Clinical Lecture Series 2014-15

Clinical Lectures are held monthly on Mondays from noon-2 p.m. in the School’s auditorium, beginning in September. Registration and a catered meet-and-greet reception open at 11:15 in the lobby. Online pre-registration is required. CLS wall flier 2014-2015

List of Presentations

• Monday, Sept. 22, 2014 – Barbara Fredrickson, Ph.D. and Mary Brantley, LMFT – Positive Emotions: The Science Behind Them and Practices to Change Your Life
• Monday, Oct. 20, 2014 – Meggan Morehead, Ph.D. – Dialectical Behavioral Therapy: What’s The Latest?
• Monday, Nov. 10, 2014 – Jon Abramowitz, Ph.D., and Ryan Jane Jacoby – ACT and Exposure Therapy: A Combined Approach to Enhance Treatment Engagement
• Monday, Jan. 12, 2015 – Reid Wilson, Ph.D. – A CBT Rapid-Gain Model in Anxiety Disorder Treatment
• Monday, Feb. 2, 2015 – Eric Youngstrom, Ph.D. – Differential Diagnosis and Depressive Disorders
• Monday, March 2, 2015 – Tonya Armstrong, Ph.D., M.T.S. – “Are You There, God? It’s Me and My Therapist” Spirituality as a Cultural Competency Practice 
• Monday, April 13, 2015 (2:00-4:00 p.m., in conjunction with Career Day) – Kim Strom-Gottfried, Ph.D. – Ethical Dilemmas with Colleagues

 Chapel Hill series celebrates its 10th year

Our Clinical Lecture Series will be celebrating its 10th anniversary this coming year by bringing back some of its most popular presenters. Since 2005, the Clinical Lecture Series has hosted or co-hosted approximately 100 programs, bringing together more than 10,000 individuals. The lunchtime model allows MSW students, faculty, and area clinicians to learn together from esteemed and innovative practitioners. According to NASW-NC Chapter Director Kathy Boyd,this model has been ”ahead of the curve” by bringing students and practitioners together as it does.

Up until this point, the CLS has not repeated a single speaker. “That this area is so rich with cutting-edge researchers and clinicians makes it possible to create fully new line-ups each year,” explains CLS founder Deborah Barrett. Over the years, Barrett imagined bringing back outstanding presenters at the 10-year milestone. According to Barrett, however, as year 10 approached, participant feedback clearly identified many more outstanding presenters than slots in the schedule would allow. Thus, Barrett faced a much larger pool of outstanding presenters than she could include in the anniversary year. The selections also take into account requests for specific topics and draw more heavily on the earlier years of the series.

1. Sept 22 – Positive Emotions: The Science Behind Them and Practices to Change Your Life, presented by Barbara Fredrickson, Ph.D. and Mary Brantley, LMFT ||  SLIDES || printable Handouts || link to video

Description: It is well known that early experiences of trauma and neglect can alter neural pathways, which have pathophysiological effects on wellbeing. This workshop provides a hopeful counterweight by presenting evidence on the healing power of positive emotions. Drawing from her renowned work on positive emotions, Barb Fredrickson will share findings on restorative processes of emotions, including from her latest work on love. This includes a paradigm shift on love itself as micro-connections that are available to all of us, regardless of relationship or family status. Mary Brantley will demonstrate how lovingkindness meditation can set the stage for profound changes. Together, they will provide tools to explain and incorporate positive emotions into daily practice.

Barbara L. Fredrickson, Ph.D. is Kenan Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Director of the Positive Emotions and Psychophysiology Laboratory at UNC Chapel Hill. She has published widely on emotions and positive psychology, including her broaden-and-build theory that explains how positive emotions can lead to novel, expansive, and exploratory behaviors that, over time, generate meaningful, long-term resources, such as knowledge and social relationships. Dr. Fredrickson is regularly invited to give keynote addresses nationally and internationally, and has won numerous awards for her teaching and research, including the American Psychological Association’s Templeton Prize in Positive Psychology and the Society of Experimental Social Psychology’s Career Trajectory Award, and the 2013 Christopher Peterson Gold Medal, the highest honor bestowed by the International Positive Psychology Association. Her books, Positivity (2009) and Love 2.0 (2014) share the science of positive emotions with a general readership with an emphasis on how to apply it to overcome negativity and thrive.

Mary Brantley, MA, LMFT, teaches loving kindness meditation in the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program at Duke Integrative Medicine, in Duke’s Distance Learning phone Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction classes, and in various projects at UNC-Chapel Hill. She has been practicing meditation for thirty years and attends yearly intensive retreats, many at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA. She has practiced with luminaries, including Sharon Salzberg, Joseph Goldstein, Joan Halifax, Thich Nhat Hanh, Rodney Smith and Leigh Brasington, and completed the professional training for Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction by Jon Kabat-Zinn and Saki Santorelli. She is co-author of The Gift of Loving–Kindness: 100 Meditations on Compassion, Forgiveness and Generosity,  and until recently, worked as a psychotherapist in private practice (25 years).

2. Oct 20 – Dialectical Behavioral Therapy: the latest on shame, emotion dysregulation, and neurobiology, presented by Meggan Moorhead, Ed.D. ||  SLIDES  || printable Handouts || link to video

Description: In this workshop, Meggan Moorhead will present cutting-edge research on Dialectical Behavioral Therapy and its application in the area of emotion dysregulation. This includes evidence-based strategies for working with shame as well as theory on emotions involved in emotional suffering. She will discuss neurobiological findings in understanding the emotional arousal system in individuals with borderline personality disorder as well as the research in the area of mindfulness practices.  She will also share the latest changes and offerings in Triangle Area DBT (TADBiT) as well as closely affiliated local programs.

Meggan Moorhead, Ed.D. is a Founding Director of Triangle Area Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (TADBiT). Dr. Moorhead studied with Dr. Marsha Linehan and is an expert DBT therapist, consultant, supervisor, and skills trainer. She participated in the first national Intensive Training of DBT (1993) and has remained a trainer for Dr. Linehan’s Seattle based DBT training company called Behavioral Tech. She has had the distinct pleasure of teaching in Japan, Australia and South Africa as well as in many US states. Locally, she has taught DBT Seminars at the UNC Department of Psychology and served as an expert therapist in research trials at Duke University Medical Center. She has developed DBT Programs in the long-term unit of a state hospital as well as in outpatient public and private mental health. Born and raised in Japan in a Southern Baptist Missionary family, she has loved the cultural sensitivity, the tender collaboration and mindfulness practice of this groundbreaking therapy.

 3. Nov 10 – ACT and Exposure Therapy: A Combined Approach to Enhance Treatment Engagement, presented by  Jon Abramowitz and Ryan Jane Jacoby || Printable Handouts

The overall goal of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is to help individuals take action and bring vitality and meaning into their life. In this workshop, Jonathan Abramowitz and Ryan Jane Jacoby masterfully weave together strategies from ACT and exposure therapy to help clients reduce avoidance behaviors in valued areas of life. Participants will learn how to think about exposure from an ACT framework, along with key concepts from both approaches. The presenters will apply and illustrate this approach on OCD in particular, a condition rife with avoidance behaviors and cognitive entanglements that impede engagement in meaningful pursuits. Drawing from case vignettes and illustrated with video, presenters will demonstrate ACT strategies for engaging clients in exposure, and also for synergizing exposure and response prevention.

Jonathan S. Abramowitz, PhD, ABPP is a Licensed Psychologist, Professor and Associate Chair of the Department of Psychology, and Research Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is also Director of the UNC Anxiety and Stress Disorders Clinic. Dr. Abramowitz conducts research on obsessive-compulsive and other anxiety disorders and has authored/edited five books and published over 100 peer-reviewed research articles and book chapters on these topics. He is Editor of two scientific journals, and has received awards for his scientific and professional contributions. He is President Elect of The Association for behavioral and Cognitive Therapies.

Ryan Jane Jacoby, M.A. is a Clinical Psychology doctoral student in the Anxiety/OCD Lab at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill. She conducts research on the nature and treatment of OCD and anxiety disorders, and is specifically interested in cognitive biases, treatment augmentation strategies, symptom dimensions of OCD, and inhibitory learning approaches to exposure therapy. Ms. Jacoby has published and presented her research at various national and international professional conferences, and has received numerous awards for her academic accomplishments.

4. Jan 12 – CBT rapid-gain model in anxiety disorder treatment, presented by Reid Wilson, Ph.D. || printable Handouts

Description: This presentation will define a rapid-gain treatment process with individuals with anxiety disorders, and illustrate each stage with videotaped segments—including in-vivo exposure—of a therapy session. Attention will focus on how the clinician presents the paradigm in a manner persuasive enough to counter the dread of symptoms and their feared consequences. Participants will learn ways to confront erroneous beliefs and to develop, assign and follow up on behavioral experiments.

Reid Wilson, Ph.D. is Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the UNC School of Medicine and directs the Anxiety Disorders Treatment Center in Durham and Chapel Hill. Dr. Wilson has dedicated his 30-year career to developing self-help strategies for the anxiety disorders. He is the author or co-author of four self-help books, including Don’t Panic: Taking Control of Anxiety Attacks (Harper),Stop Obsessing!: How to Overcome Your Obsessions and Compulsions(Bantam), the newly-releasedAnxious Kids, Anxious Parents: 7 Ways to Stop the Worry Cycle and Raise Courageous and Independent Children (HCI Books), and its free companion e-Book, Playing with Anxiety: Casey’s Guide for Teens and Kids. Dr. Wilson volunteers as the expert for WebMD’s Anxiety & Panic Community. His free self-help website – www.anxieties.com – serves 500,000 visitors per year. He designed and served as lead psychologist for American Airlines’ first national program for the fearful flier.  Dr. Wilson served on the Board of Directors of ADAA for 12 years and served as Program Chair of the National Conferences on Anxiety Disorders from 1988-1991. He has offered trainings throughout the world in the treatment of anxiety. Dr. Wilson has received the Jerilyn Ross Clinician Advocate Award for his outstanding advocacy for patient education and care, training, and research.

5. Feb 2 – Differential Diagnosis for Depressive Disorders: A Step-by-Step Assessment of a Complex Case presented by Eric Youngstrom, Ph.D. || link to handouts and tools

Description: This workshop will be conducted as something of a detective story. As clinicians we are often presented with clients who may come across at different moments as depressed, hopeful, anxious, giddy, shut-down, fearful, flat, or agitated. How we assess our clients impacts our treatment plan. Working effectively with PTSD, for example, would differ from our approach to treating an individual with social anxiety or depression. Yet even experienced clinicians do not always see eye-to-eye on diagnosis. In this workshop, Eric Youngstrom will illustrate the process of differential diagnosis by inviting us to engage in his gradually unfolding and transparent assessment of a particularly challenging case study. Participants will gain skills in differentiating between different types of mood disorders, why this matters, as well as gaining in familiarity with relevant assessment tools.

Eric A. Youngstrom, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist, and Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he is also Acting Director of the Center of Excellence for Research and treatment of Bipolar Disorder. He is an extremely engaged researcher – he has published over 200 peer-reviewed articles, reviewed articles for more than 70 scientific journals, and serves on the editorial boards of numerous journals. Much of his research has focused on ways to improve the use of clinical assessment instruments for making better differential diagnoses, predictions about future functioning, or monitoring of treatment progress – particularly with regard to bipolar disorder across the lifespan. Currently, he is the principal investigator on two multi-site studies designed to improve the assessment of bipolar disorder in diverse communities. He has presented his work at scientific meetings around the globe, and has received numerous awards for his research and teaching.

6. March 2 – “Are You There, God? It’s Me and My Therapist”: Spirituality as Culturally Competent Practice, presented by Tonya Armstrong, Ph.D., M.T.S.

Description: Mental health professionals in the 21st century are more and more likely to encounter clients who desire the integration of spirituality into their therapeutic care.  Indeed, our ethical obligation to demonstrate cultural competence extends into the arena of spirituality.  While contemporary training programs are increasingly adept at preparing students to navigate spiritual topics, many otherwise well-trained clinicians seek guidance in appreciating broad spiritual traditions and integrating spirituality competently.  Furthermore, for students and seasoned therapists alike, there exists a dearth of clinical, supervisory, and consultative opportunities to grapple with this ethereal subject using concrete strategies. This presentation will provide an overview of approaches for the conceptualization, assessment, and integration of spirituality into mental health and wellness care. Through a combination of didactic material, case studies, and experiential exercises, participants will learn integrative practices that can be applied in clinical settings.

Tonya Armstrong, Ph.D., M.T.S., a licensed psychologist, is the founder and CEO of The Armstrong Center for Hope, a private group practice of multi-disciplinary mental health professionals cultivating psychological and spiritual wellness for all ages. She has produced scholarship in the areas of spirituality, African-American mental health, end-of-life care, and grief.  Currently, she serves as the Dean of the Master of Arts in Christian Counseling program at the Apex School of Theology in Durham, NC and has served for the last 15 years as the Minister of Congregational Care and Counseling at Union Baptist Church in Durham, NC, where she helps oversee Stephen Ministry, grief support groups, and counseling and psychotherapy practice by licensed mental health professionals. Her previous experience includes serving as Pastoral Theologian at the Institute on Care at the End of Life at Duke Divinity School, as well as clinical and consulting experience in a variety of inpatient and outpatient settings. Throughout her work, Dr. Armstrong seeks the faithful integration of theology and mental health care.

7. April 13 –  Do I Intervene Here? Guidance on ethical dilemmas that arise with colleagues presented by Kim Strom-Gottfried, Ph.D.  || SLIDES || printable Handouts|| references

Clinical practice is rife with opportunities for ethical misconduct. Questions of the ethical conduct of others are particularly challenging because we not only have to decide on which side of the ethical divide their behavior falls, but also how to broach the topic with a colleague, supervisee, or even a supervisor. For example:

• Is it our responsibility to follow up with a fellow practitioner if we observe what appears to be a lapse in judgment?
• How do we distinguish between a difference in personal style and more questionable practice?
• And, when we do feel that a breech has occurred, how are we to respond – especially given worries we may have about our own relationship with that practitioner?

In this workshop, Kim Strom-Gottfried will help navigate participants through a variety of ethical dilemmas that may come to light within the supervisory or other collegial relationship, as well as strategies for weighing and resolving them. This workshop will draw on relevant tenets of the APA, ACA, and NASW codes of ethics and their application to effective supervision and professional practice.

Kim Strom-Gottfried, Ph.D, is the Smith P. Theimann Distinguished Professor for Ethics and Professional Practice at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Social Work. She has written, researched and taught extensively on the topic of ethics within social work practice. She is actively involved in continuing professional education—she has developed numerous workshops and frequently gives training seminars, including on the issues of professional ethics. She has served on NASW’s national committee on inquiry, the group that deals with violations of the NASW Code of Ethics. Her practice experience includes direct service, administrative and planning positions in the field of mental health, through nonprofit and public agencies.

More information

CEU: The UNC School of Social Work is an NBCC-Approved Continuing Education Provider (ACEPTM) and  may offer NBCC-approved clock hours for events that meet NBCC requirements. The ACEP solely is responsible for all aspects of the program.  

Two Contact Hours per event
National Board for Certified Counselors Credit (NBCC) 2 hours
No partial credit will be given. Participants must attend the entire program in order to receive credit.

Questions? Contact Deborah Barrett, Ph.D., LCSW at dbarrett@unc.edu or (919) 843-5818.