When You've Lost Your Self: The Use of Mindfulness in Trauma Treatment
These morning mindfulness sessions will give participants the opportunity to learn and practice the basics of mindfulness: deep breathing, gentle stretching, and body scanning. Mindfulness helps the individual be in the present moment, and has also been used with trauma survivors to help them center, connect with the Self, and process cognitive and emotional experiences more effectively.
Objectives:
- Quiet your mind
- Relax your body
- Be in the present
Treatment Planning for Person-Centered Care: The Road to Mental Health and Addiction Recovery
Moving to Recovery and Person-Centered Practice
(Repeated in the afternoon)This workshop will present changes in ways of working with service recipients to help providers move beyond the rhetoric of recovery and substantially change service user’s experience of care and outcomes. Developing skills in person-centered service planning is an effective strategy for making these changes. Policy makers, administrators and providers must have the clinical knowledge, skills and abilities along with the capacity to direct and manage systems change to realize the vision of a more humanistic and recovery oriented alcohol and drug and mental health service system. A focus on service planning and shared decision-making is an effective vehicle for leveraging this change.
Objectives: Participants in this workshop will:
- Review the need for systems change
- Understand the focus on service planning as a strategy for moving systems toward a recovery orientation
- Understand the technical elements of person-centered planning
- Developing strategies for change in your organization
Contingency Management for Enhanced Addiction Recovery
(Repeated in the afternoon)Research has consistently demonstrated that client motivation for positive change can be influenced by tangible incentives. Contingency Management is appropriate for work with adults, adolescents and families. This session will provide an overview of motivational incentives by using contingency management techniques, based on lessons from the NIDA Clinical Trials Network, a video and a demonstration of the Fishbowl method.
Objectives: During this workshop, participants will:
- Discuss the core principles of Contingency Management;
- Appreciate the relationship between Contingency Management and positive client outcomes;
- Participate in a demonstration of the Fishbowl method; and
- Apply Contingency Management principles to a case study.
A New Look at Relapse Prevention for Individuals with Substance Use and Co-Occurring Mental Health Disorders
(Continued in the afternoon)The majority of people with co-occurring SA and MI disorders require more than one treatment experience to achieve sobriety and stability. How can the clinician facilitate this goal? Comprehensive assessment focusing on relapse prevention, including provider behaviors and beliefs, can help improve outcomes. This workshop will integrate Gorski’s approach to relapse prevention with cognitive-behavioral approaches and Stages of Change, overlaid with ASAM-PPC-2R and DSM IV.
At the conclusion of this workshop, participants will have:
- Identified client and provider-related issues related to relapse
- Used the ASAM PPC six dimensions and the DSM-IV five axes to create and assessment for relapse prevention
- Demonstrated understanding the relationships between co-occurring mental health disorders and relapse to substance use;
- Demonstrated understanding the relationship between relapse and “stages of change;”
- Demonstrated understanding of the role of medication assisted treatment for addiction.
What About the Girls? Creating Gender-Responsive and Trauma-Informed Services
(Continued in the afternoon and Wednesday)Adolescence is a time of tremendous discovery, struggle, and growth, a process particularly difficult for girls as they face unique challenges along the road to healthy development. Their challenges can be exacerbated by our culture, which often offers girls a toxic environment in which to grow. Many young women lose their voice in this process. This workshop is based on the curriculum, Voices: A Program of Self-Discovery and Empowerment for Girls. It is designed to encourage girls and young women to find and express themselves. The program materials (facilitator’s guide and participant’s workbook) can be used in schools, treatment facilities, and juvenile justice settings. Topics covered include developing a positive sense of self, building healthy relationships, substance abuse, physical and emotional wellness, sexuality and planning for a positive future. Issues of young women and girls in the criminal justice system are also addressed.
Objectives:
At the conclusion of this session, participants will have:
- Learned about the world of girls;
- Received an overview of the elements needed for creating gender-responsive services;
- Discussed specific principles for designing services;
- Learned to facilitate interactive exercises that demonstrate strategies counselors can use with girls and women, including:
- Self
- Relationships
- Healthy living (physical, emotional, and spiritual)
- The journey ahead
Trauma-Informed Substance Abuse Treatment
(Continued in the afternoon)This training explores the connections between substance use and trauma. The training will examine how substances are used in the service of affective modulation and relief from trauma-related symptoms such as flashbacks. The presentation introduces skills trauma survivors need to develop for successful recovery from addiction and trauma. Treatment approaches frequently used within traditional addictions programs that may be counterproductive to trauma recovery are also explored. Participants will be introduced to a 20 session, fully manualized psycho-educational group for substance addicted trauma survivors. Participants will have an opportunity to participate in a mock group session.
Objectives:
During this workshop, participants will
- Learn how substances are used in the service of affective modulation and relief from trauma-related symptoms such as flashbacks.
- Learn skills trauma survivors need to develop for successful recovery from addiction and trauma.
- Understand the importance of maintaining healthy boundaries with their trauma survivor consumers.
- Learn how symptoms have served as adaptive or coping mechanisms.
- Understand important connections between trauma, substance abuse, and the inability to modulate emotions.
African American Males, Substance Abuse and the Context of Trauma
(Continued in the afternoon)Many African American males experience trauma at alarming rates, but most are evaluated along an externalizing continuum. As substance use and other multi-occurring disorders become more prevalent, they are often viewed through a lens which negates critical socio-historical factors. In doing so, clinicians are ill prepared in engaging natural ecology systems, as treatment becomes more institutionally focused and supported. This workshop will present a unique paradigm designed to assist providers in sustaining more recovery oriented systems of care in the treatment of difficult to engage populations.
Objectives:
This workshop will
- Present socio-historical factors to be considered in assessment.
- Identify and discuss critical barriers to engagement of both individual and natural ecology sub-systems.
- Provide a foundation for evaluating critical organizational barriers that inform and often cripple treatment effectiveness.
- Present recovery oriented elements critical in sustaining treatment effectiveness.
Grad Course EDUC C29: Substance Abuse and Society
(continued Monday through Friday)This graduate course offering by the College of William and Mary provides three hours of graduate course credit. A comprehensive overview of the physiological and pharmacological effects of drugs will be presented. Models of addiction and prevention will be examined. Screening, assessment, and treatment planning will be covered. This course meets the substance abuse education requirements for the LPC in Virginia.
This course requires different registration procedures and tuition payment; please email info@vsias.org for latest information. It begins Monday morning and ends Friday at noon. Participants must attend all sessions to receive credit.
William Nash, M.D., Director of combat and operational stress control programs in the United States Marine Corps, headquartered in Quantico, Virginia.
L. Worth Bolton, MSW, LCAS, Currently working with the Behavioral Health Care Resource Program in the School of Social Work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as Clinical Instructor/Educational Specialist at the graduate level.
Combat and Operational Stress Injuries and Addictions: Understanding, Recognizing, and Building Alliances for Recovery
(continued in the afternoon)Veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are at risk for a spectrum of post-deployment psychological and behavioral problems ranging from normal readjustment difficulties to literal stress injuries caused by traumatic experiences, fatigue, the loss of comrades in combat, or damage to moral value systems. Unhealed stress injuries may persist as mental disorders such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, or anxiety. All deployment-related stress problems are associated with an increased risk for substance abuse or dependence, and addictive behaviors of many kinds. Promoting recovery from stress injuries and illnesses and their associated addiction problems requires first an understanding of the stress of combat and other military operations, and how that stress is experienced in the world of the warfighter or veteran. The manifestations of stress injuries must be discriminated from normal readjustment, just as recreational drinking post-deployment must be discriminated from dangerous alcohol abuse. Understanding leads to recognition, but developing and implementing a plan for recovery requires the building of therapeutic alliances capable of surmounting obstacles of stigma, discouragement, and sometimes impairment of the very faculties in the veteran needed to do the work of recovery.
Objectives:
Participants in this workshop will
- Be able to list common sources of stress for warfighters deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, and for veterans returning to civilian life and work
- Be able to discriminate between normal adjustment or readjustment and stress injuries caused by trauma, fatigue, grief, or moral injury
- Be able to describe the ways in which both normal operational or post-deployment stress and stress injuries cause increased risk for addictive behaviors
- Be able to enumerate methods of overcoming mental health stigma and denial in veterans, to build effective alliances for recovery
Motivational Interviewing with Clients with Co-Occurring Disorders
(continued from Monday and continued in the afternoon)
The original research on Motivational Interviewing focused on clients with substance use and abuse problems and health care issues. This approach is now being adapted for work with clients who have co-occurring disorders. This workshop will provide an opportunity for counselors with previous training in Motivational Interviewing to practice applying the principles and techniques with this client population. This is an experiential workshop to facilitate skills development. Participants must have prior training in Motivational Interviewing with at least a year of experience practicing this approach. Workshop is limited to 30 participants.
Body Symphony: Attuning Body with Mind and Spirit
Learn theory and experience the power of the body working collectively during this workshop. The body responds to trauma by creating physical and emotional patterns that continue throughout a lifetime unless reprogramming occurs. The workshop brings together verbal and non-verbal experiences by utilizing body awareness, expressive movement and discussion. By gaining an understanding of the power of self-regulation through visualization, guided imagery, and movement, participants will experience personal shifts using new techniques that they can continue using with themselves and with clients.
Objectives:
Participants will
- Understand how events of an emotional nature affect biological patterns within the body;
- Learn body awareness in three domains of thought, feeling, and sensation;
- Experience personal shifts from anxiety/depression to peacefulness and calm through self-regulation techniques; and
- Develop new emotional patterns for responding to life stressors and learn ways to continue using these techniques with themselves and with clients.
Listen Up-10 Ways to be an Effective Advocate
Day 2 of 4: Substance Abuse Prevention Specialist Training
(must attend full week, limited to 25)
Johanna Schuchert is the Executive Director of Prevent Child Abuse Virginia, which coordinates Healthy Families Virginia, and is one of the founders of the organization, which began in 1978.
Maria Brown is currently Healthy Families’ State Director at Prevent Child Abuse Virginia.
Listen Up-10 Ways to be an Effective Advocate
It is difficult to know how to convey information about the major problems of addiction to public policy makers and other local and state-level decision makers in ways they will understand and act on. This session will explore effective strategies for educating decision makers and will provide an overview of the administrative and legislative process within which these efforts take place.
Objectives:
- Participants will understand the structure and process of the Virginia General Assembly.
- Participants will learn the difference between lobbying and advocating.
- Participants will learn how to maximize the strong points of their issue and understand and prepare to address vulnerable areas
- Participants will learn how to create written and verbal messages for key issues to be addressed through public policy.
- Participants will learn effective strategies for delivering the messages and to whom.
- Participants will understand the importance of the timing of advocacy activities as it relates to the annual legislative cycle.
Diane M. Grieder, M.Ed., co-author of
Treatment Planning for Person-Centered Care: The Road to Mental Health and Addiction Recovery
Moving to Recovery and Person-Centered Practice
(Repeated from the morning)
Art Therapy an Effective Tool for Addiction & Trauma
This half day workshop will provide an introduction to art therapy approaches for treating addiction and trauma. Art therapy as a treatment modality for individuals with a substance use disorders is well supported by literature, and is finding increasing support as a modality of choice in treating trauma. Recent developments in neurobiology and psychotherapy have provided an understanding of the importance of non-verbal techniques in trauma work. Art therapy has been identified as a “mind-body” intervention, and as a psychomotor activity may enhance the ability to tap into memories. The kinesthetic aspect of making art may facilitate a release of tension and serve to enhance relaxation. Art therapy protocols for treating trauma and various symptoms of PTSD under development and research will be discussed from theoretical viewpoint, and some of the specific techniques and art directives will be shared. Participants will see samples of client art and will have an opportunity to explore several techniques, specifically to the use of a personal mandala for meditation and healing purposes.
Objectives:
- Identify 4 characteristics of art that support trauma work;
- Articulate the 3 primary characteristics of PTSD; and
- Identify one art technique that supports affect regulation.
Contingency Management for Enhanced Addiction Recovery
(Repeated from morning)Research has consistently demonstrated that client motivation for positive change can be influenced by tangible incentives. Contingency Management is appropriate for work with adults, adolescents and families. This session will provide an overview of motivational incentives by using contingency management techniques, based on lessons from the NIDA Clinical Trials Network, a video and a demonstration of the Fishbowl method.
Objectives: During this workshop, participants will:
- Discuss the core principles of Contingency Management;
- Appreciate the relationship between Contingency Management and positive client outcomes;
- Participate in a demonstration of the Fishbowl method; and
- Apply Contingency Management principles to a case study.
A New Look at Relapse Prevention for Individuals with Substance Use and Co-Occurring Mental Health Disorders
(Continued from morning)
What About the Girls? Creating Gender-Responsive and Trauma-Informed Services
(Continued from morning and continued on Wednesday)
Trauma-Informed Substance Abuse Treatment
(Continued from morning)
African American Males, Substance Abuse and the Context of Trauma
(Continued from morning)
Ep-i-de-mi-ol-o-logy . . . . need translation?
Epidemiology is the study of factors affecting the health and illness of populations. These health indicators serve as the foundation and logic of interventions made in the interest of public health and preventive medicine. The substance abuse field has an expanding emphasis on epidemiology through ‘data-driven decision making” and tracking of ‘population level outcomes’. This workshop will clarify terms, demystify how to achieve population level outcomes and provide practical application of how to track community changes that may impact epidemiologic indicators. Examples of epidemiologic data will be discussed, and participants will work as teams on short projects which will help them understand how to use epidemiologic data.
Objectives:
Participants will:
- Gain an applied knowledge of the basic principals and concepts of epidemiology.
- Learn how epidemiology informs state targets for public health interventions.
- Understand what epidemiologic data tells and doesn’t tell about national, state and county conditions.
- Understand the difference between process measures, outcome measures and population level change measures at the state and community level.
- Identify the different formats for presenting epi data (trend lines, bar graphs and pie charts)
- Understand the basic principals of reliability when utilizing community level data indicators: Feasibility, Accuracy and Sensitivity.
Ten Science Based Principles of Changing Behavior
Drug courts seek to change the behavior of those appearing before the court. Specifically, drug courts want participants to remain drug free and crime free. This presentation will outline over sixty years of behavior research, and how that research may be used to help drug court participants and others before the court system change their behavior to live as sober, law-abiding citizens.
Objectives:
At the conclusion of this workshop
- Attendees should be able to identify ten principles of behavior change.
- Attendees should be able to apply principles of behavior change to individuals appearing before the court or in treatment.
Grad Course EDUC C29: Substance Abuse and Society
(continued Monday through Friday)This graduate course offering by the College of William and Mary provides three hours of graduate course credit. A comprehensive overview of the physiological and pharmacological effects of drugs will be presented. Models of addiction and prevention will be examined. Screening, assessment, and treatment planning will be covered. This course meets the substance abuse education requirements for the LPC in Virginia.
This course requires different registration procedures and tuition payment; please email info@vsias.org for latest information. It begins Monday morning and ends Friday at noon. Participants must attend all sessions to receive credit.
Combat and Operational Stress Injuries and Addictions: Understanding, Recognizing, and Building Alliances for Recovery
(continued from morning)
Motivational Interviewing with Clients with Co-Occurring Disorders
(continued from Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning)
The original research on Motivational Interviewing focused on clients with substance use and abuse problems and health care issues. This approach is now being adapted for work with clients who have co-occurring disorders. This workshop will provide an opportunity for counselors with previous training in Motivational Interviewing to practice applying the principles and techniques with this client population. This is an experiential workshop to facilitate skills development. Participants must have prior training in Motivational Interviewing with at least a year of experience practicing this approach. Workshop is limited to 30 participants.
Substance Abuse, PTSD and Returning OEF/OIF Veterans
This workshop will increase awareness and knowledge for substance abuse providers concerning the behavioral healthcare needs of veterans deployed in Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). The workshop will present an overview of the impact of OEF/OIF on veterans and their families in Virginia, including signs and symptoms in post-deployment, coping strategies, post-traumatic stress disorder, and clinical implications and challenges.
Objectives:
Workshop participants will
- Learn how to discriminate between PTSD and normal post-deployment issues in returning veterans; and
- Identify resources for services for returning veterans and their families.
Day 2 of 4: Substance Abuse Prevention Specialist Training
(must attend full week, limited to 25)
