 Welcome to Seymour's World on Think Tech Hawaii. Our guest today is Beth Ann Koslovich, Senior Development Officer for Kahi Mahala. I've known Beth Ann for many, many years, and I have to say I'm sitting here with a celebrity. Because in my eyes, Beth Ann, I have heard you on the radio with HPR. You were a host. You ran your own shows. You can tell us all about it if you want to. But in many, many years, NPR, HPR was my station, and every time I listened to you, every time I went on your show, and we spoke about whatever thing I was working on, it was such a pleasure, and you're such a professional. So I am sitting here honored to welcome you to Seymour's World. Thank you, Seymour. It's a pleasure to be with you truly, truly. And yes, it was a lovely time that we spent at Public Radio, where I was the executive producer of all the talk shows that we did at Public Radio here locally. So it was a very good experience, and I loved it. And now I'm doing something that is also a passion project to be able to help children and teens who have mental illness. Well, you know, that's one of the reasons I wanted you to come on here so desperately because we share that passion. You share it in how you want to help the children, and I share it in how I want to help the children. And for me, when I heard that you were moving to Kahi Mahala, and I finally understood what Kahi Mahala was, and I did not know before. And a lot of people don't. And that's the whole thing that amazes me, because this little hospital has been here for 35 years. It is Hawaii's only and first psychiatric hospital that's freestanding, that focuses on children as young as four all the way through high school. And this is the place where kids come when they're having some real issues. And a lot of issues that we're seeing now are kids with depression, anxiety, kids who are having issues with their conduct and being able to behave in a way that, you know, other people can interact with them too. But a lot of kids who just don't see that there's a place for them in the world where they're ideating about suicide, maybe they've tried suicide, and they need a place where they can see that maybe there are a great deal of possibilities. There's hope to have a good life. But if you don't know that, then you may think that it's an easy way out, particularly when you've seen a lot of high profile celebrities who have also taken that way out. I don't want to say that suicide is easy, but they might think that. And that's not amazing. But isn't suicide one of the highest ranking deaths in the United States right now? In the United States, yes. And also in Hawaii, between the ages of 15 and 34, it's the number two cause of death for people in that age group. That's not just one generation. That's several generations. And think of what we're losing. Think of the talent that we're losing. I mean, mental health is something that just doesn't discriminate. It goes all through all socioeconomic levels, and it can just disrupt lives not only for the people who may be lost, but their families and for workplaces and for businesses to think that they might be losing talent because somebody when they were small thought that this was the only thing that they could do. It just hurts me as a mother to think that we would have kids who don't believe that they have a place in the world and that their talent and their life experience could be of value. How large is Kali Mohalla? How many beds and how many physicians do you have on staff? Well, it's an 88-bed facility. There's a full clinical staff, medical director, and other psychiatrists and psychologists, and other clinical staff who are there. And it's on 14 acres in Ewa Beach where it's been since it was built in 1983. And so it looks very park-like. I think we've got some pictures of that, but it looks very park-like. And the idea is that this is a place for someone to come and heal. You know, Kali Mohalla meaning to blossom open, to shine, to be able to bring from within those good things that are resident in children when they're when they're born. I mean, they don't learn to be other ways until they learn to be other ways, right? I mean, they're born with such potential and to be able to tap into that potential and have them feel that they have a place where they can be free to discuss their issues and to work with families to do that. And how are the kids referred to Kali Mohalla? Is it private? Is it mostly physicians here in Hawaii that refer them directly to Kali Mohalla? It can be very much so. I mean, these are Hawaii kids. And, you know, I think I saw that our latest figures are that about 27% of the children who come to Kali Mohalla come from the neighbor islands. The rest are coming from Oahu. A few kids will also come from Guam. This is it. I mean, look at where we sit in the middle of the Pacific. This is really it. And for other kids who whose families may not know about Kali Mohalla, they may be sent to the mainland, which is not necessarily a great thing for the kids or the family because it may mean that visited separation, separation, you know, visiting would be difficult. But the idea is that, you know, kids need to be able to, first of all, feel that they are children. It's why there are playgrounds there. It's why there's a gym there. It's why they have activities that are geared for kids and adolescents because that's who we're talking about. And a kid's job is to be a kid and to learn how to be an adult is tough business, particularly now. How can we help? What do you want the public? We have a lot of people who are watching this show. What do you want the public to know and what do you want them to do? Well, I'd like them to know that Kali Mohalla exists. And if you have a child in your family or an adolescent in your family who's having difficulty, who is, you know, very depressed and who may be ideating about suicide or haven't been tried it, you that may wind up in a hospital visit. Hospital may in fact, you asked before about how kids may come. Maybe the one to call or a doctor may be the one to call. But to know that there is help and there is hope. But for us to be able to perpetuate this, Seymour, we also need help in the form of finances. Kahi Mohalla has now for its first time ever me and my position as Senior Development Officer is to create a full and comprehensive program for the for the hospital philanthropy program so that we can see this as sustainable. And we know that this is going to be incredibly needed in the next years, because we see what life has become in the years behind us and what we see coming down the pike. And you don't have to take my word for it. If you want to just experiment, put a Google alert on your phone for children and teen mental health and see what comes up from not only the United States, but around the world. We are really I think in crisis mode with mental health in general, but especially for children. And why not try to help them when they are younger and when their brains are more plastic and we have the best chance of being able to help them live successful lives. One of the things Bethanne that really pulls my heartstrings is the homeless situation and seeing the kids inside some of these homeless situations that we have here in Hawaii. And it's not just in Hawaii because we have people watching from all over the world, but we have a serious situation here. How can you help those kids, the kids that are there? Are you able to reach out to them? Does Connie Mahala have an outreach program for the homeless children that are out there? A lot of this would be coming through the state programs. We don't go out and seek the children to bring them in. That's just not the way the hospital works. But to be able to have kids who have been trafficked. I mean, we know from other experts that we've talked to that we have some kids who have been trafficked, some kids who may have been homeless or still are dealing in at risk situations, even if there is technically a home, it may not be what you might consider to be a positive home situation. So a lot of that, it all feeds into itself. Because, you know, mental illness and kids when they're moving around so much, a lot of instability. Kids are resilient. That's a good thing. But how they are resilient and what we can do to help them to be even more so really comes down to what kind of help they're able to give. And sometimes getting that help is difficult. We know that we have not nearly enough physicians. And when you start to look at that physician shortage through the lens of what do we need for a psychiatrist and psychologist, and then children's psychiatrist and children's psychologist, it becomes even more different. And we need funding for those people too. But I mean, just as a state. So, but you know, we're doing as very much we can as much as anybody can do it. Bethanne, it's you. Because I know you well enough after all these years that you're sinking your teeth into this because it's not just, it's not just a job for you. It's a passion. That's something that you really want to help with. Well, you can't, you can't see these children and not feel that way. I was having lunch in the cafeteria the other day, the dining hall. And this beautiful girl was bringing her tray next to me. And I was carrying my tray and I looked down at her arm and I saw cut marks going all the way up her arm. I mean, just one or two seen more. But I mean, there were scars on top of scars. This beautiful girl, I thought this, this can't stand. We can't allow this to just be okay that the kid feels that they have to do something hurtful to him or herself. You can't, you can't sweep it under the rug anymore. No, we can't anymore. You know, I work with a group called Kids Hurt 2, which is a foster kids group. I know that group. And I've had a program there called You Are In Charge, where I take foster youth from 18 on when they're supposedly out of the foster system. But really, where do they go? Right. And they have such a major issue, psychiatric issue sometimes. And where do I send them? I send them to Kahi Mahalo because I can't find, I can't find anything in our system to help these kids out. We need what you are doing desperately. And we need to be able to reach out to people who need that help and be able to tell them there is somewhere for you to go. Very few people know about you. Well, maybe more will know about Kahi Mahalo now. They will. But I want you to just stop for a moment and just think about this statistic because mental health America of Hawaii, NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, there's full agreement that across the board within our population, both within Hawaii and the national population, we are just a reflection of the national population, 20 percent of our population in any given year will have some issue with mental illness. And that goes for kids 13 and up too. So if you cut it off from 13 and look at 13 through adulthood, 20 percent of our population having an issue that may range from mild depression or anxiety all the way up to much more serious conditions. But that's a lot of people. That is a lot of people. And we have to stop the stigma of talking about this. I mean, people will tell you about their appendectomies. They'll tell you about their bunions. They'll tell you about their heart condition. But they don't tell you if they're not feeling well mentally. Because they feel that that would somehow prejudice your opinion of them and that that would not be a good thing. Right. So what do we do about it? We have to keep talking about it. We have to keep reaching out. We do. We have to maybe make kahi mohala instead of an 88 bed facility. Maybe a two or three hundred bed. Maybe it needs two or three other buildings. Or excuse me to be able to to, sorry about my voice, to be able to reach out and do things beyond the walls of kahi mohala. All that can be made possible. Funding. And local funding obviously is in the hands of the major companies that we have here. The OHAs of the world. The banks and all this. Is that part of your job as well to reach out to these guys? Well, you're talking about what I'm doing is creating a full comprehensive program for them. So in philanthropy you know there are foundational grand tours. There are individuals that are tiered at different levels based on how they feel they can give and what they want to give. There are legacy gifts. There are events. There are all kinds of things that go under that umbrella of philanthropy. So all of this is now a plan and it's being rolled out and it will probably take us a couple years to get to a full entire you know philanthropy plan. I mean or program I should say. But it will happen. We have to do it. I want to be there to help you. I hope so. And I hope other people want to be there with us too because we need individuals who care. We need people who say this is important because it's a moral issue. It's a health issue. And it's certainly a workplace issue. These people are going to grow up these kids and instead of having them potentially wind up on the street or wind up in a situation where they can't take care of themselves. Let's see if we can take care of them now. Let's see if we can help them build a successful life now. Well that is such a positive way to end the first segment that we have because it's it's so important to understand what you're doing. But then not just you personally but what Kahi Mahala is doing. And I think we're we're opening up opening the eyes of many many people who just understood it as a hospital out there on Fort Weaver Road. You know that's all it was. It's not just a hospital. It's something that helps the helps people become people that help other people. And if we could help one person who can help another person and another person will find a better life for everybody. So let's take a break and then we'll come back with Beth Ann Koslovich on Seymour's World at Think Tech Hawaii. We'll be back in a minute. Aloha I'm Wendy Lo and I'm coming to you every other Tuesday at two o'clock live from Think Tech Hawaii and on our show we talk about taking your health back. And what does that mean? It means mind, body and soul. Anything you can do that makes your body healthier and happier is what we're going to be talking about. Whether it's spiritual health, mental health, fascia health, beautiful smile health, whatever it means. Let's take healthy back. Aloha. Aloha. I'm Marcia Joyner, inviting you to come visit with us on cannabis chronicles, a 10,000 year odyssey where we explore and examine the plant that the muse has given us and stay with us as we explore all the facets of this planet on Wednesdays at noon. Please join us. Aloha. Hi, welcome back to Seymour's World on Think Tech Hawaii. If I'm speaking fast, it's because we have so much to cover. My guest is Beth Ann Koslovich. She's with Kahimohala and it's the only psychiatric hospital we have in Honolulu. Am I correct? Or in all of Hawaii? It is the only freestanding psychiatric hospital with a focus on children as young as four all the way through high school. Wow. And it's the only one, the first and only one in Hawaii. Let's look at some of the photos that we have. Okay. This is a lovely collage that's one of our folks made up at Kahi just to be able to show what our grounds look like. It's a beautiful place. You can see that there's a little bit of the gym on the lower right and dining areas outside and a lot of green space. A lot of green space because when you're dealing with psychiatric issues to be able to see green, to be able to be in a healing environment, a garden park-like environment and there are 14 acres. We also have a ropes course which is of not just something that's fun to do but something that really teaches competency and the ability to have a sense of self-worth and the ability to do something that may be difficult and yet to feel the fear and to do it anyway and also to know other people will be there with you and to develop some interdependency. That's important too. Let's see the next slide. And that's one of our counselors with a boy going down to the basketball court because play, after all, is the business of children. That's how they learn and to deal with whatever they're dealing with. There has to be time for them to be able to relax. It's not just play, it really is healing. And the next one. And sometimes you just need a friend. And we were really very grateful to Petco who donated a lot of these beautiful little stuffed animals last holiday season. And this little girl is having a conversation with her bunny. And sometimes you just need to have a conversation with somebody who will listen. And many of the people at Kahimohala do the very same thing. They listen. That's just fabulous. I happen to believe in that because when we do our music program in the hospital, every child gets a stuffed animal after we play for them. And you could just see them hug that stuffed animal so hard. They forget about why they're in the hospital. And I guess the same thing works with you, right? Of course. Of course. So tell me more about the mission. Is the mission statement for Kahimohala to get larger or just to be, to do a better job within itself? Where are you going with this? Well, there's a lot that we can do. But of course it's going to take the will to do it and then the money to be able to support that will. There are programs that we'd like to be able to potentially move beyond the walls of Kahimohala to be able to develop other partnerships. And that's something that I think would be very, very welcome because the hospital is still the size that it is. And then again, there's the idea that maybe at some point it will also expand. All this now is being discussed by our board. And when some decisions are made, then we'll have a very clear path to that. We know that addiction is a big part of the problem that we have here. Is that something that you guys address at Kahimohala as well? We address it as a secondary category. We are not a traditional rehab that deals with addiction first. Very often you have dual diagnosis where you have someone who's dealing with psychiatric issues and frankly it could be because they are also abusing substances. It could be, you know, for a lot of other reasons too. That's what treatment is all about. We find, I think I mentioned to you before we started that I'm hoping and planning to open up a rehab center here in Hawaii because I feel we are lacking, just as we're lacking psychiatric facilities, we're definitely lacking rehab centers. And I made a commitment to you that I want to help you with Kahimohala. And I have a feeling there is a joint, there's a line that connects between the two of us because substance abuse that I have studied over the last 10, 15 years is definitely related to some type of psychiatric event. And usually it starts when they're quite young and they do need help for it. And if we could do that I know that I'm planning to have psychiatrist on board at the rehab center and there's going to be times when we have to work together, right? And I think the community needs to work together that way. I would agree with you. I mean this is very much a community effort. We know that we are out here in the middle of the Pacific. We know that we have to help each other. We're usually very good when some sort of disaster strikes. Well this is a disaster that's slow burning and we're seeing the effects of much of that now and we will see the effects of that in the future. Life has gotten tough for kids, for parents. There's a lot more coming at them now than before. You have media that plays into this and a great deal of time that's spent on media, screen time, what people believe, what they think, how people are interacting, some of the soft skills that we may be losing. But we're not paying attention to the kids. Well that's psychiatry today. We're always looking at the adults. We always talk about people like me who may need help that way for one reason or another. But how many people have focused? If I say to people, do you realize that we have a psychiatric hospital for children here in Hawaii? I would say probably 90% didn't know that. This is true. I mean Kahi has sort of been the little light under the bushel and I think we have to make that light shine a lot more brightly because we have children who need us across the state. We're going to have more. There's going to be a need for people to support that kind of expansion and that kind of work that needs to be done not just in self-interest but because again this is tied to our economy too. Better to deal with kids when they're smaller and they can learn some better ways of dealing with themselves and with life or being able to have better diagnoses when they're younger than to let this go on and on where it will become much more difficult to intercede when they're 25 or 30. I just had a note. How do people donate? Could you tell us how people can donate to Kahimo Hala? Well, they can go to our website which is Sutter Health, Kahimo Hala. Sutter, S-U-T-T-E-R, I think they're there we go. Yeah, Sutter Health, Kahimo Hala or SutterHealth.org slash Kahimo Hala I should say. But if you put in Kahimo Hala you'll find it. And you go to the scroll down and it says philanthropy. Click on philanthropy and you can see all the ways and the various programs that donors may choose to want to give to or to a very new fund I created called the Impact Discretionary Fund which allows us to move money where it may be most necessary at any given time just to know if there's a program or something else that comes up where we need to move money in a certain way. That Impact Discretionary Fund goes to where it would be most needed and that's brand new too. And if people have specific specific donations that they want to give for specific needs inside Kahimo Hala they can do it as well. That's there too. We have the Gathering Place Project it's been running since March that's to do a complete. I read about that actually. You did. That's to do a sort of a facelift of the dining hall but especially for a piece of equipment we've had since 1983 which is the service tray line you know the tray that you go along right and this thing has to be turned on at 5 o'clock in the morning and it's kept running until 7 o'clock at night because if they don't it can't bring the food back up to the legally required temperature so we figure that's wasting about $10,000 annually at least and so that's going to be replaced and we're also going to make it a much more warm and welcoming multi-purpose room in the dining area so that it can truly be functional at a way where I think it may not have been in past so that's happening we also had a spare pair project that we created because on average once a week a kid will arrive with just what they have on and for girls and for boys that means they only have one pair of underwear and as a mother I just could not cope with that one and I thought we need to do something so we created spare pair and we were lucky enough to have a lot of other people feel that that was an important thing too Excellent, it's wonderful and now kids can have a second set or sometimes even a third set so that when the other one's in the wash they have clean underwear and it makes them feel that there is a sense of integrity of body as well as mind Well I'm going to do something for you that you didn't expect What? I'm going to bring music to your hospital so I'm going to bring musicians in to play once a week for the kids and we'll teach them we'll bring ukuleles with us we'll bring all sorts of instruments Oh that would be lovely We'll do like a music program for you similar to what we do at Capilani Hospital and at Shriners and Kaiser and all that stuff Wonderful Again, I didn't know until you and I spoke that there was a children's hospital a psychiatric children's hospital so absolutely we will bring music in for the kids Lovely, well I will connect you to the people who will help you make that happen and thank you for wanting to do that George is my coordinator George you're watching this so get on it please I think that'll be wonderful I think it'll be terrific Thank you Tell me a little bit more about your personal I know you don't want to talk about you and you want to talk about Kahi Mahalo but you became so passionate Why? Is it something you've always done? I think for a very very long time this has been a conversation that I have been trying to elevate in advance and we did that on Town Square we did that on the conversation through many other conversations I had on and off air but realizing that we had a real problem here and the more stigmatized it became the less people wanted to talk about it and we just have to open our mouths and be willing to talk about it I don't think you could look far into your own family or to your circle of friends to see that there are lots of people who are struggling and when you see the numbers of articles that come up about anxiety and depression and all kinds of other psychiatric conditions this is telling us something we are in trouble and we need to be able to reach out to each other and not feel shame in talking to each other about it not feel a sense of being threatened or oh my god they're going to think I can't run my company or that they're going to think I can't do my job I mean we have to understand that this is part of the full embrace of humanity and this is who we are as people and once upon a time we didn't talk about cancer either and now people will tell you all kinds of things about their cancer treatments probably stuff you don't want to know but we need to get to that point especially for kids illness and especially with children children depend on us to take care of them this is a way in which we can help to take care of them even if they're not getting that kind of understanding and care within their nuclear family or if they're dealing with at-risk situations some of these situations we talked about before we can all do something just need to be aware and we need to keep this little hospital going well I think you are a credit and a blessing to Kahi Mohalla because I know you you've sunk your teeth into this thing and you're very much like me you know we all have I'm doing a commentary right after the show it's called do we have two lives this is your second life now and I have a second life and you have a second life and you've decided that you're passionate to help children especially children in the way that you can at Kahi Mohalla and I admire you for doing it Bethan and I want to thank you so much for coming on Seymour's World and telling Seymour's World all about Kahi Mohalla and you and the kids because there's so many things I just learned in this last half hour I can't believe it well thank you so much and thank you to all of you and I hope that you have learned something about Kahi Mohalla too and if you want to know more you can contact me I'll be happy to answer you I answer everybody within 24 hours I promise and she does she answers I'm always shocked I consider a text at 4 a.m. when I start as you probably have seen and at 5 a.m. there's a text coming back from you with an answer I love that about you by the way thank you because a lot of people that I do business with around the world do not do that and I really appreciate it because then I can get it off my table and know we go from there me too so thank you all for watching and listening Bethan Koslovic with Kahi Mohalla is truly truly a person we have to listen and try to help because Kahi Mohalla is an organization it's a hospital it's our children it's our kids and if we need to start somewhere if we need to donate if we need to do something it's with our children so let's help Kahi Mohalla we'll see you next week I'm Seymour Kazimerski on Seymour's World Aloha