Episode 33

The Quiet Side of Crisis – Inside the Red Cross’s Disaster Mental Health Response with Dr. Tom Hlenski

Joining us today is Dr. Tom Hlenski, a dedicated leader in the American Red Cross Disaster Mental Health program, based in Long Island, New York. With years of experience supporting individuals and communities through unimaginable moments, Dr. Hlenski offers a deep look into how disaster affects mental health—and how trained Red Cross volunteers step in to provide comfort, guidance, and a path toward healing.

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Episode Transcript

Transcript

Rob

We’d like to start today’s podcast with a brief announcement. We are delighted to share with you that the Mental Wealth Podcast has partnered with the American Red Cross as part of our partnership. 50% of all proceeds from products purchased through our online store will now go to support the urgent needs of the American Red Cross. We want to thank everyone at the American Red Cross for their instrumental work. Please visit support.mentalwealthpod.com to learn more about our partnership and thank you everybody for your support. They are the organization known the world over for responding to disaster hit communities in their hour of need beyond their vital work collecting blood donations, providing food aid, shelter and medical supplies. The Red Cross is lifesaving emergency response work. Extends to mental health. In this episode, we’re joined by Doctor Tom Hlenski, Long Island regional program lead for disaster mental health at the American Red Cross. He guides us on the vital work of Red Cross disaster, mental health volunteers and the steps they take to provide support to when crisis strikes. You’ll hear powerful stories, expert insights and learn more about life on the ground for the Red Cross team. Dostoevsky how are you?

Dr. Tom Hlenski

I am fine. Thank you.

Rob

Thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate you being here on a Saturday giving up your weekend time to be with us and we really appreciate it if you could please give us an introduction to your role, the Red Cross and talk to us a little bit about disaster, mental health and what that means in terms of the Red Cross organization.

Dr. Tom Hlenski

Sure. I’m the coordinator for disaster mental health here on Long Island. I’m also the volunteer partner for the Long Island County Executive director for the American Red Cross. And I’m the volunteer partner for national program people matters. And so three different hats in the Red Cross. To the to the issue of disaster mental health, a quick background disaster, mental health and the American Red Cross started 1992. That was following a rather catastrophic. Kaine and a recognition that that our clients and our workforce. There’s two, it’s. A dual mandate clients and our workforce would benefit from disaster, mental health interventions and that’s really basically generally speaking to provide for the emotional and psychological well-being. Of those two groups. I had my first experience with the American Red Cross disaster mental health in 1996. TWA Flight 800 had gone down off. The coast of. Long Island and I was at that time considered what we called then. A spontaneous volunteer. Today we we refer to that as event based volunteer and both my wife and I my wife worked at Stony Brook. She’s also a disaster mental health volunteer as is my daughter. My wife was asked to go out. She worked for Stony Brook at that time. If she would support the Red Cross, she asked me if I would join. I did. And we provided services, we actually worked the respite tent for the divers and the Navy divers on that operation. So our job was to meet with them and to just be there and provide what we call a compassionate presence for people that were doing a very difficult job. So that was my first experience with the Red Cross and I was very taken by that. My wife was always involved in volunteer work. She was involved with make a wish, foundation, etcetera and she would encourage me to get involved. And I said when I’m ready, when I finish what I need to do with my. Dissertation my practice and everything I’m going to join the Red Cross when the Big Hurricane Katrina hit. That’s when I officially joined, took the classes and was my first deployment during Hurricane Katrina.

Rob

Ohh, I didn’t realize that Katrina was the part of that process for you. That was when you officially became part of the organization.

Dr. Tom Hlenski

That’s when I said I’m ready to serve. I have the time. I can do this and after two days training I was deployed down to actually Florida for Hurricane Wilma had come across at the same time. Time and I was assigned to a a shelter that housed 500 people in the Fort Lauderdale area of Florida and and it was a two week experience and that was my first my first official national deployment with the American Red Cross.

Rob

In terms of disaster, mental health in general, is there a typical deployment for experts such as yourself, or is it sort of ad hoc tailored to the event itself?

Dr. Tom Hlenski

No disaster is the same. There’s always some variation. But there are common threads that one can expect, especially when there’s loss of life and destruction, which we often see. But I I want to be clear, there’s two domains that we operate in and I’m speaking now generally not just disaster, mental health, but Red Cross. There’s the domain of our chapter, our region, and there’s the domain of national deployment. So I’m busy as the coordinator here on Long Island, busy building the team, the disaster mental health team in preparation for something that might happen locally. So we have fires that happen every three or four days, we’ll respond. Leading to a home fire, some of them are fatal fires or various circumstances that we may deploy for here in our region or in our chapter area, Long Island. And then there’s national. So then national, something happens on a national level. So when we had the pulse shooting a number of years ago. And I was asked to deploy for that. So that’s my putting on the national hat and going out and supporting the response for that.

Rob

Yeah, I suppose the Pulse nightclub, for example, is one of those headline grabbing events where everyone sort of knows what it is. And I think a lot of people perhaps don’t realize the extent to which the Red Cross deals with those smaller events. Those like you said, those house fire events. Could you speak to some of the differences involved in the scale of those events and speak to? Your individual role in in some of the smaller events like a house fire. What does that look like from the first time you arrive on the scene for that kind of event?

Dr. Tom Hlenski

I can give you what I would call what I’m going to frame as a Margaret moment. So Margaret is a name I make up. It’s totally confidential. If you allow me, I’ll speak to that. So Margaret Moment was a case that happened in February and this is a typical of what we do here on the chapter level. But you can scale that up to some extent on a national response. We’ll talk now on the, on the local level, on the regional level. So this woman was in February, there was a house fire. And the house was destroyed, so she had nothing. Not only that, she was injured and she required going to the hospital to be put on a vent because she had smoke inhalation. Want to be very clear? Disaster mental health is one part of a collaborative response for a client or for our workforce. They all work together. It’s it’s like a very good recipe. They all. Have a piece in this and they have a certain order. If you go out of order with a good recipe, it doesn’t work right. There’s a cadence. There’s an order that we have. So our disaster action team. Goes to the fire scene first here. In Long Island. And they will give out immediate assistance. We call it. Well, she was in the hospital, so she didn’t get immediate assistance. Two of our team members went up to the hospital, visited with her and did an assessment and then sent an e-mail to me indicating that she requested and needed disaster mental health. When I saw that case. I noticed that she qualified for us to activate what we call the integrated care condolence. Team typically activated not by me, but but by the person right above me. So I got the green light for that. And what that does is provide its fatality assistance typically, but it also supports people that have been injured and Margaret was injured. So the team gets activated in what I call a wrap around service. Casework gets involved, so we have casework which goes through all the possibilities that she was going to a shelter. There was no way. But we were doing everything we could to support her in that process, that transition and also to get her out of that shelter as soon as possible. So casework worked with her disaster health service, work with her around needs that she had around medication, medication or walking support. And of course, disaster mental health was me. I worked with her just on what she experienced and where she was going. Her big issue, quite frankly, was that, and understandably in the. Hospital she felt like she was alone and she didn’t matter, and no slight of the staff because, you know, people are busy in hospitals and if she wasn’t the squeaky wheel, she wasn’t gonna get the attention. But she she noted that what the Red Cross did for her besides supporting her on her way out of the hospital. And discharge was that she didn’t feel alone, and she felt like she. Better. So that was key and that’s a great example. That case got spotlighted by national a couple of weeks ago because it really showed how we worked together in tandem. All these different activities come together and support that client.

Rob

I love that you just mentioned the isolation element of that topic. How do you handle those emotions when you people are probably confused? They’re angry. They’re a little frustrated. They don’t have the resources they need in that moment. What tools do you use when you get on the ground during a disaster?

Dr. Tom Hlenski

It’s a great question and what I will say first is it depends on the context. So when I deployed to Vegas for the shooting at the casino, I had to do some television, some work with the television crews. I talked about moving from from fear to hope because the Community was struck just like in Orlando, FL, the community was. Absolutely devastated. People were frightened. The Muslim population needed the support of the American Red Cross. We went out. I was considered an ambassador at. That time, because I went to one of the mosques for breakfast, four of us went as as ambassadors for the American Red Cross to support the Muslim population that was frightened about any retaliation. Post the shooting at the pulse. You think of these various contexts that we work. So yes, sometimes in my first deployment in that shelter in that vital shelter that for some people it was, it was all they had. So people would come up to me and some had a home that they were eventually going to return to. So it was about the transition and being in a shelter and some of the hectic, you know, the the difficulties that can happen inside a shelter, the stressors that are there for some, they knew they had no home to go to. So that’s a different conversation. For some, they had left Katrina. They were, they were transported to Florida and got away from Katrina, only to have Wilma hit them for for those the depression was was just drip. Thing from them, the sadness and almost like is there something following me? Different conversation, different listening tools. When I deployed for the call in airline crash in Buffalo the fatalities were high. They had lost people, they didn’t want to talk, they just knew. I was there. They knew it was. It was all disaster mental. Well, and some did, but a lot of just knew that we were there and we call that that compassionate presence, you know, so that changed after a few days and we got more involved with people. In fact, I was involved with supporting the dog teams up in Buffalo. So when you bring the dogs into an operation, people open their doors. And all of a sudden, you’re engaged in a different way. It’s amazing what these therapy dogs can do. I also work with the therapy dog team down in in Orlando. Again, it’s amazing what can happen, you know. So so again the. Context is so critical and when when when I visited with the 9/11 callers in Orlando.

Rob

Cool.

Dr. Tom Hlenski

That group of people that took those calls on that frantic night of the shooting when they saw us come in, they saw the Red Cross come in and the dogs come in. Some of them just started crying. They just needed to cry.

Rob

Right. That’s sort of a vulnerability, that acceptance of there is help available. I am vulnerable. I need this help. And I guess the sort of realization that that help exists and it’s a tangible help that is available right now, it must be such a a transformative impact for people that are going through these horrible events.

Dr. Tom Hlenski

It is and the important thing about that transformation is that we come in, we’re in and we’re out. It’s that’s the way that’s part of the design. The importance of our connection with the Community and the Community resources so we can connect people and going back to the Margaret moment, the the key aspect of our work with Margaret. Was connecting her with all those community resources that can lift her up. That I can bring her to the next step in her life, in her, in her journey. And that’s what we do. We don’t take over. We we try to work with and side by side with Community resources.

Rob

You facilitate the next step in that recovery process.

Dr. Tom Hlenski

Terrific work. We do facilitate that, absolutely.

Rob

You yourself must be going through a lot emotionally when you’re dealing with people that are. Have had a tragic event happen to them suddenly. Is there steps that you take personally to to help your own mental health going through these processes?

Dr. Tom Hlenski

Yes. Well, the one thing we do in the Red Cross is we don’t try to take care of each other. We have a disaster mental health call team. So what that means is when I go out on a deployment, I have available to me on that deployment on that, on that DRO disaster relief operation. I can go to mental health if I feel I need something. I need to talk about something that was very difficult. Typically when I get home though, I’m going to get a call from my. Team we call. Everybody that goes out, regardless of what the operation was, they get a phone call from disaster mental health, a check in call. Keep in mind now. There’s probably about. 1800 volunteers across the nation in disaster.

Dr. Tom Hlenski

And these are all volunteer. So what I’m talking about here on Long Island is all volunteer. We go out in that field whether it’s local or whether it’s national. We are a volunteer organization for the most. To get to be disaster mental health, you have to have professional training. You have to have degrees, you know, in my in my other life, I’ve been a psychotherapist since 1975. What I see on deployments is often very similar to what you have in your practice. You know, people have disasters, there’s loss, there’s there’s illness, there’s all kinds of things that happen. So you learn to find ways yourself. In addition to the support I get from Red Cross. In addition, my wife and I are both therapists, so we can support each other. A lot of these apps that I recommend for my patients. The. To breathing apps, the headspace for meditation. I love to cook and I love to garden. I’m very fortunate, so those are very calming for me, very relaxing. I love to exercise, which is also a release. So if I go out on an operation and I’m doing what we call Psych first aid or Psycho educational stuff. I’ll I’ll look to see what their strengths are. Do you like to cook? Do you take cooking classes? Do you do this? Have you thought about yoga? Have you thought about walking or running? Have you thought about this or that? Or what kind of hobby do you have to help people connect as quickly as possible to their routine? Because that’s a good predictor for a positive outcome post disaster. Going back to your routine and getting connected to the people that love you family. It’s typically your family.

Mukund

I know it’s it’s easier said than done for people who have lost loved ones. There’s no consolation that can replace them. So doctor, my question is, how do you start helping them in the situation.

Dr. Tom Hlenski

Yeah, that’s a great question because you know as you both know anybody that’s alive knows that you’re we’ve all had experience with losses personal or with friends. And you know when those first those first week, the first week and a half, two weeks, people are basically very numb and they’re they’re just in a cloud. Code and so people have very little memory of conversations they’ve had with you in those first couple days. That said, in the most horrific of times, it’s important. It’s it’s important to listen. It’s also very important what not to say is probably more important than anything else because it when you’re around somebody that’s been devastated by loss, the impulse to want to do something or say something, give them some. Is very powerful, but a lot of times people will say things. And that just just because they feel they have to. So the importance of of listening carefully and making that eye to eye contact and that presence and is is critical in those early stages very critical. Let me give a let me give a great example is very powerful. Moment I want to share this in terms of what people needed in the most difficult time in Buffalo four or five days after the crash. Maybe it was a few days longer. We had a site. Visit I had been to the site earlier where the crash was, so there was still part of the plane that was in the ground. The site had been cleared but we could have a site visit and the bus ride to the site visit. There were maybe about 8:00 or 10:00 buses. I was on one of the buses and you could hear a pin drop. You could hear a pin drop on that bus even with the motor running of the. That’s the only thing you heard. And as we got closer and closer to the crash site. The intensity that I was beginning to feel, you know, I was beginning to practice breathing because I felt the intensity when those buses parked and people started to get off, I was in the front of the bus. I got off. There was a number of it was mostly DMH, but there were a number of other activities. In the Red Cross and Bob. People got off the bus. Some people were vomiting immediately from the tension. From the anticipation. This is the most powerful they were going to see the site where their loved ones were when they got to the site. When I walked to the site, when all the people were down there, what I saw was groups of people centered around spiritual care around priests, rabbis, you name what the groups were. They were centered around those. Groups. Praying together, they didn’t. Need mental health per se. They need. We got that we were there for them, they knew it, but they needed that. That faith-based support at that moment of the most critical crisis, very powerful experience. Never forgot it. It was something to see.

Mukund

The spiritual thing is more people trying to find meaning of what happened. Is it correct, doctor, in terms of finding closure? Is that the reason you think people congregate around spiritual leaders spirituality?

Dr. Tom Hlenski

I think that’s absolutely correct. I think it’s also when all else has fail. Well, it’s the hope that some higher power that there’ll be some meaning, some understanding something, some comfort, some connection. Yes. Yeah, it’s it’s it’s very powerful. Very power.

Mukund

And for situations where somebody has lost a loved one, is there a checklist? Do you follow or the organization follows the right approach? Is there a right approach?

Dr. Tom Hlenski

Well, the right approach is to be careful about what not to say and that takes some, you know, learning some practice. If I spoke to the two of you in that shelter, if you were in that shelter in Florida when I first deployed, I would be listening for. Your strengths I would be listening to see if the what we call the pre morbid personality if prior to the disaster you were compromised if prior to the disaster you were compromised then I have to listen even more carefully to see if you might require. More observation or an evaluation possibly at the hospital. So in my role during Sandy, at times I’ve had to go to a. Shelter because there was a a shelter resident that was erratic and so you have to make an assessment and based on what’s happening in that moment and what what, you know, the history to be as best as you can and then make a recommendation is like they’re OK, they’re fine to stay or that they may need. To go to the hospital. For evaluation. So again it depends. There was a title of a book written by psychiatrist listening with the third year, and I like that title. Because there’s a certain level of listening that occurs. Actually, when I was in Florida, there was a man who was moved from Texas and brought over to Florida, and Wilma followed him. I just remember after I spoke with him, something flashed inside me that said I need to go back to him. Because I suspect his depression is deeper than I originally thought, there’s something just triggered that I had to reconnect with him and make. Sure that he wasn’t at risk. So there is that level of listening that has to occur when we’re on an operation.

Rob

And do you have any sense of what that that thing that triggered that emotion or that feeling was or is it just an innate understanding after years of practice?

Dr. Tom Hlenski

Yeah, we call that practice wisdom, you know. So, yes. Yeah, it was something intuitive that you say. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. You know, things just collided, and you just you just go with it.

Rob

You mentioned that there are communication mistakes that people make in those kind of events. Could you speak to the tangible words, the mistakes people make when they’re trying to comfort people they’re trying to give advice, for example, after a a tragic event, is there a sort of a a number of catch all phrases people use that are not helpful that you know, you know might actually benefit? People listening. Yeah.

Dr. Tom Hlenski

There are. So again, that’s a great question and there’s probably a a long list of them. But when I think about some of the, you know, things happen for reasons he or she’s in a better place. They’re they’re at peace now, things like that. The person still processing the loss, they still haven’t really accepted it. The denial is still at play and I think the intent is clearly to help somebody. The idea to make them feel a little better in a horrible moment. But it’s best to listen and to to be very, very careful and deliberate about what to say. You know, sometimes the best thing to say is I don’t know what to say.

Rob

That’s a great point. I love that point.

Mukund

Do you watch for those stages? Doctor, the different stages like denial, anger, acceptance. Somebody going through a traumatic place.

Dr. Tom Hlenski

There have been a lot of things positive about the stages of of grief and bereavement, and there’s some challenges to that. I will say that what what I have found over the years is that everybody grieves differently. Everybody grieves differently, but you can see certain things. You can see the.

Speaker

Right. Right.

Dr. Tom Hlenski

You know, initially the person’s like, wait a minute. I’m not there yet. I’m not ready to. After this and then it moves to another stage and eventually more often than not people get to the acceptance level. Many people I talk to, you know, who have gone to groups and stuff. Feel like, Oh my God, I wasn’t ready to hear what they were telling me in that group. I just I I wasn’t there yet. Which, you know, sometimes they’re not. And sometimes those groups are phenomenal for people. So the bereavement groups I’m talking about. So it is, it is complicated work. And one of the reasons I was so happy to be at this podcast was that. Anything that I can do? To push out the message of the American Red Cross and also the American Red Cross disaster mental health. Because when we respond, typically even here on Long Island, a lot of people, when we support schools that may have had a loss or a bus crash or whatever it is, they’ll say. I didn’t know that the American Red Cross. Did that, you know, I didn’t know that they would support, you know, this bus crash that happened and there were fatalities that we were there with 16 disaster mental health workers in person to support that school over a three-week period. They said I I didn’t know you had that capability. Yes, we do. Yes, we do. I’m not just here on Long Island. We have that. Capability around around the.

Mukund

Had there been situations where your help has not been welcomed, they might be going through something very traumatic that they don’t realize. The help is of value.

Dr. Tom Hlenski

Yes. Oh, yes, yes. What what will happen we make? We do as best we can. So we’ll go back to Margaret, right. Margaret is asked one if not 2 if not three times. Do you want to speak with a disaster? Mental health worker so that when she gets the call from me or whomever it is on my team, she’s not like, why is mental health calling me? Who told you that? Because that does happen sometimes. I remember when I was in Florida, there was a line of people out the door that wanted to talk about some of them thought that I had financial resources for them. Somebody told them that’s the line for the financial resources and when they got to the front of the line and they spoke to me, they were not happy about what what I was peddling. Which was awareness, psychological first aid and support.

Speaker

Right.

Dr. Tom Hlenski

Yes, it does happen, which we we’re very careful to not impose ourselves on people by the way, what we don’t do in the American Red Cross disaster mental health, we don’t do psychotherapy, we don’t grab a person and start doing psychotherapy. So when a new volunteer joins the Red Cross and wants to be a disaster mental health worker. They are required to take 17 hours of training, but more importantly, they gotta work in the field with me. They gotta have a mentor. They gotta have somebody that says, look, this is what we do and this is what we don’t do. And this this is, you know, this is how it works. So it’s very important, the training, the mentoring that happens within that’s going on 24/7. Seven days a week behind the scenes.

Rob

In terms of responding to tragedies, you said you’ve. Doing this with the Red Cross since Katrina 20 years ago now, how has your understanding of the human nature or resilience changed over that time in those 20 years?

Dr. Tom Hlenski

That’s another great question I when I first came out of school, I worked, I went right to the Veterans hospital here on Long Island. That was my first job. And I worked what we call a therapeutic community for returning Vietnam vets. So so I’m prefacing that because what I saw was I saw combat veterans. I saw veterans that were not necessarily combat, but were in Vietnam and experienced a lot of different things. And what I saw was certainly a challenge to the human condition, the taboo of war. And what happens to people. And I saw how resilient some people were. And I also saw a subset of the population that was not resilient and succumbed to that kind of. Pressure and required a lot more inputs and maybe for a very long time. So I learned that early working with a very challenged population and it’s similar to what you see in disaster response. There’s a most people have the resources, they have the resources. And the connections of family or church or friends. That they can move forward, that they’re resilient. Most people are resilient, even in the worst of times, even with the losses, most people are resilient. And then there’s a subset of that population that pre-existing will compromise where we might call an at risk population and that population. That subset will obviously have had difficulty prior and will have more difficulty, certainly after a disaster, certainly you. Know what? Whatever it. Could be and there’s so many different disasters that could happen out there, they can’t even name all.

Rob

I’m assuming now that the the Red Cross is looking for disaster mental health volunteers on a constant basis. They’re always looking for additional specialized help in the disaster mental health units.

Dr. Tom Hlenski

Correct. Because we age out, there’s turnover and quite frankly, disaster work is very stressful. People and sometimes people go out and and they realize it’s just it’s too much for them. And look, I can tell you personally as much as it has been one of the most rewarding experiences to go out and deploy, whether it be locally or nationally and some of my best friends that I have today are people that I’ve met through the Red Cross. It’s it’s just, it’s that kind of that kind of culture that comes together. But there’s no question that people go out. And they realize this is just not for me. I can’t. It’s too much. When I get the call to go out, say, to my wife, I’m ready. Are we good? And then I’m OK. I’m going, or she’s gonna go. It depends. She went to Parkland. Then she went to Connecticut for Sandy Hook. So these were two very powerful deployments for her. But when we go out, we’ll talk to each other. But I can feel in my stomach all of a sudden. I’ve got to cancel all my patients in my private practice. This, I realized. Wait a minute. I’m not doing this. I’m not going to do that. And I’m and then you know that your days are going to be very long days. So all of a sudden it hits you and then you go and then you get into it and then you return.

Rob

Is there a website phone number people could use or e-mail address people used to to contact if they were interested in applying for a role in disaster mental health?

Dr. Tom Hlenski

Yes, if they go to the American redcross.org. And they can follow that there’ll be links for joining the American Red Cross. And when they hit that, it’ll begin to sort out what activity. So mental health will be right there or disaster health with the nursing or spiritual care, for that matter. But yes. And we do always, we always. I am always looking for new recruits. You just don’t know when the next lead for for the region is is coming and working there. Way up and absolutely again, I don’t think people know what we do, even the mental health workers in the community don’t know what the American Red Cross is doing. So getting the word out, getting the message out. Hopefully this podcast out that go back to that American redcross.org you’ll see that they have disaster preparedness that they speak to. Flood safety Tips House home fire safety tips the American Red Cross is very, very big. They have been for years on installation of smoke detectors. In terms of prevention, that’s a very big piece of the American Red Cross that is is constantly going on and in play it’s an important part of what we do. If you look at the American redcross.org, if you look at just the the CPR training or you know, in terms of what we do for blood, because blood collection is huge in the American Red Cross. We’re one of the biggest providers of blood in the country, but but the CPR for adult and for pediatric. When I saw that the other day, I said I’ve got to sign up for that. It’s been a while since I’ve taken it, but I never took for the infant CPR. So again, for to have those those tools ready to go prevention for the planning and building in in advance. So we’ll mitigate a lot of the possibilities of things that could happen, but I also would ask people to. Or your local chapter of the American Red Cross. So if they were to call the chapter here, they might connect with me or one of the people on the disaster mental health team. But they also can call their community mental health representative. Samsa is another one that that is disaster response. If you go on their website, you’ll see Community resources. You click in your area code and they will pop up resources in your community. I think you know it’s safe to say that we’re all compromised on some level. We’re all under stress of some kind overtime. And sometimes it’s more elevated based on what’s going on external or within our family, so. Some. So it’s always important to prepare like they talk about well, to have a will in place, right. Some people don’t do that. But to prepare for the possibility of a home fire or for a flood or for, you know, a tornado or for the unforeseen, a tree, a lot of the trees falling and. The destruction that could happen during that the the importance of preparing, being prepared. I can’t talk about that enough. It makes a world of difference when something happens and you don’t have your medication. There’s a world of difference. If you do have your medication for a few days. A world of difference.

Rob

We will also add those results to the podcast release as well. Doctor Hlenski, I wish I could put words to how much we appreciate your time today. We are so happy. That you could join us today when I heard what disaster mental health was all about. I thought we have to make sure that we learn more about this and speaking to an expert such as yourself, it means so much to myself and my kind and to the entire team here. And we really appreciate. First of all, what the Red Cross and yourself are doing and secondly you for your time this week, it’s been a real pleasure speaking with you about the Red Cross. ‘S work we. Just wanted to again, thank you again for. Your time.

Mukund

Yeah. Thank you so much.

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