking - Reflection: I knew that human and sex trafficking exists in our world, but it was still a queasy feeling that I had as I researched for this project. The statistics were very saddening, but I felt really good knowing that there are so many resources out there to help victims/survivors of human and sex trafficking. I was especially surprised to see how many screening tools exist to identify victims. I appreciate this project because it provided me with important resources that I can use in my current and future career.

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Crisis Prevention Plan and Threat Assessment Group Assignment - Presentation

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Joshua A. Gordon M.D., Ph.D.

Read about our plan for the institute's research priorities.

Funding News for Current and Future NIMH Awardees.

Find NIMH funding opportunities and announcements, including those specific to clinical research and training, and learn more about NIMH funding strategies, the application process, and grants management.

If you or someone you know has a mental illness, there are ways to get help. Use these resources to find help for yourself, a friend, or a family member.

Learn more about how to participate in outpatient and inpatient studies at the NIH Clinical Center, a hospital dedicated to the highest quality research.

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Joshua A. Gordon M.D., Ph.D. Read about our plan for the institute's research priorities. Funding News for Current and Future NIMH Awardees. Find NIMH funding opportunities and announcements, including those specific to clinical research and training, and learn more about NIMH funding strategies, the application process, and grants management.

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A Screening Tool for Identifying Trafficking Victims

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A Screening Tool for Identifying Trafficking Victims

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Identifying human trafficking victims is a challenge for service providers and law enforcement officers. A screening tool that reliably identifies victims could be an enormous help to law enforcement agencies and organizations involved in victim services. The Vera Institute of Justice undertook this study to answer several questions about a screening tool it had developed for use by front-line practitioners:

Does the tool accurately and reliably identify trafficking victims?

Under which conditions is it most effective?

What is the best way to share this tool and promote its use among law enforcement?

Working with 11 victims services agencies from around the country to develop and test a comprehensive screening tool that would make identification easier, Vera determined that this tool can reliably identify victims.

Accuracy and Reliability. The screening tool accurately measures several dimensions of human trafficking. It is highly reliable in predicting victimization for both sex and labor trafficking across diverse subgroups, including those divided by age, gender and country of origin. Most questions asked about migration, work and working/living conditions were good predictors of trafficking after taking demographics into account: 87 percent of the questions were strong predictors of trafficking victimization in general, 71 percent were strong predictors of labor trafficking, and 81 percent were strong predictors of sex trafficking.

Validity of a Short Version of the Tool. The researchers determined that a short version of the tool consisting of 16 questions (approximately half of the questions tested) accurately predicts victimization for both sex and labor trafficking cases. The tool can be further shortened if an interviewer suspects a specific type of trafficking victimization (sex or labor) based on circumstances.

Effectiveness Depends on Appropriate Use. The effectiveness of the screening tool depends upon its appropriate use. Because of the trauma and fear that trafficking victims endure, it is important that people who use the tool adopt a sensitive approach. Building trust; ensuring safety; and meeting victims' legal, social and health needs are fundamental elements to consider during the victim identification process.

Suggestions From Law Enforcement to Encourage Use. In interviews with researchers, law enforcement experts made several recommendations, based on their experiences with trafficking victims, for adapting and implementing the screening tool to make it more useful for officers. These included making the tool shorter and finding ways to balance the need to stay focused on the most significant details against the need to maintain a conversational approach with the victim.

By using this tool, victim services agencies can not only help victims get the services they need but potentially improve case investigations and prosecutions.

Use of this field-tested tool expands the reach of those who serve victims and those who investigate and prosecute trafficking cases. It will help meet the four goals identified in the Federal Strategic Action Plan on Services for Victims of Human Trafficking in the United States 2013-2017 to increase coordination and collaboration, to increase awareness, to expand access to services and to improve outcomes. Study results also can strengthen crime victim services in general and law enforcement's victim identification practices at all levels, including in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and state and local anti-trafficking task forces, by increasing understanding of the victimization process, of the means of control used to exploit victims and of their concerns and needs upon exiting.

Vera worked with 11 victim service providers to collect original data on more than 230 cases from interviews with potential trafficking victims and case file reviews to determine whether the screening tool could reliably identify victims, including adults, minors and domestic and foreign-born of sex and labor trafficking. Vera also facilitated participatory evaluation by conducting focus groups and 36 in-depth interviews with service providers, trafficking survivors and law enforcement personnel to identify best practices in implementation of the screening tool.

About this Article

The work discussed in this article was completed under grant number 2011-MU-MU-0066 awarded by NIJ to the Vera Institute of Justice. This article is based on the grant report Improving Human Trafficking Victim Identification-Validation and Dissemination of a Screening Tool by Laura Simich, Lucia Goyen, Andrew Powell, and Karen Mallozzi.

Download the screening tool and guidelines for its use, Screening for Human Trafficking: Guidelines for Administering the Trafficking Victim Identification Tool (TVIT) (pdf, 37 pages).

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A Screening Tool for Identifying Trafficking Victims

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Identifying human trafficking victims is a challenge for service providers and law enforcement officers. A screening tool that reliably identifies victims could be an enormous help to law enforcement agencies and organizations involved in victim services.

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Tips for Survivors: Coping with Grief after a Disaster or Traumatic Event

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Tips for Survivors: Coping with Grief after a Disaster or Traumatic Event

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Be the One in the Fight Against Human Trafficking

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Be the One in the Fight Against Human Trafficking

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ADA Compliant Versions

Note: English and Spanish closed captioning is available.

Video Description

Human trafficking is modern day slavery and it is happening all across Texas to thousands of men, women, and children. This video, developed by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas, provides an understanding of what human trafficking is and is not, identifies vulnerable populations that are more likely to be victimized by human traffickers, identifies indicators of human trafficking and methods of reporting to the authorities, and highlights actual cases of human trafficking prosecuted in Texas.

How to Report Trafficking

Call 911 in an emergency

To report human trafficking or for information or resources:

Need more info? humantrafficking@oag.texas.gov

Intended Audience

School Administrators

School Staff

School-Based Law Enforcement

Teachers

Parents

Additional Resources

The Office of the Attorney General (OAG) of Texas provides additional information about the types of human trafficking, buyers and sellers of human trafficking, red flags for sex and labor trafficking, and tips on how to report human trafficking to authorities. To view this additional information, please follow the link below.

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Be the One in the Fight Against Human Trafficking

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This video walks the audience through actual cases prosecuted in the state of Texas, identifies the tools of traffickers and how they are typically utilized to obtain and maintain victims, and equips viewers with red flags and a reporting protocol.

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Reflection: I enjoyed this assignment because I learned how to parse through a case study and identify physical, emotional, social, and cognitive words or phrases within it. I feel that this gave me a better understanding of structure when it comes to speaking to someone going through a crisis. There were a few times I struggled and second guessed myself over answers, but going back to the highlighted sections I had created was extremely helpful. I can see myself using this method for future cases as I work to help others.

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Human Trafficking 101 for School Administrators and Staff

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Human Trafficking 101 for School Administrators and Staff

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Psychological First Aid Online Certificate

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Psychological First Aid Online Certificate

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Reflection: I'm really glad I had the opportunity to complete this online training, as I had no idea what Psychological First Aid even was until this assignment. One of my biggest worries was knowing what to say or do when someone in crisis is in front of you. I don't feel 100% confident in myself just yet, but doing this online training raised my confidence significantly. These skills will be useful for my current role as an advisor and my future role as a counselor.

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Psychological First Aid (PFA) Online_Certificate

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The Depression Test is also available in Spanish. Click here to test for postpartum depression (new and expecting parents).
Source:

PHQ9 Copyright © Pfizer Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission. PRIME-MD ® is a trademark of Pfizer Inc.

Kroenke, Spitzer, & Williams. (2001). The PHQ‐9. Journal of General Internal Medicine 16(9), 606-613. Retrieved from
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1525-1497.2001.016009606.x/pdf
Please note: Online screening tools are not diagnostic instruments. You are encouraged to share your results with a physician or healthcare provider. Mental Health America Inc., sponsors, partners, and advertisers disclaim any liability, loss, or risk incurred as a consequence, directly or indirectly, from the use and application of these screens.

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The Depression Test is for individuals who are feeling overwhelming sadness. The depression test is also available in Spanish.