Full Course Description

The Art & Science of Wellness

Copyright : 09/09/2021

Managing Suicidality with High-Crisis DBT Clients

This workshop will provide practical techniques and skills to address suicidal urges and actions grounded in DBT principles. Come and learn how to manage emotional arousal with innately sensitive clients that frequently leverage their lives for relational attachment while often exhausting support networks, including their therapists. Deepen your DBT skills toolkit with vital interventions and scripts to deescalate life-threatening behaviors which is the primary target of individual DBT treatment.

Program Information

Objectives

  1. Evaluate the biosocial model of DBT in the context of emotional dysregulation that increases suicidality urges and behaviors.  
  2. Analyze the DBT conceptualization of emotional dysregulation and its role in suicidal urges and behavior. 
  3. Evaluate how DBT coaching is utilized to shape effective communication strategies to reduce suicidal actions, gestures, communications, and hospitalizations. 

Outline

  • Learn DBT-based strategies to reduce frequency of suicidal behaviors and gestures. 
  • Learn how to provide comprehensive and quick orientation to clients of the biosocial model with key interventions to reduce a heightened stress response that increases vulnerability to life-threatening coping behaviors.
  • Develop a quick and effective coaching structure to reduce collusion with unskillful behaviors. 
  • Learn how to establish an effective safety plan for clients new to DBT.

Copyright : 09/09/2021

Why People Die by Suicide: What the Last 20 Years of Research Shows Us

In his theory of suicidal behavior, Thomas Joiner proposes three factors that mark those most at risk of death: the feeling of being a burden on loved ones, the sense of isolation, and, perhaps chillingly, the partly genetic and partly learned ability to hurt oneself. He tests the theory against diverse facts taken from clinical anecdotes, epidemiology, genetics, and neurobiology, with implications for the full spectrum of clinical activities related to suicidality.

Program Information

Objectives

  1. Evaluate anecdotal, clinical, and scientific evidence on a new theory of suicidal behavior.
  2. Appraise approaches to suicide risk assessment (utilizing risk assessment instruments) developments in the treatment of suicidal behavior, and in suicide prevention.
  3. Develop skills to understand the experience of people who are bereaved by suicide.

Outline

  • Conceptualizing and evaluating suicidal behavior from a new perspective
  • Exploration of approaches to suicide risk assessment
  • Overview of interventions for suicidal behavior
  • Investigation of research on suicide prevention
  • In-depth understanding of bereavement related to suicide
  • Overview of risk assessment screens and instruments

Copyright : 09/09/2021

Losing a Loved One to Suicide: Interventions to Move Survivors Beyond the Ruins

Suicide is an event that can profoundly disrupt survivors taken-for-granted constructs about life, sometimes traumatically shaking the very foundations of one’s assumptive world. While Post Traumatic Growth is a hot topic today, historically mental health providers have spent decades helping people cope with trauma instead of focusing on the client’s potential for resiliency. This workshop will assist clinicians working with survivors of suicide as they explore 3 areas of impact that will lead to PTG. It will provide a roadmap for clinicians as they help survivors grope their way toward new sustainable frameworks of meaning by interrogating the tacit assumptions about life, God and the world around them that were challenged by the trauma. As a suicide survivor and psychotherapist, the presenter brings a dual awareness that will help prepare clinicians in their work with suicidal clients and the survivors of suicide who are left behind.

Program Information

Objectives

  1. Describe three factors affecting survivors of suicide and their potential for growth.
  2. Formulate integrative interventions that assist survivors in making meaning after loss.
  3. Examine intervention skills that emphasize resilience and correlate with Post-Traumatic Growth.

Outline

  • Explore the impact on the traumatized brain, guilt/shame/complex trauma, and existential shattering/crisis of faith/belief on survivors of suicide.
  • Overview and skills building in the areas of: awareness building, meaning making for survivors using storytelling, Somatic Resourcing, Parts work, Polyvagal theory, and DBT exercises.
  • Identify resilience building skills that will move survivors toward Post-Traumatic Growth and discuss how to target clients underdeveloped and overdeveloped skills.

Copyright : 09/09/2021

Suicide in Historically Marginalized Communities: Perception Versus Reality

There is myth in the Black community that Black people don't die by suicide and that acknowledging mental health challenges, like anxiety and depression, are signs of moral weakness. In this session, Victor Armstrong will discuss the stigma around mental health and suicide among those in historically marginalized communities. He will discuss and uncover historical challenges of these communities, emphasizing Black men, in accessing care for mental health.  He will discuss the way that perception and provider bias influence mental health access and suicidality among Black men.

Program Information

Objectives

  1. Appraise the historical biases in the structure of mental health services affecting the Black community.
  2. Investigate the impact of clinician biases on therapist-client interactions.
  3. Create enhanced rapport and empathy through decreasing clinician biases.

Outline

  • Over and exploration of the impact of complex trauma and systemic racism on mental health outcomes for Black men.
  • How to appraise and manage the impact of clinician’s own biases on therapist-client interactions.

Copyright : 09/09/2021

What To Do with Suicidal Thoughts That Just Won't Go Away

Dr. Gordon will share effective methods and approaches for improved efficacy in safety planning with crises orientated clients.  Specific interventions will be presented which are targeted as increasing client coping with emotional pain and distress.  The session with conclude with strategies for increasing client hope and finding meaning in suffering.

Program Information

Objectives

  1. Formulate an effective safety plan for clients with suicidal ideation.
  2. Apply therapy tools for helping clients to cope with emotional pain and distress.
  3. Utilize interventions that increase hope and build meaning in the face of suffering.

Outline

  • How to effectively safety plan with patients for suicidal crises.
  • Strategies for soothing emotional pain and distress that leads to suicidal thoughts.
  • Therapy tools for building hope and making meaning in the face of suffering.

Copyright : 09/09/2021

Reduce Suicide, Liability, & Workload in Healthcare and Beyond with The Columbia Protocol

The Columbia Protocol, or C-SSRS, is a few simple questions that anyone can ask, from support staff to loved ones, that empower individuals and communities to find people who are at risk for suicide, connect them to the care they need and prevent tragedies before they happen. The Columbia Protocol has become the gold standard for suicide monitoring and is ubiquitous across the U.S. and worldwide. As policy across all 50 states, national agencies, and most countries, it has helped achieve reductions in suicide across all sectors of society and around the globe.

Program Information

Objectives

  1. Investigate how preventative suicide screening models can be used to identify at-risk individuals.
  2. Establish care plans that reduce suicide while allocating resources effectively.
  3. Utilize a systemic best-practice measurement, the C-SSRS, to identify suicidal ideation and behavior to improve risk identification and safety monitoring.
  4. Implement a comprehensive screening program within an agency.

Outline

  • The scope of the global problem and what we need to do to fix it
  • Mitigating Stigma and promoting help-seeking
  • Knocking down the barriers of fear and liability
  • Evidence for Universal Screening and a Public Health Approach with the C-SSRS

Copyright : 09/10/2021

Lessons from Treating Suicidal Veterans: The Latest Interventions

This session will focus on using the crisis response plan (CRP) for managing acute suicide risk, with at risk-individuals. We will review the current evidence base supporting the use of the CRP with veterans and active-duty military populations. Time will be spent reviewing specific strategies for conducting a patient-centered narrative assessment for assessing suicide risk and a tailored crisis response plan that prioritizes self-management strategies the patient can self-implement to reduce overall risk.

Program Information

Objectives

  1. Describe the primary motives for suicidal behavior.
  2. Facilitate a narrative assessment with a suicidal individual.
  3. Apply the core components of a crisis response plan (CRP).

Outline

  • Crisis response planning with suicidal Veterans
  • Doing a narrative-based assessment with suicidal individuals
  • How to use the Crisis Response Plan for managing suicidal risk

Copyright : 09/10/2021

Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) for Suicidality: Overcoming Stuck Points and Creating Mental Flexibility

Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) is a rapidly growing model that is showing promising results and has uncovered key cognitive processes that, when addressed, can create lasting healing from suicidal ideation and behaviors that can often accompany PTSD. 

Join co-developer of CPT, Kathleen Chard, PhD, where she will address how she approaches suicidality from a CPT perspective based on over 20 years of research around PTSD and suicidality. Learn the key processes behind this approach to trauma treatment that is endorsed by the U.S. Departments of Veterans Affairs and Defense, the International Society of Traumatic Stress Studies, and the U.K. National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) as a best practice for the treatment of PTSD.

Program Information

Objectives

  1. Analyze the empirical evidence supporting the use of CPT for suicidality.
  2. Determine common myths around suicidality among those with PTSD that can interfere in treatment and worsen outcomes.
  3. Utilize three cognitive processing techniques to address “stuck points”.

Outline

  • Explore the evidence for positive results from CPT research studies on suicidality and PTD
  • Identify common myths around suicidality
  • Practice 3 CPT interventions useful for suicidal clients

Copyright : 09/10/2021

New Insights and Strategies: Crisis Safety Planning with Youth and Teens

Suicide is a leading cause of death among young people. Assessment, management and treatment is particularly important with those youth who struggle with behavioral health challenges. This workshop will offer insights and specific strategies for the practicing clinician.

Program Information

Objectives

  1. Assess suicidal behavior and manage suicide risk in youth.
  2. Construct interventions for youth in building healthy relationships.
  3. Develop skills and interventions to support healthy self-regulation in young clients.

Outline

  • Learn effective management of suicidality in youth
  • Employ evidenced-based management of suicide risk in youth
  • Gain insight into relational strengths that help youth
  • Feel more connected develop strategies for developing self-regulation capacities in youth

Copyright : 09/10/2021

Helping the Suicidal Person: A Clinical Toolbox

Suicidal people need more than to stay alive. They also need to find life worth living. This presentation synthesizes several concrete tips and techniques from a variety of evidence-based practices, including cognitive therapy for suicide prevention, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, problem-solving therapy, and more. The presentation will equip participants with knowledge and skills in tapping into suicidal ambivalence, inspiring hope, identifying reasons for living, and reinforcing gains.

Program Information

Objectives

  1. Construct a narrative approach to understanding a suicidal person’s story.
  2. Apply at least two strategies to inspire hope and problem-solving in the suicidal person.
  3. Demonstrate at least one method from cognitive behavior therapy to help clients challenge suicidal thoughts.
  4. Apply at least 2 techniques to help clients relate differently, via acceptance and observation, to their suicidal thoughts.

Outline

  • A narrative approach to helping the suicidal person
  • Interventions for building hope
  • Tapping into critical problem-solving skills
  • Core ACT and CBT techniques for the actively suicidal client
  • Key resilience interventions

Copyright : 09/10/2021

Embracing Suicidal Parts: Using Internal Family Systems (IFS) to Heal Traumatic Wounds

This session offers a practical exploration of how to approach suicidal ideation and behaviors from an Internal Family Systems approach.  Examining the pieces of the psyche that drive these thoughts, feels, and actions, IFS encourages the therapists to help clients make peace with, embrace and find love for suicidal parts.

Program Information

Objectives

  1. Conceptualize suicide from the Internal Family Systems approach.
  2. Employ at least 4 skills to integrate the IFS approach to suicidality treatment into other modalities.
  3. Practice aspects of coping through the IFS approach for suicidal parts management.

Outline

  • Demonstrate the basics and foundational principles of IFS.
  • Conceptualize IFS theory as an intervention for suicidality.
  • Practice aspects of coping through the IFS approach for suicidal parts management.

Copyright : 09/10/2021