 I'm back to Shrink RAP Hawaii. I'm here with my guest, Nancy Siden, again, the clinical psychologist. And we're going to turn now to talk about international psychology. How did you get into such a thing? Well, it's something that I've always been very interested in people throughout the world and different cultures. And there was an organization, excuse me, there's a division within the American Psychological Association, Division 52, that is on international psychology. And we're actually celebrating our 20th year anniversary this year. But I joined that division. And within that division, I really found fascinating people that were really interested in taking psychology way beyond just how we look at it here in the United States and looking at what other psychologists are doing in different parts of the world and really exchanging information and collaborating and doing scholarly work together. And in that division, I actually talked about my frustration that psychology was really not involved in human trafficking at all. And that division gave me the support to go ahead and start a task force on human trafficking. And we did. I established that in the late 2000s. And from that task force, it became clear that a whole association needed to be involved in human trafficking and looking at how psychologists can address the issue. So there became a system-wide task force that I had the privilege of co-chairing. And I shared with you the executive summary. If anybody wants to read the report that was published in 2014, you can go to the American Psychological Association web page. And it's a very rich and dense report talking about human trafficking. And specifically, what are the consequences for those that are trafficked and what role psychologists, and I believe other mental health professionals, can take to help fight this really horrible thing that's happening massively in this world. And we've been trying to get rid of slavery for years. We've had laws. The UN had a declaration in 1948. We know that there are more people living as slaves now than any other time in our life. Including before the Civil War. Yes, definitely. That's horrendous. That's really astounding. Well, we don't have hard facts, because it's really hard to get hard facts. Right, because nobody's going to say, oh, I'm not. Right. Exactly. But estimates are up to 31,000 people are trafficked. Excuse me, 31 million people trafficked a year. In the world. In the world. Wow. And here in the United States, we know that there's not one state, one territory that has not had trafficking cases identified. So it's prevalent throughout the United States. It's prevalent throughout the world. So you mentioned how you thought it was important for psychologists internationally to be involved. Why is that so important? I mean, what can psychologists do? Well, psychologists can really do multiple different things. I mean, from education, just raising awareness to going into elementary schools and junior highs and teaching kids what to be aware of. I mean, there's, in the United States, one of the recruitment ways is what's called grooming. And quite literally, it's somebody that identifies a vulnerable girl or boy and starts attending to that. Somebody that maybe doesn't have good self-esteem and telling them, oh, how beautiful you are, how wonderful. And they literally entice them in by the things that they're not getting in other parts of their life. Vulnerable parts. And then ultimately get them most oftenly in the sex trade. So that's one thing that psychologists can do. The other thing is with people that have become victims of human trafficking and when they're on the side of getting out of that, working with them. Because many, many people are quite damaged by their experience of being trafficked, both physically and mentally. I would imagine, just like with any kind of abuse, one of the problems is that people begin to blame themselves, to have guilt and think, oh, I must have done something. Well, most of us are raised on good things happen to good people. Bad things happen to bad people. And that kind of ends the way system. So if this bad thing happened, it must be my fault. Or, yeah. I mean, that can definitely be a component of it, for sure. And then the other piece is trust. You know, you've trusted somebody. And the major way people are trafficked are what's called false fronts, where they're given the opportunity. If you take this job, I can get you to the United States. And you can be working a restaurant and make money. And they do that. They come in with this idea that they're going to have this job. And all of a sudden they get where they're supposed to go. And it's no longer the job that they thought they agreed to. Again, they'll be exploited, whether it's sexually or labor-wise. So here's somebody you trusted, or you trusted a parent and they sold you to be trafficked. So there's that. People must have a hard time believing it even that a parent would sell their kid to the sextrate. But it happens. It happens. I think there's some people that do it very knowingly because they have their own problems, whether they be drug addicted. And this is a way they can support their drug habit. Or they're from a very impoverished family. And again, the false front, well, we have an opportunity for your daughter. She'll be able to send money home. And they willingly do it with the great hope of the good life for their daughter. And their life might be a little bit better if they have monies coming in. But it doesn't happen. So what has the APA, American Psychological Association, been doing to support your efforts? Well, I think, first of all, supporting the task force, creating a document that can be used by policymakers. That's another thing, that we are a resource for many other venues. And as well as there's resolutions that have just recently been passed of working with people that have been victimized. And psychologists have that guide to assist them. So you mean, in a political arena, the APA can reach out and try to sponsor legislation? Do we do that? No, but we can surely offer information so that politicians could. Right, so it can really affect policy in an effective way. Are there places in the world that have been better than others in doing that? Absolutely. The US does a report called Trafficking in Persons Report every year. And they literally grade countries in their efforts of combating human trafficking. And that's done annually. And tier one country is a better country. Tier three is not. They're not doing stuff. So yeah, there's definitely countries that are identified are doing a better job fighting trafficking and committed to trying to eradicate something that's very difficult to do since it's so lucrative and so underground. Right, so it's similar, I guess, to some of the drug trade because it's lucrative and there's a supply and a demand. Absolutely, yeah. In fact, human trafficking is just under drugs as far as what's trafficked. In terms of money? In terms of money, yeah. And there was a study that was done out of Chicago, 25 pimps that had trafficked women in the sex trade. They were all talking about that used to be in the drug trade, but it was much safer to be doing human trafficking. You're looking shot. You're looking shot, less likely to get arrested. And there it's a challenge. Well, thank you, Nancy. Our time is just about up. And I really appreciate you coming on the show today. Well, I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks. OK. Tune in next time for Shrink Wrap Hawaii. Bye-bye.