100 Series, Thursday, September 13, 2012 at 9:00 AM - 3:30 PM

100- FULL
Approved Supervisor Refresher Course

Michele S. Smith
AAMFT Approved Supervisors must take a comprehensive 5-hour refresher course prior to the renewal of their designation. This institute is designed specifically to meet that requirement, and to keep participants up-to-date on clinical MFT supervision practice. The course will include case examples, didactic and interactional instruction methods. It will focus on current resources available to supervisors, management of ethical and legal issues likely to arise during supervision, utilization of supervision contracts, cultural competence in supervision and therapy, and discussion of the current AAMFT Approved Supervisor requirements.

101
Sexuality Counseling and Therapy: Foundations for Practice

John Stephen Southern
Rochelle Cade
This institute is devoted to building advanced clinical skills in the research-based practice of sexual counseling and therapy. The session will provide basic information about sexual health and emphasize connections among intimacy, love, and desire. Therapists will learn treatment models for sexual dysfunction, addiction, and boundary violation. The institute will include the examination of professional attitudes, values, and issues.

102
The Use of Play in Family Therapy

Trudy Post Sprunk
The institute will provide marriage and family therapists the opportunity to learn and experience the advantages of including children in family therapy using Family Play Therapy techniques. Through the use of video, discussion, small group opportunities, and lecture, attendees will explore a variety of simple easy approaches that integrate Play Therapy with Family Therapy.

103
In or Out? Discernment Counseling for Couples

William Doherty
Steven Harris
Couples and therapists often get stuck when spouses show up uncertain about whether to try therapy, let alone whether to stay married. This institute will present a field-tested protocol for “discernment counseling” that helps couples explore the decision about divorcing or trying a course of therapy and other services to see if they restore their marriage to health.

104
WOMEN'S HEALTH AND WELL-BEING: Dealing with Empty Arms: Women and Infertility

Kami Schwerdtfeger
Bobbi Miller
Andrew Brimhall
Michelle Engblom-Deglmann
Grace Wilson
Lauren Oseland
Reproductive problems affect a significant number of women. An overview of research on women’s experiences of reproductive problems will be presented. Clinical approaches based in trauma, ambiguous loss, and attachment theory, and a case study will be used to prepare clinicians to conceptualize and treat reproductive related losses in the lives of women from a relational lens.

105
Qualitative Research: Adventures in the Pyramids of Evidence

Ronald Chenail
In MFT clinical research circles, qualitative researchers often find their work marginalized to a position outside the hierarchical clinical evidence pyramids or at best relegated to a lower quality level. To address this situation, participants will learn how to incorporate rigor-enhanced qualitative research methodologies into interventional, observational, and review designs leading to enhanced MFT evidence and practice.

106
Building Cross-Disciplinary Bridges for Client Success

Lee Johnson
Jerry Gale
Megan Ford
Joseph Goetz
Therapists are often unprepared to assess and intervene in issues of finances, nutrition, home environments, and legal issues. Using literature from neuroscience and other disciplines, and experiences from our interdisciplinary clinic, this institute will provide strategies and resources for working for working with other professionals. These strategies will increase the therapist’s client base, collaborate with other disciplines, and improve client outcomes.

107
Practical Applications of Mindfulness and Mentalization

Glenn Veenstra, Jr.
Participants will learn to use mindfulness to perceive relationship interactions from new perspectives. Individual meditative techniques will be outlined and explained in terms of the neuroscience of the mind so core mindfulness aspects can be abstracted and applied in more practical relational ways. Then ways of translating the perspective into new maps for action by mentalization improvements will be illustrated.

108
WOMEN AND THE MILITARY: Returning Female Veterans and After-Deployment Struggles

Jerry Powell
Shannon Cate
Deborah Bell
This institute will help clinicians understand the differences between post combat readjustment, PTSD and mild traumatic brain injury and different approaches to treat each variance and how it impacts women returning from combat. Participants will better understand unique assessment tools available for after-combat female veterans and how to implement these instruments into therapy.

109
Walk-in/Single Sessions in Agencies and Private Practices

Arnold Slive
Monte Bobele
Adding walk-in/single session capabilities to existing practices is an opportunity to increase services and decrease down-time. This institute is designed to provide a variety of practice settings with the tools to take advantage of this service delivery paradigm. It will describe how to conduct effective single sessions and organize single session services in agencies and private offices.

110
Creative Group Activities: Learning from the Quilting Bee

Jannette Sturm-Mexic
Borrowing from the collective process in traditional women’s quilting bees and sewing circles, this institute will introduce attendees to creative approaches for therapeutic group work grounded in Group Systems Theory. This session will provide attendees with hands-on group experiences using creative activities developed for group members of various ages attending group for different reasons.

111
Couple Therapies for Psychological and Physical Aggression

Norman Epstein
Carol Werlinich
John Hart
BreAnna Davis
Morgan Childers
Deanna Pruitt
David S. Curtis
Andrew J. Dauler
This presentation will describe and demonstrate assessment and treatment with couples experiencing psychological and mild to moderate physical aggression. Guidelines for using cognitive-behavioral, emotionally-focused, and narrative couple therapies will be described and compared, as well as ethical considerations and gender-related issues involved in conjoint treatment of aggression. Assessment and treatment methods will be demonstrated through video examples.

112
SUPERVISION TRACK: Laying a Foundation for Your Supervision

Mary Hotvedt
In this institute, participants will learn about the four roles of supervisors described by common factors research. They will also begin to formulate their own styles of supervision consistent with their therapeutic modalities and philosophies. We will explore the difference between an "eclectic" and an "integrated" mode of supervision.  We will look at how to operationalize one's model through the four roles of the supervisor. The workshop, and the whole series, will be both didactic and  experiential, encouraging individual participation as much as possible. (This institute addresses learning objectives 1 and 2.)

113
Reproductive Mental Health: The Myth of Maternal Bliss

Diana Lynn Barnes
A woman's experience of pregnancy and motherhood is embedded in social and cultural ideology. Unrealistic expectations imposed by societal myths have a significant impact on her mental health. This institute will address their impact on a woman's vulnerability to perinatal mood and anxiety disorders. Risk factors will be discussed along with therapeutic approaches to treatment.

114
Young, Gifted, and Trapped: Black Girls and Therapy

Kenneth Hardy
Renata Carneiro
Christiana Awosan

Black girls often find their psyches and souls torn apart at the intersection of racism and sexism. Consequently, many Black girls tend to suffer from the wounds of an ‘assaulted sense of self’. This session will provide an overview of ‘assaulted sense of self’ that maligns the lives of Black girls will be explored as well as effective treatment strategies will be provided.

115
Caregiving Women: Surviving Elder Care Tsunami

Venus Masselam
Alexsandra Papura-Gill
Alexis McKenzie
Increased longevity and the growing number of aging adults are changing caregiving demands on family members leading to increased morbidity and mortality of caregivers. This institute will help therapists understand their own issues and views of this stage. Practical considerations for therapists seeking employment in this area will be presented.