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AAMFT Institutes for Advanced Clinical Training
 March 3 - 7, 2010
 Panama City Beach, FL

Treating Military Families Using Integrative and Evidence Based Therapy
Lance Sneath, M.S., M.Div.

Hundreds of thousands of families are being affected by military deployments, separations, financial strain, and combat stress. The culture and context of the military lifestyle and community requires special knowledge and skills to provide effective therapy with service members, veterans, and their families. The attachment relationships which give meaning and stability to people are at the center of impact for the effects of the Global War On Terror (GWOT) for these combat veterans and their families.

Therapists who are equipped with knowledge of the military culture and skilled in the ability to successfully integrate research, constructivist concepts, experiential methods, and EFT techniques, can more competently assist military families in developing secure and resilient relationships on their journey home.  Whether you work in a military setting or see military families in your civilian practice, this course will prepare you to work competently and effectively with active duty and veteran military families. This Institute will also assist you in learning the numerous and varied opportunities for clinical professionals to serve the military population both in federal and private practice settings. Course instruction will include multimedia presentation, literature review, narrative and video case studies, small group discussion, and role playing enactments and experiential sculpting.

Participants will learn to:

·      observe the impact of military culture on the family.

·      understand the effects of deployment, combat, and combat related stress on the military family.

·      conceptualize and assess military family symptoms and treatment through the lens of attachment theory and family systems theory.

·      join with military family clients effectively to create a safe, trusted, therapeutic alliance for stabilization of the family.

·      formulate treatment plans that integrate with the network of military, civilian, and Veterans Administration (VA) treatment providers.

·      use EFT techniques to restructure the attachment relationships of service members and their families to become relationships that provide healing, a safe haven, and a secure base.

·      facilitate a process of integration for military families that enables them to make sense of their journey and enables them to reconsolidate their beliefs, values, and sense of meaning.

·      serve military families as clinicians through working with various federal and private settings.

Chaplain (Lieutenant Colonel) Lance Sneath is the Director and a clinical supervisor at the U.S. Army Chief of Chaplain’s Family Life Chaplain Training Center at Fort Hood, Texas. He trains and supervises Army and Air Force Chaplains in Marriage and Family Therapy in an internship program associated with the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor at Fort Hood, Texas. He also trains and supervises civilian MFT interns from several universities at the Fort Hood center, providing thousands of treatment hours annually to service members and their families within the Fort Hood community. He is an Approved Supervisor and a Clinical Member of AAMFT, an LMFT with the State of Texas, a Diplomat of both the American Association of Pastoral Counselors (AAPC) and the College of Pastoral Supervision and Psychotherapy (CPSP). Chaplain Sneath is also an EMDR Certified Therapist with EMDRIA. He completed an Externship in EFT under Dr. Sue Johnson at the Ackerman Institute in New York.  He has given presentations twice at the AAPC Annual Conference on treating combat veteran families with EFT. Chaplain Sneath has served in multiple Army commands where he has provided support for military families who have been directly impacted by deployments in support of the Global War on Terror.  Chaplain Sneath is himself a combat veteran who deployed to Saudi Arabia and Iraq in 1990-1991 in support of Operations Desert Shield, Operation Desert Storm, and Operation Provide Hope.