Unpacking Women’s Mental Health Care and Trauma-Informed Psychotherapy

In Part 1 of this video Psych Congress Steering Committee Member, Samantha Lau, MSN, FNP-BC, PMHNP-BC, CEO of ELEVATEHER LLC, Santa Barbara, California, sits down with Heather Flint, senior digital managing editor, Psych Congress Network, to discuss her private practice, ELEVATEHER LLC, and her commitment to women’s mental health. Lau also discusses trauma-informed psychotherapy and how it “impacts someone's mental health, physical health, and relationships.”

In Part 2, Lau will discuss the role of collaborative care in mental health as well as the future of mental health, especially relating to empowering patients to “know that their voices are supported.”

Read the transcript:

Heather Flint:  Hello, Psych Congress Network. We're here today with Samantha Lau. We're going to talk about women, wellness, and psychiatric care. Sam, would you please introduce yourself?

Samantha Lau:  I'm a psychiatric nurse practitioner and a steering committee member at Psych Congress. I'm also a founder of a private practice called ELEVATEHER.

Heather:  That is very interesting to me, that you started with ELEVATEHER. I want to know about your practice and your mission. Your mission is amazing.

Samantha:  I've always been a champion for women's mental health. It's time for someone to do something about how mental health care is being perceived. I'm focusing on giving mental health care a little facelift. Making it even more appealing for a woman to seek help.

That's very important to me, to help them feel better, work better, love better. I always tell them that, "Be your vulnerable, badass self. That's where power is from."

Heather:  That's amazing. That's an amazing message, especially to young women. Do you find that there are more barriers for younger women to seek mental health care? They're too busy, they have too much going on, or they're afraid. There's a stigma that they might be pushed to the side, or they might not go as far in their career if they're trying to seek therapy and seek help?

Samantha:  The younger generation now, they have less of a stigma. It's still there. It's still difficult for people to disclose, especially when they have experienced some child abuse and trauma in the past. We know that those folks carry a lot of shame and self-blame.

It takes a while for them to come out and find someone that they can trust to go on their healing journey.

Heather:  You bring up trauma. I know one of your big focuses is trauma-informed psychotherapy. Can you tell us a little bit about what that actually entails, and what trauma-informed means?

Samantha:  Trauma-informed psychotherapy is a specific approach that is worth an understanding that traumatic experience, how that impacts someone's mental health, physical health, and relationships. We would assess, plan, and intervene according to that framework.

When we're sitting down one on one with them, we have that sensitivity, knowing that they might be carrying that shame and self-blame. How to create a safe space for them. Also, a balance in when we're getting information. Sometimes we traumatize them by making them feel too exposed or too deconstructed.

We have to be careful with the assessment. See the assessment as a process and not a one-time thing. There's this tendency for a clinician to want to know everything. Also, the client, who might have been on a waitlist for five years, a year to get in to therapy, and to tell the clinician everything. That cannot be a good thing.

Having that awareness that this is how we empower you and respect your voice, is that way, in a safe and gradual way.

Heather:  When we talk about trauma and trauma-informed psychotherapy, unpacking is making sure that you take it slow. Don't put them back in that situation where they're too vulnerable. Is there is there a point where it's too vulnerable? You talked about being vulnerable. How do you differentiate between pushing too hard?

Samantha:  We want to understand how trauma impacts our body. It can overwhelm our systems so much that you re-experience that trauma again. We want to avoid that. There is something being too vulnerable. That's why we have to titrate that. Do it in a way with a lot of compassion.

You have to invite them to have self-compassion, too. That's also a process. That's where success happen.

Heather:  That's excellent. You're talking about their body. I know that you like to do more of a physical and behavioral health care approach. Can you talk a little bit about the integration of a physical health care and behavioral health care approach to these patients?

Samantha:  For my first 9 years of career, I have championed for integrated care in a system. Advocating for people to have easier access to mental health services, eliminating copays, and designing a better workflow for primary care providers to maybe assess and screen mental illnesses, and collaborate earlier with psychiatric providers.

I've went up to executive leaders to put both mental health and physical health care on one site so people can have a wrapped around approach of care, so we have better clinical outcomes.

Heather:  It seems to be a lot of all about collaborative patient care.

Samantha:  Yes.

Samantha Lau, PMHNP-BC, FNP-BC & a ketamine psychedelic therapist, is the CEO of ELEVATEHER, LLC, a personalized mental health care company that provides result-driven psychiatric care and transformational inner makeover for busy young women who are ready to unveil their vulnerable-badass selves to feel better, work better and love better.

She has more than 12 years of experience in psychiatry. She has served as a planning committee member at Psych Congress since 2017, a national medical conference that provides cutting-edge research translated into clinical application by the leading minds in psychiatry and a co-chair at Elevate by Psych Congress, another national medical conference for practical psychopharmacology and future- focused education tailor-made for early career and forward-thinking mental health clinicians, ready to make waves in the field. Samantha is proud to be part these important conferences in their goal of building a better world-class mental health care system in the United States.

She worked as a West Coast manager and a psychiatric nurse practitioner in behavioral health at Landmark Health, enhancing the collaboration between physical and behavioral healthcare. She received both undergraduate and graduate degrees in nursing at the University of California, Los Angeles and completed her post-graduate psychiatric nurse practitioner program from Johns Hopkins University. She is double-board-certified in family medicine and psychiatry.

Her earlier career focused on becoming a more effective leader in the effort to influence health policy, with the goal of having the psychiatric field a more fluid partner in an integrated healthcare system for the betterment of both fields. Prior to Landmark Health, Samantha was an accomplished mental health care specialist, a manager of nurse practitioners and a mentor in the field at CareMore Health, Anthem Inc. She developed a quick guide for psychopharmacology and disease management and a tool for primary care practitioners to facilitate patients with mental health needs. It gives her great satisfaction to educate the public and help train the future workforce in psychiatry. She spoke to senior citizens in the community about mental illness and undergraduate students in healthcare policy at local universities.