Health, happiness and humanitarian disasters: Resilience and wellbeing during crises

Modern life can feel like one of constant crisis, through exposure on social media feeds, local news or even your personal life. Recovering from the physical and emotional toll of these is hard, but also essential. 

Doctor Sara Spowart from the University of South Florida, is a researcher specialising in the psychology of support around survival. Her framework of integrative happiness sets out a vital tool for all those affected by trauma to find happiness and stability in their lives again.

Read her original work at : https://doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.107413

This interview includes discussion of war, natural disasters, poverty, assault and the pandemic. Listener discretion is advised. 

Transcript

00:00:07 Will Mountford 

Hello. I'm Will. Welcome to research pod. It feels like hardly a day goes by without one crisis or another these days, be it one recorded in your social media feed rolling out on your local news or in the worst case scenario, happening to you, right now. 

00:00:21 Will Mountford 

Surviving, enduring, and recovering from the physical and emotional toll of these is hard, but also essential. The alternative is... well. 

00:00:31 Will Mountford 

Doctor Sara Spowart from the University of South Florida, is a researcher specializing in the psychology of support around survival. 

00:00:38 Will Mountford 

Our conversation today touches on war, natural disasters, poverty, assault and the pandemic. So listener discretion is advised. Ultimately, though, her framework of integrative happiness sets out a vital tool for all those affected by trauma to find happiness and stability in their lives again. 

00:00:59 Will Mountford 

Doctor Spowart, hello. 

00:01:00 Dr Sara Spowart 

Hello, nice to be here. 

00:01:02 Will Mountford 

Thanks very much for your time for my own sake and for everyone listening at home. Could you tell us a bit about your research, kind of where it started and how it's led to the interdisciplinary topics that you've examined in your current book chapters today? 

00:01:16 Dr Sara Spowart 

Yeah, absolutely. So. 

00:01:19 Dr Sara Spowart 

My research has been a mix of different things. For whatever reason, I'd say most of my life people seem to tell me things that they don't. 

00:01:29 Dr Sara Spowart 

Tell a lot of other people. 

00:01:31 Dr Sara Spowart 

Similarly, that's where this all kind of started in Tanzania, and then it just progressed from there. And I've seen this this theme for sure of violence, trauma, mental health and its interconnection with public health and poverty. And that if you just address one factor, it's not going to be successful. 

00:01:51 Dr Sara Spowart 

And you're not really addressing the bigger picture of what's going on. 

00:01:55 Dr Sara Spowart 

I didn't really start off with thinking I would focus so much on sexual violence, and particularly the effects of sexual violence on a global level. 

00:02:05 Dr Sara Spowart 

It started when I did work in Tanzania and I'll never forget I was going to different parts of Tanzania for different organizations. It was 2009. There was this one project where there was basically a village of women that had all experienced rape. A lot of them had HIV. 

00:02:25 Dr Sara Spowart 

From it and multiple times of rape group rape, just these horrific stories, and they all kind of like lived in this village together and kind of close by. There was this program that had been developed to try to help the most impoverished. 

00:02:39 Dr Sara Spowart 

Help get resources. Get back up on their feet. There were some other people that survived by going through landfills and three kids. And I remember specifically when it came time to do the interviews for these projects about the women that lived at this village, there was just a line. 

00:02:59 Dr Sara Spowart 

I can't remember how long the line was. Honestly, it went out the door running like 20 women. But these women all wanted to talk to me. 

00:03:06 Dr Sara Spowart 

OK. 

00:03:07 Dr Sara Spowart 

Not that I could fix what had happened to them, but they wanted to tell their story, which was very unusual because usually with sexual abuse, people tend to be more secretive. They don't want to talk about it. Other work I've done for people that were from the Congo, that had been practically everyone. 

00:03:27 Dr Sara Spowart 

That I have worked with have been sexually abused. 

00:03:29 Dr Sara Spowart 

There. 

00:03:30 Dr Sara Spowart 

They didn't talk about it, but they all had really bad depression. 

00:03:33 Dr Sara Spowart 

But these women, they all wanted to share their story and be validated, and they all struggled with a lot of different issues. And I just remember thinking like, this is unbelievable. This is just such a problem from the work that I did in Tanzania. There's all these different projects that I just kept seeing the same theme of the Depression, the mental illness. 

00:03:53 Dr Sara Spowart 

The trauma, the sexual violence and the projects were not actually designed for that. The projects were designed for learning skills, so you can make money for food or a lot of it was around trying to help people get education. 

00:04:07 Dr Sara Spowart 

But there's a huge gap in terms of pupils needs and what I saw was actually happening, which was so much more horrific than the programs were even aware of. 

00:04:22 Will Mountford 

You deal with some profoundly hard topics for people in profoundly difficult situations who are having the worst experience possible in life on the planet. How do you maintain your well-being and your? 

00:04:39 Will Mountford 

Mental resilience to have that kind of reflected back at you. 

00:04:42 Dr Sara Spowart 

Yeah, one person asked me this once because I find that. 

00:04:46 Dr Sara Spowart 

And. 

00:04:47 Dr Sara Spowart 

I learned a long time ago. I'm not sure when it was probably after my Tanzania trip in 2009, I learned that people I don't think can't handle, but it disturbs them to hear some of these things. I remember one of my Thanksgivings. Somebody asked what I did and I started to talk about it. And this was when I worked with three. 

00:05:08 Dr Sara Spowart 

Crisis and trafficking. 

00:05:10 Dr Sara Spowart 

Survivors and about 10 minutes in, everyone got silent and I was like. 

00:05:13 Dr Sara Spowart 

OK. And I'll. 

00:05:13 Dr Sara Spowart 

Just stop. Like I can just tell everyone is uncomfortable and I'm don't want to. 

00:05:17 Dr Sara Spowart 

Affect everyone's mood. 

00:05:19 Dr Sara Spowart 

Yes. 

00:05:20 Dr Sara Spowart 

I would say looking at the humanity of everybody, and this might sound more spiritual. 

00:05:25 Dr Sara Spowart 

An approach but it's. 

00:05:27 Dr Sara Spowart 

What I. 

00:05:27 Dr Sara Spowart 

Saw with Tanzania that it can become a society wide issue, violence, mental illness, all these things. 

00:05:35 Dr Sara Spowart 

What is the difference? 

00:05:36 Dr Sara Spowart 

Between me and this other person. 

00:05:40 Dr Sara Spowart 

I don't know. 

00:05:41 Dr Sara Spowart 

Seeing the humanity trying to see myself and others trying to see that we're all people and that we all matter, we all have value and approaching it from more of a hopeful standpoint that this is terrible. But I believe the solutions and I would like to find some of those solutions. So coming at it from. 

00:06:01 Dr Sara Spowart 

A position of OK, this is terrible, but what data can I take away from this that can go? 

00:06:06 Dr Sara Spowart 

Towards a solution. 

00:06:08 Dr Sara Spowart 

And I think the first time I had that insight was I was, say, 2009, there was this one boy, I think he was 13 or 14. He had been abandoned by his family, and he lived at a landfill. He went through the landfill to get stuff to survive. And I saw this as well, a lot in India. Remember him? 

00:06:29 Dr Sara Spowart 

Being very upbeat and smiling, and he also tried to do performances in the street and I remember just seeing the humanity in him and feeling a sense of love and compassion. 

00:06:39 Dr Sara Spowart 

And that there has to be a solution. So seeing the humanity in all of us, I think is what helps me to do that. And the belief that someone is different from me, separate from me, actually makes all of that harder on yourself, you might think, oh, it protects me. It makes it harder because if you feel someone's very different from you and separate. 

00:07:02 Dr Sara Spowart 

Then, hearing these things is like, Oh my gosh, go away. But if you see, OK, this is a human being. 

00:07:09 Dr Sara Spowart 

Just like me, somehow it makes it easier. 

00:07:14 Will Mountford 

You talked about this research coming from a place of crisis, of sexual violence was so widespread and so enduring that to a lot of people listening to this, that must seem an entire world away. But that is not the only place where these crisis happens, where the impacts of sexual violence. 

00:07:34 Will Mountford 

Of humanitarian disaster happen. 

00:07:36 Will Mountford 

So to bring things back, maybe to a a much closer experience. How do you see that life in the Western world in northern Europe, in North America is reflecting some of those same experiences and responses to the various multitudinous ways in which life is very hard for a? 

00:07:56 Will Mountford 

Lot of people. 

00:07:57 Will Mountford 

Right now. 

00:07:58 Dr Sara Spowart 

Yeah, absolutely. 

00:07:59 Dr Sara Spowart 

Really. Well, I haven't worked in Europe, but I did live there for a time. I studied abroad in France and I spent some time in some of the other countries as well. Between all the way from Russia to Spain, I didn't find it was something that was talked about. I did find that myself, the people that I knew, people that. 

00:08:19 Dr Sara Spowart 

I did. 

00:08:20 Dr Sara Spowart 

Studying with programs. 

00:08:22 Dr Sara Spowart 

Everyone experienced a lot of harassment. There was a lot of sexual harassment. It was more scary to be a woman, but it wasn't something that was addressed and if anything, you were kind of blamed for it. Like it's well, it's your fault. It's like, OK, I guess it's my fault for existing. I didn't really see that be overt, but I'm sure it's a problem. 

00:08:42 Dr Sara Spowart 

The reason I say I'm sure is because it seems to be a problem. It's pretty widespread. 

00:08:48 Dr Sara Spowart 

In India, when I worked in India, for example, the trains, they had a special section for women because women would be sexually assaulted and harassed on the trains. I mean, such a problem. They had to actually separate and imagine how stressful that must be just to try to function in the world and. 

00:09:07 Dr Sara Spowart 

In terms of power, in terms of public health. 

00:09:10 Dr Sara Spowart 

It hurts society. It actually hurts society. A lot of people think, well, what does it matter? You know, it actually does matter. It causes a lot of problems, a lot of health problems, economic problems, mental health problems. People can't develop to their full potential in terms of closer to home in the West. 

00:09:28 Dr Sara Spowart 

And this was actually part of the interest as well in this whole topic. I remember thinking well, you know the US isn't like this, it's better there. So what happened was I started working in Florida, I went to University of South Florida, I started working in Florida in Pinellas County. 

00:09:47 Dr Sara Spowart 

Which is a kind of a million people, but it also spread to Pasco County, Sarasota County, Hillsborough County, the work that I did and I'm working not in the beginning, but I am working as a trauma therapist and a crisis advocate and then a sexual assault specialist. 

00:10:07 Dr Sara Spowart 

Which they used to call rape, crisis specialist Rape Crisis counselor. But the word rape upset people, so they changed it to sexual assault. 

00:10:15 Dr Sara Spowart 

So what I found was we were flooded. We were inundated. There was way too many more cases than we can handle and. 

00:10:25 Dr Sara Spowart 

You would think. 

00:10:26 Dr Sara Spowart 

Well, you know, it's just certain types of people this happens to. I mean, there's a lot of shocking stereotypes that came across, but actually, I mean, I had a lot of kids in my, a lot of people like that were kids. We had this person that was specialist just for kids. It was very prevalent. And the thing that helped me and actually helped a lot of the people that were able to mentally handle. 

00:10:49 Dr Sara Spowart 

Saying cause a lot of people would leave was instead of thinking ohh this is not a problem in our society. This is a rare thing. 

00:10:57 Dr Sara Spowart 

So every time someone will come in, it would be upsetting like, no, this is a prevalent issue. It comes in different forms, but when people had different types of violence happen against them, taking aside the law and the fact that most people that do sexual assault, the vast majority don't have any consequences and people don't believe them. 

00:11:19 Dr Sara Spowart 

It ruins lives. These people. It wasn't just women. It was also men. A lot of times they couldn't go to work and they couldn't function. 

00:11:26 Dr Sara Spowart 

And they just fall apart. They couldn't live in the same city. We'd have to try to relocate them. It changed them. And sometimes people would be actually very high functioning. And then these things happen. 

00:11:39 Dr Sara Spowart 

And people think, well, that's never going to happen to me. A lot of these people. 

00:11:44 Dr Sara Spowart 

Just normal people. Maybe they went to some sort of event like a family event with neighbors. I mean, it could happen to anybody, so it might sound negative, but this was part of the research. And then the other phenomenon was the human trafficking piece that I started seeing more and more. 

00:12:03 Dr Sara Spowart 

People coming in that because was very crisis. You don't have to have an ID, you don't have to have your real name. We just help, no matter what people coming in, you know, 1514 runaways totally traumatized. And then they get picked up by some guy, a group of guys. So I saw more. 

00:12:23 Dr Sara Spowart 

People that seem like they're being trafficked and that sort of segued into my interest in the trafficking issue and then my and some of my colleagues there as well. 

00:12:33 Dr Sara Spowart 

You know, living in DC, I think a year and a half or two years, I specialized with trafficking victims. That was quite shocking as well because. 

00:12:45 Dr Sara Spowart 

It was mostly Americans, the vast majority of sex trafficking victims, a lot of people don't know this, they think, and it's not OK either way. But a lot of people have this stereotype of it's someone being shipped over from Thailand or Russia, which is still not OK, but actually the vast majority of sex trafficking victims and even child victims. 

00:13:05 Dr Sara Spowart 

Are American citizens a lot of kids from the foster system with the work I did in DC? And it's a very international city. 

00:13:12 Dr Sara Spowart 

I only had a handful of people from other countries. There was one girl I think from. 

00:13:17 Dr Sara Spowart 

West Africa, because I remember how to speak French with her and the other thing that was shocking because I would go on different ride alongs with law enforcement sometimes I just some ride alongs with Trevor I think was US Marshals I think was FBI one time. 

00:13:33 Dr Sara Spowart 

And then the police. But one of the main spots for the trafficking for people to pick them up was six blocks from the White House and was on the way. And people think, oh, it's late at night. No, it was terrible. It would be like 5-6 in the morning. Educate people that worked near the White House would stop there on their way to work. 

00:13:54 Dr Sara Spowart 

And they would buy a girl, and then they go to work. 

00:13:58 Dr Sara Spowart 

A lot of it was very counter to what I thought. I really was very shocked at how prevalent the issue is and how it's not really taken seriously, and even I remember doing one of the ride alongs I think it was with US marshals and they were just saying it's really tough to get these people. 

00:14:19 Dr Sara Spowart 

Prosecuted and they have to have a lot of evidence against them. It's a growing issue. So in terms of closer to home, it takes a lot of different forms. But I think at the root. 

00:14:30 Dr Sara Spowart 

Move it. 

00:14:31 Dr Sara Spowart 

It's not seeing people as people. It's seeing people as objects, which is a general issue worldwide. When you look at racism and minority groups and it's looking at people's objects, not people. 

00:14:49 Will Mountford 

He mentioned there the similarity in the attitude and expectation of value between races and between other forms of abuse and prejudice for people who fall within multiple categories of that who are in that intersection of being, you know, a black. 

00:15:06 Will Mountford 

Trans sex worker. 

00:15:09 Will Mountford 

There is a lot of ways in which life is going to be especially hard for them, and it seems like at some point society, as you say, seems to just kind of expect or accept that well, they have done the wrong things. I have done the right things, and that insulates me or protects me from this ever. 

00:15:30 Will Mountford 

Happening in my life. How far away? 

00:15:33 Will Mountford 

Is any one person from being that much more disadvantaged? I hear people talk about, you know, the economic disadvantage of you're never three months away from being a millionaire, but you're always three months away from being homeless for people who might not expect to ever be on the receiving end of state violence or sexual violence or any kind of, you know. 

00:15:52 Will Mountford 

Compounded. 

00:15:53 Will Mountford 

Abuse. Do you find that there is anything that can awaken awareness of what is happening, where it is happening? Does it have to be a ride along like you have seen, or could there be a social push to really drive home the prevalence and scale of the problem domestically and internationally? 

00:16:11 Dr Sara Spowart 

Yeah, absolutely. So that was the next. 

00:16:14 Dr Sara Spowart 

The area, the research that I found was again so much as counterintuitive. 

00:16:19 Dr Sara Spowart 

Education on these things, awareness actually helps to reduce it. Just education, more people speaking out. The thing that keeps it alive is the silence, the secrecy, people thinking it's just them have been blown away at how many clients I've had and people I've met that think it's just them or just two people. 

00:16:39 Dr Sara Spowart 

You know, maybe one person, they know. 

00:16:42 Dr Sara Spowart 

No, it's a cultural, societal issue. It's doesn't have boundaries with countries. It's not just the secret thing. So I'd say bringing out to the open education, not victim blaming, putting the focus on the perpetrators and the perpetrators. By the way, the research has been done, which is quite limited. 

00:17:04 Dr Sara Spowart 

It shows a lot of them also have mental illness. Some of them have severe depression, very low self esteem, they're isolated. 

00:17:13 Dr Sara Spowart 

They also have issues and it's not excusing what they do, but it absolutely is part of the issue and there's been some cool initiatives. They're limited again, but to help perpetrators to get mental health services, to get more connected, to build better social skills, to help them. 

00:17:33 Dr Sara Spowart 

So they're not so sick and so seeing it more as like a sickness. I think it's helpful in terms of people that think they're safe from it, that it's not going to happen to them. They're insulated. 

00:17:47 Dr Sara Spowart 

I really wish I could say there's cotton dry rules. I have not seen any and I can honestly say. 

00:17:54 Dr Sara Spowart 

No one I've worked with on this topic has seen any. I guess the only rules really are someone that has. 

00:18:02 Dr Sara Spowart 

Access and you're in a vulnerable situation and they think there's no consequences. They're more likely to do it. 

00:18:09 Dr Sara Spowart 

People with disabilities are more at risk. Children are more at risk, foster care children because they're more vulnerable. I've also seen, and it's terrible. But, you know, in theory, let's say you have a family system and one person is a breadwinner, that breadwinner knows that the other family members are vulnerable. They are more likely to be a perpetrator. 

00:18:29 Dr Sara Spowart 

To someone in the system. So when you have power dynamic imbalances, so in terms of like protecting yourself, I mean I know that different religions have tried different things have tried. 

00:18:40 Dr Sara Spowart 

We know now with the research and this is again counterintuitive, and you could say sad. We used to think it's some stranger in the parking lot that's going to attack you that you need to be afraid of. And yes, that can happen. You know, don't walk by yourself in dangerous parking lots at night. But it's more likely to be an intimate partner. It's more likely to be. 

00:19:01 Dr Sara Spowart 

A family member or even a parent, or somebody that's close to you, like a neighbor, someone that is closer to you is actually more likely to. 

00:19:12 Dr Sara Spowart 

Will hurt you. 

00:19:14 Dr Sara Spowart 

At least in the West, in other places, maybe not so much like in the situations like in Tanzania that I saw, the people that were assaulted. It was a lot of time strangers that would just break into their homes. But it's harder to break into someone's home in the West. 

00:19:28 Dr Sara Spowart 

So it's in terms of protecting yourself, I'd say people empowering themselves as much as possible, I found to be the most. 

00:19:37 Dr Sara Spowart 

The grace protection, loving yourself, taking care of yourself, making sure that you are not around people that are treating you badly. 

00:19:45 Dr Sara Spowart 

Because sexual abuse is also especially more in the West, tied to the cycle of abuse with verbal physical financial. So someone's doing certain types of abuse, they're more likely to do other types as well, not allowing yourself to be treated badly. 

00:20:04 Dr Sara Spowart 

And that's easier said than done, and it goes back to education as well. Educating people on what abuses, what love is. And I don't just mean relationship like partner love. I also mean family love, friend, love. 

00:20:18 Dr Sara Spowart 

And educating people more on self love and taking care of themselves and looking out for themselves. 

00:20:24 Dr Sara Spowart 

Not in a fearful way, but in a way where you are not going to allow yourself to be disempowered as much as you can. 

00:20:34 Dr Sara Spowart 

It's about power and control. 

00:20:36 Will Mountford 

Well, to come back to some of what you mentioned about working in Tanzania and other kind of instances of humanitarian crisis, mindfulness and mental well-being during crisis, where it's not just the personal crisis that is happening in the Community, but landslide or flood or as. 

00:20:55 Will Mountford 

We've seen in the recent couple of years pandemic and drawn out economic instability, how does the duration of exposure affect mental resilience, ability to cope with another day in a hard environment with people around you where you know if everyone's going through that same circumstance then things will become. 

00:21:15 Will Mountford 

Especially fraught on the Community level. 

00:21:17 Dr Sara Spowart 

In terms of natural disasters, when you have more collective issues, it makes it a lot tougher. So something called complex PTSD, which is a newer diagnosis. 

00:21:29 

Well. 

00:21:29 Dr Sara Spowart 

Other people have confusion. If it's similar to borderline personality disorder, I think the best way to understand it is from what I've seen because I've worked with people that have CPTSD. 

00:21:41 Dr Sara Spowart 

Is it's when you've had chronic traumas and multiple traumas and. 

00:21:47 Dr Sara Spowart 

It's beyond your capacity to handle. So what happens when you have more and more and more things happen? I mean, I guess the best way of saying and is it becomes. 

00:21:59 Dr Sara Spowart 

Even harder to get out of it, it becomes even more difficult to be resilient. 

00:22:05 Dr Sara Spowart 

And people need support with building resilience. For example, in Southeast Asia, when there's been some research with different events that have occurred, when you have a more collectivistic society and you have people that have had trauma. 

00:22:20 Dr Sara Spowart 

You can become traumatize yourself from what happened. And then you're traumatized by the other people's trauma because you're all trying to work together, and you're all more interlinked. 

00:22:31 Dr Sara Spowart 

And that doesn't help societies to move forward. It actually makes it really challenging. And on that note, I'm actually involved right now on a project in Mali. I've also done some work in Mali for there was the the violence, they were microfinance initiatives. But I remember I did focus groups, this organization, freedom from hunger. 

00:22:51 Dr Sara Spowart 

In the folks groups, again, the focus groups were about these projects to help women make more money, have more food, have better health. But a lot of them, they wanted to talk about their depression, their hopelessness, their feeling of no energy, their feeling of. 

00:23:07 Dr Sara Spowart 

There's no hope, and so something that was designed was these support groups. 

00:23:12 Dr Sara Spowart 

Where these women could come together. And I'm not saying it has to be women. It could be men. It could be, whoever. Whatever you want to do is for group. But these groups that would come together and they could talk about their experiences, they could learn new skills like psychoeducation with resiliency in the new initiative. They're also learning about things like abuse. 

00:23:32 Dr Sara Spowart 

Things like taking care of yourself. 

00:23:35 Dr Sara Spowart 

They're learning about symptoms of trauma because that's something we take for granted. Sometimes people just think. 

00:23:41 Dr Sara Spowart 

Well, this terrible thing happened. We have to keep surviving. So I'd say the support groups combined with some education can be helpful for collectivistic society or individual society. 

00:23:54 Will Mountford 

And did you ever find during any of the time that you spent abroad or domestically? There is yet the attitude of these people have been in natural disasters like floods in southeast. 

00:24:05 Will Mountford 

What we're doing, sending psychologists along when they need tents, they need food, they need external stability before we can address the internal. 

00:24:14 Dr Sara Spowart 

Remember, bringing this up to people was like look, this is what they're telling me. They're having depression. They're no motivation. Hopelessness like what about also adding in some mental health stuff? And I was always, well, the funders aren't interested in that. This is what the funders want. And I would bring it up again. I see this stuff with sexual violence. And this is what they're telling me is their problems. 

00:24:35 Dr Sara Spowart 

Why aren't we dealing with this with the funding like, well, the funders don't want that. This is what the funders think. 

00:24:41 Dr Sara Spowart 

Is the way we should go. 

00:24:44 Dr Sara Spowart 

Part of it is, I'd say, education for whoever is doing the funding, which gets tricky when some of the funding is coming from government and the government is funding initiatives that have certain political agendas, that becomes challenging. 

00:25:02 Dr Sara Spowart 

But either way, you can always try to educate funders. More recently, there's been more of a movement, and I've I've written on this as well. That is exciting. It's. 

00:25:13 Dr Sara Spowart 

Mental health, first aid and mental health literacy, which essentially means that we're not sending exactly psychologists. That's too compartmentalized sometimes for these crisis situations, but the community workers that are going to go in, they're crisis workers, they can be trained with mental health first aid. 

00:25:33 Dr Sara Spowart 

With some of these basic things with psychoeducation, so if they lead any groups or do any health education or different types of initiatives, they can mix in these very important things into the work that they're doing. It doesn't have to be so black and white and it's not. 

00:25:51 Dr Sara Spowart 

Can wait and if you want these health recovery development initiatives to be successful, got to address the mental health peace, because if you have people that are traumatized trying to overcome violence, they don't feel safe. They're dealing with abuse at home, they have depression. 

00:26:11 Dr Sara Spowart 

And then you give them some money and tell them about washing your hands. 

00:26:15 Dr Sara Spowart 

You're not really honoring your humanity. You're treating them more like it's simple. It's more black and white than it is. It's not any different from your eye. It's we have to address the whole piece. So yeah, tone about washing your hands. Whatever. Give loans to help or money to help, but also talk about trauma. Also talk about. 

00:26:36 Dr Sara Spowart 

Impression also talk about some tools that they. 

00:26:38 Dr Sara Spowart 

Pianos and mental health first aid provides some basic tools and support, and I think too the power of the support groups is huge. They were not meant to be support groups, but when I did the focus groups. 

00:26:51 Dr Sara Spowart 

Molly and I did them in Ghana, too. And then when I did interviews in India, but then also in Tanzania, wasn't meant to be a method of support, but people were so desperate for someone to hear their story for support. They sort of became that way. This is what they wanted to talk about. So honoring the people share. 

00:27:11 Dr Sara Spowart 

They won't know what you think they should have. 

00:27:15 Dr Sara Spowart 

Which is more? 

00:27:15 Dr Sara Spowart 

Of a grassroots versus a top down approach. 

00:27:18 Will Mountford 

Like I've got no background in this. I've just heard what you've told me, but it makes so much sense that if you're going to be providing help to people help, then finding out what they want is going to be an important part of that. 

00:27:31 Dr Sara Spowart 

Absolutely. Otherwise it is. 

00:27:34 Dr Sara Spowart 

Kind of insulting. 

00:27:36 

You're. 

00:27:37 Dr Sara Spowart 

You're coming in thinking you know better. And even when people give you feedback on what they need and you're saying no, no, this is what you. 

00:27:44 Dr Sara Spowart 

It's a waste of money as well and unfortunately, and I hate to say this, but this is something that I've seen and that's why I personally, I'm very interested in more grassroots movements that people are saying. This is what we need and they're implementing it. It's more dollar efficient and it's more impactful in terms of positive outcomes. 

00:28:03 Dr Sara Spowart 

From what I've seen. 

00:28:09 Will Mountford 

To ground some of this work, not just in the geography that we've covered, but also in the history, we have collectively been through some very strange, traumatic for some people, a lot more severe times. Is that something that as a case study? 

00:28:27 Will Mountford 

With a lot of. 

00:28:28 Will Mountford 

Death tolls being tracked across hospitals across countries with a lot of well-being initiatives being tracked and being set up across countries and across health systems is something that is going to really inform future development for crisis response and psychological well-being. Or is it all kind of things we've seen already that are now being? 

00:28:49 Will Mountford 

Put into action. 

00:28:50 Dr Sara Spowart 

MM. 

00:28:51 Dr Sara Spowart 

My understanding is there's been huge emphasis on the cases with COVID and the deaths from COVID, which is tragic, and myself had COVID actually more than once. It's a terrible. It was terrible disease. 

00:29:08 

But. 

00:29:10 Dr Sara Spowart 

Looking at the science, the numbers instead of just what is on being kind of more pushed from my understanding and then and I would need to double check the numbers, but my understanding is there was a huge issue with Suicide Depression. 

00:29:29 Dr Sara Spowart 

Addiction, overdose, intimate partner violence that really was not addressed because my understanding is and again, I'd have to check this number, but I believe more people died from intimate partner violence in Mexico than COVID during COVID. And that's not something that's talked about. the US has a huge drug epidemic. 

00:29:50 Dr Sara Spowart 

That has been going on, but is much worse now than ever before. 

00:29:55 Dr Sara Spowart 

And it's completely tied. And so the mental health piece is not divorced from the health piece. Obesity in the US. I think the average person gained like 30 or 40 lbs during the epidemic. That is a lot of weight. And on top of it, we already had, as a society that was considered obese, generally speaking. 

00:30:15 Dr Sara Spowart 

It was already a problem. So when you have these endemic issues, you know they're racism issue. If we only look at the black and white numbers of, you know, life versus death, sick versus not sick, we're not looking at the whole piece. 

00:30:30 Dr Sara Spowart 

Of it. So in terms of crisis response, I think it needs. 

00:30:34 Dr Sara Spowart 

To be more. 

00:30:35 Dr Sara Spowart 

Intricate, it needs to be more holistic and it needs to be bigger and maybe we don't have the system set up yet for that. But looking at the actual data of what's going on, not just the data, what's highlighted. 

00:30:50 Dr Sara Spowart 

Is essential for coming up with solutions that are going to have a positive impact. 

00:30:56 Dr Sara Spowart 

The US is still reeling and I hope, recovering, although maybe not, maybe just getting worse from the mental health impacts of COVID. And I think that's true for a lot of the world. I know that the rates of mental health or mental illness with children are much higher now than they were before COVID. And what's being done about that. 

00:31:16 Dr Sara Spowart 

And how are these children going to inform our future? And this is not just us, this is in general, I'm sure in Europe as well because you have these children, children that were isolated, they had to be at home, they were hearing all these terrible things all the time. 

00:31:32 Dr Sara Spowart 

And it affected their development in important years. 

00:31:36 Will Mountford 

That you mentioned it earlier, with the education initiatives and awareness, but that overall prevention is better than cure. This is something that you probably will see around that probably is happening maybe a few doors away from you that this is here now and to recognize it is hard to take. 

00:31:56 Will Mountford 

Action is hard, but it is on all of us to stop that friend who is misbehaving in the pub to call out Cat calling when we see it. 

00:32:05 Will Mountford 

Do you see that there is a place for mass media for a public health initiative to break the cycle of permissive aggression and dehumanization, and that that can hopefully have maybe long term lasting effects for the well-being of everyone in the society? 

00:32:23 Dr Sara Spowart 

Absolutely awareness education is huge, sort of an unfortunate thing people might think. Ohh, people will naturally do the right thing. Only certain outliers are doing problematic things, but a lot of people need education and I don't mean the reading and writing kind. I mean education. 

00:32:43 Dr Sara Spowart 

Going on, things like don't stop someone. This is what stalking is. If you've done these behaviors, this is stalking, helping people to understand. 

00:32:54 Dr Sara Spowart 

They need to be educated on. 

00:32:56 Dr Sara Spowart 

OK, when you do. 

00:32:57 Dr Sara Spowart 

This it hurts someone else and that might be kind of tragic, but. 

00:33:00 Dr Sara Spowart 

One of the. 

00:33:01 Dr Sara Spowart 

First things I usually do with a lot of my clients in my private therapy practice. 

00:33:06 Dr Sara Spowart 

I have them take an empathy test, usually after their first session, there's an empathy test that I like. It's just sort of a good baseline. 

00:33:13 Dr Sara Spowart 

Most people have quite low levels of empathy, actually least with the clients have had and mostly in the US but. 

00:33:21 Dr Sara Spowart 

I don't know. 

00:33:21 Dr Sara Spowart 

Might. 

00:33:22 Dr Sara Spowart 

Similar in Europe, maybe it's better, I don't know, but I'm with these very tied to violence because when you have low levels of empathy, you don't really think about. 

00:33:34 Dr Sara Spowart 

Your impacts on others you're thinking about yourself. You don't understand. You're hurting someone else when you have higher empathy, you don't wanna hurt someone because you're hurting yourself when you. 

00:33:44 Dr Sara Spowart 

But I know there's been more research done at UC San Diego and I think they got a big grant recently regarding empathy training and it used to be thought, well, you can't teach that. But I think it is teachable. And the first step is people understanding. 

00:34:00 Dr Sara Spowart 

Where they're at and how low their empathy actually is. So yes, absolutely. I think there is a space here for education with mass media and there are people that I think they truly don't think there's anything wrong with what they're doing and they need to be taught. 

00:34:19 Dr Sara Spowart 

This is not. 

00:34:20 Dr Sara Spowart 

OK. 

00:34:21 Will Mountford 

And this all leads to your work on a happiness framework. A happiness index. Could you tell me? 

00:34:26 Will Mountford 

More about that. 

00:34:27 Dr Sara Spowart 

It was last year I was reflecting on all this a lot. Am I thinking? Well, how does this all tie into happiness? 

00:34:33 Dr Sara Spowart 

It may be happiness seems like too. 

00:34:34 Dr Sara Spowart 

Cheerful a word. 

00:34:35 Dr Sara Spowart 

But what's the opposite of depression? You could say it's happiness. Not getting to neutrality. What I identified was I looked at different happiness frameworks, different theories, basically on well-being. 

00:34:50 Dr Sara Spowart 

And I didn't see anything that looked at all the complexities and intricacies as much as it could. And maybe there's something out there. 

00:34:58 Dr Sara Spowart 

I'm not aware of. 

00:35:00 Dr Sara Spowart 

But it's not highlighted and no one's told me about it yet, so it shouldn't be so hard to find a lot of the research and even with the major institutions that study this stuff, it's things like the hedonistic treadmill which is about pleasure versus pain. 

00:35:16 Dr Sara Spowart 

And it's about do you get what you want versus not what you want? It's not exactly taking into account all the factors. You know we have or that just focuses on biology. 

00:35:26 Dr Sara Spowart 

Unfortunately, happiness and well-being is more. 

00:35:29 Dr Sara Spowart 

Complex. 

00:35:30 Dr Sara Spowart 

It's not as simple as I have what I want, therefore I'm happy it's not as simple as my physical health is good. Therefore I'm happy there's many components to it and there's a fantastic study through Harvard University. I think it's the longest running. 

00:35:46 Dr Sara Spowart 

Study on human well-being and development. 

00:35:49 Dr Sara Spowart 

And it looked at well-being from Harvard students over a lifespan and then now it's looking at their children. So the next generation. 

00:35:59 Dr Sara Spowart 

And across the board, what they found, regardless of economic status, regardless of education, your ability to have authentic connection. 

00:36:09 Dr Sara Spowart 

Good close relationships, not number of relationships that. 

00:36:12 Dr Sara Spowart 

Could be of one or two. 

00:36:13 Dr Sara Spowart 

You but close relationships and connection is one of the most important components for health and happiness, but it's not the only one, but it it's probably one of the most important. So what I did with the framework is I looked at different variables that have been identified as significant. So our biology, you know that we have our basic needs. 

00:36:35 Dr Sara Spowart 

That and that we feel safe. Safety is huge. 

00:36:39 Dr Sara Spowart 

And feeling safe when someone had trauma they don't feel safe, so addressing. 

00:36:44 Dr Sara Spowart 

Looking at the connection piece, how is their relationships or authentic connection and so looking at the different elements as a whole is important instead of just thinking it's one or the other. Don't know if it's sort of a poverty mindset. If we think well. 

00:37:03 Dr Sara Spowart 

We're lucky if we could just get the basic needs, but that's all we can do. 

00:37:07 Dr Sara Spowart 

I think that what if we expand our awareness and our consciousness to think, what if we could get multiple things meant at once? What if we can integrate it all together instead of just thinking? Well, we can only do this. We can only provide food and water and or we can only provide shelter. So those things like. 

00:37:27 Dr Sara Spowart 

For initiatives, it is a poverty mindset. Why can't we think a little more holistically? 

00:37:32 Dr Sara Spowart 

And have it actually be more impactful. 

00:37:39 Dr Sara Spowart 

Part of the reason why I got into the interest of happiness and also mindfulness was because I actually originally was looking at malnutrition, severe poverty when I did my first PhD, and then I was like, this is depressing. I started looking at depression and I'm like, OK, what are the solutions for depression? I'm like, this is depressing. You know, if I read. 

00:37:59 Dr Sara Spowart 

Hundred articles on depression. I'm gonna feel worse and there has to be something more. What are we trying to start from? Happiness. Start from mindfulness. Start from a different framework and build from there. And I find sometimes. And I I think Albert Einstein said. 

00:38:15 Dr Sara Spowart 

You can't come up with a solution from the same place as the problem. Sometimes you have to, oddly enough, start where you want to be, in the sense that, OK, we wanna build more happiness. We wanna build more mindfulness. We want have more health. What are the components of health? How can we build from that framework of health and happiness and well-being? 

00:38:37 Dr Sara Spowart 

Instead of building. 

00:38:38 Dr Sara Spowart 

From the framework of depression and poverty and scarcity. 

00:38:43 Dr Sara Spowart 

All the problems that are happening, it can be overwhelming and disheartening and people can feel like it's hopeless. 

00:38:50 Dr Sara Spowart 

But another way of looking at this could be these problems have been around for a long time. Maybe they're exasperated now, but I think they're coming to surface so we can see them more clearly. 

00:39:03 Dr Sara Spowart 

And see how things are more complex. 

00:39:06 Dr Sara Spowart 

Than we thought before. So I think this is an opportunity to be like, OK, how can we create a collaborative integrated holistic solution or approach instead of being so segmented with certain? 

00:39:21 Dr Sara Spowart 

Variables. Instead of seeing that maybe there is a lot of interconnection. 

00:39:26 Will Mountford 

If people need further information or support about any of the topics that we've covered, is there anywhere that they could? 

00:39:31 Will Mountford 

Head. 

00:39:31 Will Mountford 

To following this episode. 

00:39:34 Dr Sara Spowart 

Yeah. Well, in Florida, you can call the number 211 and it will route you to crisis services. 

00:39:43 Dr Sara Spowart 

If you are suffering from abuse or different traumas, I encourage you to look up online. Local domestic violence shelters or there's community mental health centers, Rape Crisis centers. 

00:39:58 Dr Sara Spowart 

But also NAMI is a great resource and AM if you look up NAMI online they can point you to a lot of great resources and they are national network for rental. 

00:40:09 Dr Sara Spowart 

Health. 

00:40:10 Dr Sara Spowart 

And from there I'm sure that someone could be supported no matter where they are in the country. I have a Instagram called happiness learned. I have my website which is Doctor Sarah spowers.com and I'm starting a new website thatishappinesslearned.com. If you check out happiness. 

00:40:30 Dr Sara Spowart 

Learned it has to do with all of these things and how we can kind of get ourselves from a low point to a better point. 

00:40:39 Will Mountford 

Doctor Spark, thank you so much for your time today and I look forward to speaking with you again sometime soon. 

00:40:43 Dr Sara Spowart 

Thank you so much. It was a pleasure.