Episode #85 Interview with Behavioral Health Therapist, Sean Inderbitzen APSW, Member of MINT

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Biography

Sean Inderbitzen, APSW, MINT, has lived 32 years with Autism Spectrum Disorder and is an active clinical social worker within a community health center specializing in the treatment of Autism and co-occurring trauma.

In addition to his work as a therapist, Sean is a doctoral student of Tulane University’s School of Social Work, and a collaborator on two studies on the treatment of PTSD in children with Autism utilizing Sensorimotor Psychotherapy (SP). He works closely with Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute on the SP study under the research and clinical guidance of Dr. Bonnie Goldstein

Sean is an active member of the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers and regularly lectures for state governments, foundations, and universities on motivational interviewing and the intersection of Autism and mental health. His writings can be found regularly featured on Differentbrains.org, a non-profit group devoted to advancing the neurodiversity movement. Learn more at SeanInderbitzen.com.

Watch Sean on Youtube: https://youtu.be/uYJdX4NCous

Links mentioned: https://ce.uwec.edu/programs/treating-patients-with-autism-spectrum-disorder-and-comorbid-psychiatric-conditions/ **Please note this program is no longer available. Please reach out directly to Sean via his contact page at SeanInderbitzen.com with any inquiries on training opportunities. Thank you.

Automatic Transcription from Otter.ai

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
autism, clinicians, work, motivational interviewing, tf, research, today, tool, relationship, trauma, parents, training, data, interested, cbt, wisconsin, emdr, mi, sensorimotor, study

00:00
Hey, everybody, welcome back to another episode of the autism and action Podcast. Today we have another very special guest. And my dear friend, Mr. Shawn interprets and he is a doctoral student clinician teacher wears all the hats. Researcher, he does so, so much. And he's got a lot of information for you guys today. Thank you so much for taking the time to be here today. Welcome to the show.

00:26
Thanks. I really enjoy us on your show.

00:30
Thank you. Well, you have just got so much going on. And you're working with so many different things in your bids and consulting services was something that you created, and why don't you tell us a little bit about what you do there.

00:44
So in your Betson consulting services really is my training hat, primarily. And so I do primarily two types of training, I teach motivational interviewing, and then I do trainings on autism and comorbid psychiatric conditions. And with that program, I do a lot with the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire. So we run a five weeks five week program, where we work with clinicians, we do two hours of lecture, and then we do half an hour didactic sections for five weeks. So basically, it's over the lunch hour people bring cases, we work through the cases, we coach using my clinical expertise and my lived experience with autism. And yeah, it creates statistically significant results in increases in confidence. And so clinicians can expect to have a large effect size. And I know this because we've run the data independently. And so right, it's I can't share the data because we didn't do IRB. But what I can say is for those of us who run the program, we know it works, and it works really well. And so yeah, it's really to address that gap between clinicians, and their comfort with working with people with autism. Like a lot of times, I'll get referrals, and the clinicians will say, I'm really stuck. I don't know what I'm doing here. And I'm like, Well, then why don't you come take this program? Because this will make you a resource to all these people. And that's the goal, right? Like, it doesn't really matter how we get there. But people with autism have equal access to mental health as any other population.

02:21
Absolutely. And it's so needed. I mean, especially seeing as how, you know, I'm sure that it was a big gap, the last time that the CDC, you know, they let out that what if 50 died, what in 54? And I don't know when they're going to have another study come out to reveal more statistics, but I think that was data that was based on several years ago

02:41
was 2016 data, and I feel like it read it somewhere 2018 data, and I want to say it was one in 48. But I can't find a source for that. So don't write me on that. But I thought I read that somewhere.

02:53
Now, how can therapists get interested in this program? How can they find more information on it and learn what they can do to get involved?

03:04
Well, in the shownotes, today, I believe you are going to put the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire's hyperlink, they can just click that. And then they can work with the University of Wisconsin. You just go online and you register. So yeah, you just come take the course we run it multiple times a year. If you're if people are interested in me doing the course for their organization, specifically, my website, Sean and davidson.com, there's a Contact Me form. And so sometimes organizations come to me that way. One of the things we're exploring right now is an online monthly Consultation Group. I'm specific to this topic. So that's something to look for. That could be fun.

03:45
Absolutely. Now you are involved in a lot of different research projects to why don't you share a little bit about the research you're doing.

03:53
So I really so I live both with a diagnosis of autism, and some pretty significant trauma in my history, I wrote an article for different brains on autism and PTSD. That is just really just scrapes the surface of my experience living with trauma, right. And so naturally in my clinical career, I've gravitated towards certain clinical practices and not others, right. So like, the most research approach right now is TF CBT is a randomized controlled trial funded by the organization for autism research by Christina McDonald from the University of Wyoming. She was at Virginia Tech when she started won the grant but um, so they look at tf CBT and say this is the gold standard and like, like that would not work for me because I'm way too like all over the place. And so I am a level two sensorimotor psychotherapist, and I'm becoming one I'm gonna get go the whole distance is the plan depending on some contract, but, um, depending on how those pan out. So my research interest really lies, like my personal stake lies in sensorimotor psychotherapy and its application to Kitzur, eight to 17 with autism and so we're trying to win some money from OCR. Basically, to pay clinicians to be involved in the study, you have to have a level one sensory motor certification to administer the study, because again, we want to be able to say sensorimotor psychotherapy Institute says these people know how to treat trauma. And so it's kind of part of the funding argument we make. And then the other study I'm working on is a modified EMDR protocol. And does that work on people with autism, PTSD, or not, specifically from the ages of age 17. So what we're doing is we're sampling parents and the kids of these subjects. So we're gonna have five on each subject. So by the end of it, we should have a really nice like array of data that compares TF CBT, EMDR, and sensory motor and says it's strong at this. It's not at this and really lays out an argument, right for like, why why these therapies and allows for greater reimbursement hopefully. That's kind of the overarching theme is right? Like, how do we widen access for people with autism and mental health to evidence based practices. And right now, TF CBT is out there. But that doesn't work for everybody, right? Like some people are not verbal processors. So EMDR might be a better fit, right? Or like me, where I'm very like body oriented, right? Like I work out I box I run. And so like, doing bodywork makes a lot more sense for me to access my trauma than to do narrative and write some stupid book, right? And then they work great for somebody, but not me. My goal is to give more options to people.

06:55
I think that is awesome. And so, so needed, because there's definitely not a one size fits all when it comes to treatment protocol, you know, and are unique individuals that need services. So all of that needs to be taken into consideration when we are delivering the best possible treatment outcomes that that we can, what else would you like to share with our listeners today?

07:15
Um, so I'm a motivational interviewing network of trainers trainer. And so if people are interested in motivational interviewing, training, there's sort of two tracks, I do that on one I do just like the basic intermediate advanced, right like structure, and I do mighty coding. If somebody is interested in like, advancing their mi practice, I do that too. And then the other trajectory is really this MI and autism thing. So I take the Mi stuff, and I really tweak it more towards high functioning autistic adults, like I just did a training for the Dan Marino Foundation, they worked with their staff to kind of just get a basic understanding of am I. But we also use that with a right like, how do we apply that to autism, and there's some really easy ways. As a teacher, I can do that. And so if people are interested in that, they can again, go for my website and contact

08:09
me. Awesome. Well, we will definitely put all of those links in the show notes. What would your number one advice be for our listeners today?

08:25
My number one piece of advice is kind of always the same. When I get asked this question. It's find somebody you trust and feel safe with. I think safety Right? Like, is one of the most undersold undervalued most big impact things, right? Like, what we know from Bruce lampholders research is that therapeutic alliance makes all the difference in treatment, regardless of modality difference, and what we know from Ed tronics research, right, like is kids attune? Like, I best 33% of the time, and then in the relationship, they rupture it like 33% of the time, and then the other 33% of the time they're attaching to that caregiver, and repairing that relationship. So like, best case scenario, 66% of the time, you're connected to somebody. So when you add in social deficits to that, right, like relationship with everything. I don't think like this is a new idea. I think this, you look at the ancient bible texts, right? Like the older and newer testaments, you have all these themes of relationship, right? So it comes as no surprise that 1000s of years later, we're still kind of stuck on the same thing.

09:35
Yes, yes. Well, Shawn, as I said before, thank you again for taking the time to be here today. I want to be very respectful of your time. I know you've had a very busy work week and very busy Friday, closing things out for the week. And we will have this linked in the show notes guy so you can go check out all the goods there. And don't forget intervention consulting services. They're out of Rice Lake, Wisconsin. If you get to get on Google and search them up to see if you can inquire about the additional trainings.

10:06
I didn't even get to tell you about my curriculum, but

10:11
Well, we can, we can definitely do. Yeah, keep telling us as

10:16
I do the training for behavioral development solutions. And so if you search motivational interviewing for parents, I have a curriculum that is manualized. So people can actually do do my stuff with people with autism, or parents of kids with autism, or parents of kids with ADHD. So you actually teach parents motivational interviewing skills. And so the curriculum is really designed to give the clinician or the behavioral analyst the tools they need to like, teach mi basics to parents, right. And so it's just, it's a super cool tool. It's on my LinkedIn page. But if you google it behavioral development solutions, and my strategies for parenting. It's awesome. It's a great tool, I don't make a whole lot of money off of it. It's more about getting my ideas out there at this point than money. Money comes and goes, but ideas, right, like they're the thing that changed the field.

11:17
They do, and they definitely have a big impact. tools are needed by parents. So I as a parent myself, I can say I need all the tools that I could get

11:27
you should. $40 for a two month subscription, but it's a pretty usable. So when you're it's nice because it's a group tool. So right, like it's got group exercises. So you can kind of go over things like, Well, how do we work with like kids who are stuck? How do we work with resistance, right? Like, yeah, how do we work with all those pieces that, like, create this sort of like, situation with your teenager or your kid? And so, yeah,

12:02
awesome. Awesome. Cool. Well, thank you for sharing that. We'll definitely check that out.

12:07
Sorry, I didn't think of it earlier.

12:09
That's okay. All right. Thank you again for coming today. Shot.

12:13
No problem by Tasha. Bye.

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