In this training session participants will learn about the principles of Psychological First Aid. Participants will learn to recognize potential risk factors and warning signs for a range of mental health problems following exposure to traumatic or stressful events. Participants will gain the skills necessary to effectively assess and manage psychological distress in the immediate aftermath of traumatic or stressful events.

Objectives: 

1. Recognize the potential risk factors and warning signs for a range of mental health problems following trauma exposure.
2. Describe the core principles of psychological first aid. 
3. Understand how to use psychological first aid to support individuals who recently experienced trauma.

Dr. Held is a licensed clinical psychologist and an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Rush University Medical Center. Dr. Held is also the Research Director of the Road Home Program: National Center of Excellence for Veterans and Their Families and Director of the TREAT (Treatment Response, Efficacy, Access, and Timing) Lab. As a health services researcher, Dr. Held is passionate about innovating mental health care treatments, especially as it relates to PTSD and other trauma-related disorders. His research focuses on examining the efficiency and effectiveness of evidence-based treatments for PTSD and other trauma related disorders such as substance use, mood, and anxiety disorders. Dr. Held’s goal is to develop briefer and more accessible treatments so more people can benefit from them. Additionally, his research aims to and identify ways to help those who do not respond to existing treatments. Dr. Held’s research combines clinical treatment with advanced statistics and analytics, such as machine learning, with the goal of being able to further tailor treatments and match an individual with the type and length of treatment in which they are most likely to succeed given their background and experiences.

Given the devastating traumas and losses that youth continue to experience throughout Israel and Gaza, behavioral health providers are uniquely positioned to help identify and address the acute mental health needs of these children and provide timely support. This presentation will provide a high-level overview of how trauma and grief manifest in children and adolescents, how to identify those in need of mental health care, and how to utilize evidence-based, best practices to reduce their psychological distress.

Dr. Julie Kaplow is a licensed clinical psychologist, board certified in Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology. She serves as Executive Vice President of Trauma and Grief Programs and Policy at the Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute and Executive Director of the Trauma and Grief (TAG) Center at The Hackett Center for Mental Health in Houston. Dr. Kaplow is also Executive Director of the TAG Center at Children’s Hospital New Orleans and Professor of Psychiatry at Tulane University School of Medicine. She is also CEO of the Lucine Center for Trauma and Grief, a group practice that provides no-cost teletherapy to youth exposed to traumas and losses across the states of Texas and Louisiana. In these roles, she oversees the development and evaluation of treatments for traumatized and bereaved youth and disseminates trauma- and bereavement-informed “best practices” to community providers nationwide. Following tragedies such as Hurricane Harvey and the Santa Fe school shooting, Dr. Kaplow and her team provided evidence-based risk screening and interventions to impacted children and families. More recently, they have been conducting and coordinating trainings for school- and community-based clinicians throughout Uvalde, Texas following the Robb Elementary School shooting.

This 90-minute workshop will help providers identify important Stuck Points, thoughts that people can’t get past. Then picking the most important Stuck Point, Dr. Resick will explain and demonstrate how to implement Socratic Dialogue to help them examine the facts and context and develop a more balanced thought. With the change in thinking, emotions and PTSD symptoms should be decreased.

Patricia A. Resick, Ph.D., ABPP is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University. Dr. Resick received her Doctorate in Psychology from the University of Georgia. Over her career, she also served on the faculties of the University of South Dakota, the Medical University of South Carolina, the University of Missouri-St. Louis, where she held an endowed professorship, and Boston University.  For a decade Dr. Resick was the Director of the Women’s Health Sciences Division of the National Center for PTSD at VA Boston Healthcare System.  Dr. Resick has received grants from NIH, NIJ, CDC, SAMHSA, VA and DoD to provide services and conduct research on the effects of traumatic events, particularly on women, and to develop and test therapeutic interventions for PTSD. Specifically, she developed and tested Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), an effective short term treatment for PTSD and corollary symptoms. She has published nine books and over 250 journal articles and book chapters. Since 2006 she has been a leader of a national VA initiative to disseminate Cognitive Processing Therapy throughout the VA system and is currently working on five clinical trials in San Antonio and Ft. Hood, Texas, one at Duke, a large cooperative study in VA comparing CPT with PE, and consulting on several grants overseas.

The loss of someone significant commonly challenges a griever’s sense of purpose, meaning, and identity as well as adaptive meaning-making processes. This presentation will describe applications of a manualized therapeutic approach, Meaning-Centered Grief Therapy (MCGT), which has been developed for and evaluated with bereaved parents, though has applicability to other grieving populations. MCGT helps parents recognize their ability to choose their attitude in the face of suffering, to connect with sources of meaning in their lives, to choose how they construct narratives related to their lives and their loss, and to remain connected to their deceased child. Cases will be discussed, and how to adapt the intervention’s principles and exercises to various common clinical scenarios that grievers face will be explored.

Learning Objectives:

1.     To identify meaning-making challenges that grievers, and bereaved parents in particularly, commonly face.
2.     To describe the core principles of Meaning-Centered Grief Therapy.
3.     To describe exercises designed to facilitate meaning-making.

Wendy G. Lichtenthal, PhD, FT is Director of the Center for the Advancement of Bereavement Care at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center and Associate Professor, Pending Rank, in the Department of Public Health Sciences, Division of Prevention Science and Community Health at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. She is a licensed clinical psychologist and has worked as a grief specialist for 20 years. Since 2005, she has been at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) in New York City, where she was Founding Director of the Bereavement Clinic and Associate Attending Psychologist, and where she now serves as Consultant Faculty. She completed her undergraduate studies at The University of Chicago, her doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania, her clinical psychology internship at the Payne Whitney Clinic at Weill Cornell Medicine, and a postdoctoral research fellowship in psycho-oncology at MSK, where she was Chief Research Fellow. She was a recipient of the 2012 International Psycho-Oncology Society Kawano New Investigator Award, the 2019 Association for Death Education and Counseling (ADEC) Research Recognition Award, and the 2023 American Psychosocial Oncology Society Outstanding Clinical Care Award. She is a Fellow in Thanatology and was elected to the ADEC Board of Directors in 2023. Her research has been funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, National Cancer Institute, National Institute of Nursing Research, American Cancer Society, T.J. Martell Foundation, and MSK’s Cycle for Survival and has focused on grief and bereavement, cancer survivorship, meaning-making, identifying grieving family members in greatest need of support, and intervention development and evaluation.

1.     Lichtenthal WG, Catarozoli C, Masterson M, Slivjak E, Schofield E, Roberts KE, Neimeyer RA, Wiener L, Prigerson HG, Kissane DW, Li Y, Breitbart W. An open trial of Meaning-Centered Grief Therapy: Rationale and preliminary evaluation. Palliat Support Care, 2019; 17(1):2-12.
2.     Lichtenthal WG, Lacey S, Roberts K, Sweeney C, Slivjak E. Meaning-Centered Grief Therapy. In Breitbart W (Ed.), Meaning-Centered Psychotherapy (pp.88-99). New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017
3. Lichtenthal WG, Breitbart, W. The central role of meaning in adjustment to the loss of a child to cancer: Implications for the development of Meaning-Centered Grief Therapy. Curr Opin Support Palliat Care 2015; 9(1):46-51
4.     Lichtenthal WG, Breitbart, W. Finding meaning through the attitude one takes. In R. A. Neimeyer (Ed.), Techniques in Grief Therapy: Creative Strategies for Counseling the Bereaved (pp. 161-164). New York: Routledge; 2012

5.     Lichtenthal WG, Roberts KE, Catarozoli C, Schofield E, Holland JM, Fogarty JJ, Coats TC, Barakat LP, Baker JN, Brinkman TM, Neimeyer RA, Prigerson HG, Zaider T, Breitbart W, Wiener L. Regret and unfinished business in parents bereaved by cancer: a mixed methods study. Palliative Medicine 2020; 34(3):367-377.

The presentation will describe adaptation of cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia when treating patients with trauma exposure, and will incorporate with element from acceptance and commitment therapy. The talk will also cover imagery rehearsal therapy to address nightmares and how to sequence the two.

Rachel Manber, Ph.D, DBSM, is Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University and co-director of the multidisciplinary Center for Sleep and Circadian Sciences. In addition, she directs of the Stanford Sleep Health and Insomnia Program (SHIP), where she provides behavioral sleep medicine interventions to adults as well as children and adolescents and mentors behavioral sleep medicine researchers and practitioners.  Her research is focused on insomnia and its treatment in specific populations.  Dr. Manber published over 150 peer-reviewed articles, as well as two self-help books and a book for clinician, describing a flexible case-formulation-based approach to CBTI.  A strong emphasis of her work is on the dissemination and implementation of CBTI, including her leadership in the nationwide CBTI training rollout in the VA and her research on stepped-care approaches that combine therapist and digitally delivered CBTI.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for nightmares can reduce the frequency and intensity of nightmares and improve sleep and daytime symptoms of PTSD and depression. This presentation will provide an overview of nightmare disorder and assessment procedures. It will also provide basic step-by-step procedures for implementing nightmare exposure exercises, dream rescription, and imagery rehearsal practice. 

Kristi Pruiksma, PhD is an Associate Professor and licensed clinical psychologist in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. Her clinical and research work focuses on providing treatment, conducting clinical research, and supporting dissemination of evidence-based treatments for insomnia, nightmares, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In her role, she has served as a DoD-funded principal investigator, research therapist, supervisor, and trainer for the STRONG STAR Research Consortium (strongstar.org). Dr. Pruiksma has authored or co-authored over 50 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters related in these fields.

When mental health professionals are “impacted people helping impacted people,” the work can become so much more challenging . This presentation will explore how the indirect exposure to trauma and loss, while also being exposed directly, can affect mental health professionals who are providing services in Israel. Discussion will focus on strategies to help enhance compassion satisfaction, posttraumatic growth, and resilience for providers.

Marisa Nowitz, MSW, LCSW-S is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker-Supervisor with over  twenty years of clinical experience, as well as expertise in education, training, and program development. As Senior Director of School and Community Engagement at the Trauma and Grief (TAG) Center, Marisa directs the external training program and provides school and community-based trainings in a variety of mental health topics related to supporting youth exposed to trauma and loss. In her previous role at the TAG Center, Marisa supervised a clinical team and provided evidence-based, trauma- and bereavement-focused services as part of the coordinated response efforts in the community of Santa Fe, TX following the tragic school shooting in 2018.  Prior to joining the TAG Center, Marisa spent much of her career working as a clinical social worker and supervisor at MD Anderson Cancer Center, creating programming for children whose parents had cancer. Marisa completed her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Texas A&M University and a Master of Social Work from the University of Houston. 

This training is a follow-up to Dr. Wendy Lichtenthal’s Part I presentation on Meaning Centered Grief Therapy (MCGT). This training will provide a more in-depth exploration of MCGT, a conceptually sound, telehealth-delivered therapy that focuses on helping individuals find a sense of meaning or purpose in their life after loss. As attendees follow the journey of MCGT, case material will be presented to illustrate didactics, exercises, and how MCGT can support individuals cope with guilt after a traumatic loss.

Wendy G. Lichtenthal, PhD, FT is Director of the Center for the Advancement of Bereavement Care at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center and Associate Professor, Pending Rank, in the Department of Public Health Sciences, Division of Prevention Science and Community Health at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. She is a licensed clinical psychologist and has worked as a grief specialist for 20 years. Since 2005, she has been at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) in New York City, where she was Founding Director of the Bereavement Clinic and Associate Attending Psychologist, and where she now serves as Consultant Faculty. She completed her undergraduate studies at The University of Chicago, her doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania, her clinical psychology internship at the Payne Whitney Clinic at Weill Cornell Medicine, and a postdoctoral research fellowship in psycho-oncology at MSK, where she was Chief Research Fellow. She was a recipient of the 2012 International Psycho-Oncology Society Kawano New Investigator Award, the 2019 Association for Death Education and Counseling (ADEC) Research Recognition Award, and the 2023 American Psychosocial Oncology Society Outstanding Clinical Care Award. She is a Fellow in Thanatology and was elected to the ADEC Board of Directors in 2023. Her research has been funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, National Cancer Institute, National Institute of Nursing Research, American Cancer Society, T.J. Martell Foundation, and MSK’s Cycle for Survival and has focused on grief and bereavement, cancer survivorship, meaning-making, identifying grieving family members in greatest need of support, and intervention development and evaluation.

Obsessive-compulsive symptoms represent a unique complication in the treatment of trauma. It is only recently that clinicians have begun to systematically evaluate the nature of this complex co-occurring symptom profile. In this presentation, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) will be described, and the functional connection it may have following trauma. Further coverage of the common areas of behavioral avoidance, emotional reactions, and cognitive dimensions between OCD and trauma will be described. Finally, coverage of methods of adapting treatments for OCD and trauma will be covered. Ample time for discussion will be provided.

Dean McKay, Ph.D., ABPP is Professor of Psychology at Fordham University, is President (2018) of the Society for a Science of Clinical Psychology and Past President of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (2013-2014). He has published over 200 peer reviewed articles and book chapters, and is the editor or co-editor of 19 books. He is board certified in Clinical and Cognitive-Behavioral Psychology from the American Board of Professional Psychology. In addition to his professorship, McKay co-directs the Institute for Cognitive Behavior Therapy and Research, a private group psychological practice.