'Increasing help for the kids who need it'

David Love is the executive director of Valley Community Counseling Services. The counseling center deals with several cases, including offering support to abused or traumatized children. (Jennifer M. Howell/News-Sentinel)

'Increasing help for the kids who need it'

Rise in therapy referrals for children has counseling center director worried

By Layla Bohm
News-Sentinel Staff Writer

Tuesday, May 12, 2009 11:39 PM PDT

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Many years ago a 12-year-old Lodi girl ran away from home, preferring to camp on couches for months.

Someone got her into Valley Community Counseling Services, where counselors tried to help her work through the trauma associated with an abusive, alcoholic father and an overwhelmed mother.

She refused to stay at home, but she made every counseling appointment, said David Love, executive director of the nonprofit counseling center. Eventually the counselors found the girl's older sister in Fresno, and she agreed to take in the girl.

Some 15 years later, Love went into a bank and was standing in line when a higher-ranking employee offered to help him. The woman looked at Love's name, then at his face and said, "I bet you don't remember me."

The runaway Lodi girl had received her master's degree in business and had just been named a vice president at the bank. Not only did she remember Love, but she thanked him.

"That means we did a pretty good job," Love said this week with a smile.

Though he smiled, another fact has given him pause: In March the counseling center received 100 referrals for children needing counseling.

It was the first time during his 35 years in business that the number reached triple digits.

The county's Child Protective Services hasn't seen a rise in abuse cases, interim director Kathy Stanley said, so Love thinks the increased counseling means that children are under more stress at home.

Love attributes the rise to the economy — increased stress at home causes more stress for children, who get in trouble and act out in school. Half of Love's referrals come directly from school employees, who may notice a child is having trouble but there is no proof of actual abuse.

"We're not increasing the number of hurt kids out there; we're increasing the help for the kids who need it," Love said.

And that's fine by Love, who firmly believes that mental health counseling can keep youths from winding up addicted to drugs and spending time behind bars — thus contributing to the prison over-crowding problem.

A 2003 study conducted by Kaiser Permanente and Centers for Disease Control researchers, published in "Pediatrics," a journal put out by the American Academy of Pediatrics, backs Love's assertion: Of 8,613 adults surveyed at a California primary clinic, those who reported a negative experience during childhood were at least two to four times more likely to have addictions.

A similar study by similar researchers, including some from Kaiser and the CDC, released in 2005, found that children exposed to negative experiences — abuse, witnessing domestic violence, household stress — were three times more likely to have addiction problems.

The correlation, Love said, is simple: Stress doesn't just disappear from the brain. It lingers unresolved, until the stressed person subconsciously tries to find a way to escape.

"Every trauma you experience in life is actually recorded in the amygdala of the brain, and it doesn't go away. A child doesn't remember something from age 6 months, but it's still there," Love said.

In fact, Love is awaiting the day when mental and psychological diagnoses include brain scans, rather than just interviews. Such scans, or MRIs, are expensive so insurance companies refuse to pay for them, but Love said it would help see if a brain had been traumatized, and to what extent.

Children referred to Valley Community see a trained, licensed therapist. Sometimes they meet in an office where private rooms are filled with toys and colorful paintings on the walls.

But now, about half of the counseling is done on school campuses, so already-stressed parents don't have to take their children out of school, to an appointment and then back to campus.

Valley Community has therapists who work at 60 school campuses throughout the county. A total of 50 counselors work for the business, along with 60 other employees and about 30 contractors, Love said.

It's a far cry from 1974, when Love, a licensed marriage and family therapist, started the nonprofit counseling service in Manteca. The next year he opened an office in Lodi, followed by Stockton and Tracy.

Valley Community further expanded its services when the county began looking for ways to fulfill court-ordered treatment programs. Now adults go through the center for mandatory counseling for driving under the influence, drug use and domestic violence.

This week, some 5,000 people county-wide had some sort of Valley Community counseling, Love said.

Of those people, 628 were children, with 70 in Lodi.

Love's unending goal is to help people, especially children.

The former fighter pilot served in the U.S. Air Force during Vietnam, and he has worked with veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Though children are young and haven't been to war, they can experience the same kind of mental anguish, Love said.

"If we help them then, the chances of having the 14-year-old bully or alcoholic wind up in the California Youth Authority is dramatically less," he said.

Contact reporter Layla Bohm at layla@lodinews.com.

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