These workshops offer 6 Continuing Education Credits
All webinars in this series are recorded and will not grant live credits.

Full Day Webinar 

May 19, 2022

10:00-1:00 EST

1:45-4:45 EST

6 CEs    $99.99

Under Pressure: Crisis Management (Suicide Prevention)

10:00 am - 1:00 pm EST

Elan Javanfard, MA, LMFT

This course explicates a systematic and structured conceptual model for crisis assessment and intervention that facilitates planning for effective brief treatment in outpatient psychiatric clinics, community mental health centers, counseling centers, or crisis intervention settings. Application of Roberts' seven-stage crisis intervention model can facilitate the clinician's effective intervening by emphasizing rapid assessment of the client's problem and resources, collaborating on goal selection and attainment, finding alternative coping methods, developing a working alliance, and building upon the client's strengths. This course clarify the distinct differences between disaster management and crisis intervention and when each is critically needed.

This workshop will address many core skills pertinent to suicide prevention.

(Elan Javanfard is a Psychotherapist (LMFT # 87054) who specializes in reintegrating the whole self, by utilizing present focused methods of discovery and coping. He also serves as an adjunct professor at Pepperdine University’s Graduate School of Education & Psychology.)

Bypassing the Superficial: Helping Therapy Patients Be More Open And Honest To You And, More Importantly, To Themselves

1:45 pm - 4:45 pm EST

Daniel Marston, PhD, ABPP

Getting patients to be open and honest during therapy is a challenge.  Psychotherapy educators often emphasize phrases like "meeting the patient where they are at" as a way of allowing patients to set the rules for what problems and issues will be discussed.  But if therapists allow patients too much control over what is addressed it gives patients reason to stop therapy with the excuse that it is not really addressing the problems.  As an example of this think of a patient with an alcohol problem who says that their "real problem" is that they do not know how to get along with other people.  Therapists who allow the patient too much control in this regards will likely end up with a patient who quits therapy when they keep running into problems with their alcohol use (which has not changed since it is not really addressed in therapy).  And then therapists who are too insistent on patients discussing their "real problems" will often be met with patients quitting therapy because the therapist "is not really the right fit".

This presentation will focus on the issue of effective ways of getting psychotherapy patients to be open and honest in therapy.  It will emphasize trying to find that balance between being supportive and empathic but also being tough and directive enough to get patients to face negative truths about themselves.  Creating and mainting a supportive envrionment, emphasizing a nonjudgmental approach, using transference behaviors (i.e. therapeutic behaviors that are associated with what psychodynamic therapists term "transferrence"), using direct but supportive therapy approaches and providing effective feedback will all be topics addressed throughout this presentation.  Psychological issues related to denial and resistance, issues that date back to the earliest days of psychotherapy and continue to be relevant now, will also be addressed.

(Dr. Daniel Marston is a licensed psychologist specializing in behavioral psychotherapy and particularly in "third-wave" behavior therapies like ACT, FAP and DBT. He is board certified in Cognitive & Behavioral Psychology by the American Board of Professional Psychology and also presently serves on the Board of Directors for that specialty board. He is the author of two clinical books and a number of clinical publications. His article published in the August, 2021 issue of "Psychology Today" entitled "Don’t Let Yourself Off The Hook" addresses openness and honesty in psychotherapy and served as the starting point on which this presentation is based.)