Fall 2005 – Spring 2006

The following are the workshops from the School of Social Work’s Clinical Lecture Series, where area practitioners, students, and faculty learn together from esteemed and innovative clinicians. The CLS offers monthly lectures enhance the clinical curriculum for students and offer continuing education for graduates and practitioners. It also aims to foster and strengthen relationships among clinically-oriented students and the wider clinical community. Selection of topics and speakers come from participant feedback.

All events took place in the Tate-Turner-Kuralt Auditorium of the School of Social Work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill located at 325 Pittsboro Street, and met on Mondays from 12 noon to 2:00 pm.

Schedule of Events

Couples who exhibit hostility and dependency are among the most challenging couples for therapists to engage in collaborative problem-solving. In this seminar, participants will learn the stages of couples’ development as well as the general principles for working with these highly conflictual couples. Using scripted role plays, attendees will learn the benefits of using several clinical tools to diagnose and form interventions with each partner. The approach here comes from the Developmental Model of Couple’s Therapy, created by Drs. Ellyn Bader and Peter Pearson, which provides a non-pathological approach to assisting couples with life transitions while maintaining each partner’s autonomy & integrity.

Peter Nagel, LMFT, CGP is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and has 24 years experience working with individuals, couples & families in community health, hospital, EAP & independent practice settings. Mr. Nagel has used Bader & Pearson’s Developmental model of Couples Therapy since 1992. He is the current President of the Carolinas Group Psychotherapy Society and has made numerous presentations in North Carolina to professional organizations. 

Drawing from the principles of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, Meggan Moorhead will treat us to a refresher on practicing mindfulness in such a way that is helpful to clients and ourselves. A core theme in DBT is for us as therapists to be aware of our experience, respect our own limits, and treat ourselves at least as well as we treat our clients. DBT originated as a therapy to treat people with suicidality and borderline personality disorder in a way that is respectful of client and therapist. Additionally it targets the morale of both. In this session, Dr. Moorhead talks about DBT from the unique perspective of its contribution to the theory, structure and practical tools for treating the therapist.

Meggan Moorhead, Ed.D., is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of North Carolina and a Clinical Associate at Duke University Medical Center. Dr. Moorhead, mentored by Marsha Linehan who developed DBT, is an experienced DBT therapist, consultant and supervisor as well as an expert skills trainer. She is co-director of Triangle Area Dialectical Behavior Therapy and co-founder of the North Carolina Center for Positive Psychology. She has developed and led DBT Programs in a long-term unit of a state mental hospital and in private practice. She also works as a trainer for Behavioral Tech in Seattle, Washington, a training company for evidence-based treatments. Born and raised in Japan in a Southern Baptist Missionary family, she has a life-long interest in spirituality and its relationship to healing.

Jean McLendon will focus on the clinical application of the Satir Growth Model, a therapeutic model for inner growth that focuses on the congruence of feelings, words and actions. Ms. McLendon will provide an opportunity to refresh and deepen our understanding of the core values of this model, and help us work with clients to increase their coping strategies for relationship and other life difficulties. As an experienced trainer of therapists, Ms. McLendon will model techniques and further illustrate them with video footage of sessions.

Jean McLendon, LCSW, AAMFT, is one of the foremost practitioners of Satir family system therapy, having herself been mentored for nearly 20 years by the late Virginia Satir. Ms. McLendon is currently the Director of Satir Systems, a multi-service practice of training, coaching, supervision and therapy in Chapel Hill, NC. She has served on the faculties of numerous institutions, presented nationally and internationally on organizational consulting and psychotherapy, and is currently involved in making a documentary on the life and work of Virginia Satir. Of Ms. McLendon’s work Virginia Satir once wrote: “Jean has that rare capacity to be able to sit in the airport control tower and, at the same time, be aware of all the planes in her vision and be able to help them find out about themselves and their relationship to each other.”

Bebe Smith will provide an overview of effective psychosocial treatment for schizophrenia and related disorders. Topics covered will include engagement; cognitive behavioral therapy; supportive therapy; group therapy; and family psychoeducation. The presentation will also include information on the special issues involved in working with adolescents and young adults in the early phases of a psychotic disorder, and recent research advances that indicate the importance of secondary prevention.

Bebe Smith, MSW, LCSW is the Director of Outpatient Services for the STEP Clinic, part of the Schizophrenia Treatment and Evaluation Program at UNC in the Department of Psychiatry. She has worked in the STEP Clinic since 1995. Ms. Smith, a graduate of the UNC School of Social Work, developed an interest in working with adults with severe mental illness during her internship at Club Nova in Carrboro, NC, and from earlier volunteer experiences in a psychiatric hospital in England. Her interests include implementing psychosocial treatment programs that will improve quality of life for individuals with psychotic disorders and educating mental health professionals. For the past ten years, she has provided clinical training for psychiatry residents and graduate students from the fields of social work, nursing and rehabilitation psychology and counseling.

According to Dr. Wilson, anxiety disorders manipulate people by injecting rules into consciousness, then using that set of laws to take over mental territory. While anxiety disorders—phobias, panic, social anxiety, generalized anxiety and OCD—are no fun, Dr. Wilson helps us understand the way they operate through the use of a game metaphor. In this workshop, Dr. Wilson exposes the common denominators of the “anxiety disorder game,” and isolates the manifestations of each disorder. He then explores with us how therapists can teach clients to gain ground by engineering their own tactics and strategies, including the second-order change of switching game boards altogether!

R. Reid Wilson, Ph.D. is Adjunct Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine and a clinical psychologist in private practice in Chapel Hill, NC. Dr. Wilson is an international expert in the treatment of anxiety disorders, with books translated into seven languages, including Don’t Panic: Taking Control of Anxiety, Facing Panic: Self-Help for People with Panic Attacks, and Achieving Comfortable Flight. Much of his work focuses directly on helping individuals overcome their fears. His free self-help website – anxieties.com – serves approximately 500,000 visitors per year.

While the helping professions have clear prohibitions on sexual involvement with clients, there is less guidance about the phenomena that can lead to such transgressions. How can clinicians assure that the warmth, trust and positive regard that are hallmarks of the helping relationship do not become distorted and destructive and that nascent feelings of attraction are not ignored or mishandled? In this session, Kim Strom-Gottfried squarely addresses how to respond to and handle such feelings in an ethical manner. To illustrate her points, Dr. Strom-Gottfried presents sexual dilemmas and boundary issues that most often arise in the therapeutic encounter, and strategies to identify and treat them effectively and judiciously.

Kim Strom-Gottfried, Ph.D, is a Professor of Social Work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 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.

Eric Moss, Ph.D. will speak on group psychotherapy with Israeli civilians who have lost family members to random acts of terrorism. In Israel the scope of this problem is enormous: the numbers of victims has grown to the thousands. Citizens, going about their daily life in public places such as markets, buses, shopping centers, wedding halls, and night clubs are at risk of suicide bomb attacks. These traumatic events have a deleterious effect on Israeli society and on the family members of victims of indiscriminate attacks. Dr. Moss has been central in Israel in providing and supervising psychotherapy groups for bereaved parents, children, spouses, and siblings; and recently a group has been added that includes both Jews and Arabs, which signifies the universality of such loss, even in such a highly divisive political climate. Evidence shows that these groups have been extremely helpful in helping family members face and learn to live with the terrible trauma they have experienced. Dr. Moss will share techniques and insights gained through his clinical work.

Eric Moss, a clinical psychologist and group analyst in Israel, has worked for the past ten years as a consultant to the National Insurance Agency on all aspects of terror-related bereavement, and has been central in setting up, facilitating, and overseeing multiple bereavement groups. Currently there are some 15 groups, each consisting of 10-12 participants who have a family member who has been killed or maimed in a suicide bomb attack. Dr. Moss is a certified psychologist clinical psychologist in Israel, and his overall professional orientation is psychodynamic. He received his doctorate in rehabilitation counseling from New York University and psychoanalytic training from the Psychoanalytically-Oriented Psychotherapy Program at the Israel Psychoanalytic Institute in Jerusalem. He is a graduate of the Israeli Institute for Group Analysis in Tel Aviv. Dr. Moss has published 22 articles in the fields of psychiatry and individual and group psychotherapy.