Fall 2009 – Spring 2010
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
1. September 14, 2009 || link to more info, handouts
Responding to client therapy-interfering behaviors using behavioral principles and techniques
Jennifer Kirby, PhD
Developing an understanding of clients’ problematic behaviors, particularly those that potentially interfere or limit the effectiveness of psychotherapy, is important in creating sound treatment approaches that both assist clients in making gains and therapists in maintaining treatment morale. Drawing from dialectical behavior therapy and behavioral analysis, this workshop will present an approach to assessing and intervening on those client behaviors (therapy-interfering behaviors) that can limit therapeutic progress and greatly frustrate therapists, potentially leading to therapist burn-out over time. This workshop will provide a brief introduction to behavioral principles, a discussion of the treatment strategies of behavioral analysis and solution analysis, and a consideration of how these interventions can be employed with the ultimate goal of enhancing the therapeutic alliance and overall treatment process.
Jennifer S. Kirby, PhD is a Licensed Psychologist and Research Assistant Professor in the Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She specializes in cognitive behavioral therapy and dialectical behavior therapy, and trains and supervises graduate students in individual and couple therapy using these treatment approaches. Dr. Kirby has participated in the development and evaluation of a number of relationship intervention programs from a cognitive-behavioral perspective. These have included working with couples who are experiencing emotion dysregulation, health concerns such as breast cancer, extramarital affairs, anorexia nervosa, and couples who are preparing for marriage. Her interest and expertise in training others in individual and couple therapy is enriched by her teaching of doctoral courses in dialectical behavior therapy, empirically supported treatments for adults, and clinical supervision. She also maintains an active private practice with individuals and couples.
2. October 19, 2009 || link to more info, handouts
The journey of grief: For the clinician and client
Steve Bradley-Bull, MA, MEd, LPC
For us as clinicians, and as human beings, grief work can be powerful. This workshop focuses on ways to prepare ourselves to work effectively with clients who have experienced significant loss by exploring and integrating our own losses and perspectives on life, death, and grief. Steve Bradley-Bull will engage participants with a variety of experiential exercises to aid in their own journeys, with the goal of increasing their ability to be present with clients through their grief. The workshop also features resources for grief work, such as a Grief Wheel, which can provide a roadmap for clients and clinicians, and how to recognize and heed “yield signs” in the grieving process that are fundamental to healing.
Steve Bradley-Bull, MA, MEd, LPC is the founder of the Center for All Seasons, a counseling practice in Durham and Chapel Hill. Steve’s practice focuses on living, dying, grief, and life transition experiences and often incorporates mindfulness practices and acceptance work into his counseling. Steve has facilitated workshops and support groups and counseled individual clients for UNC Hospice, Duke HomeCare and Hospice, Hospice of Wake County, Ronald McDonald House of Chapel Hill, and Caring House of Durham, among others.
3. November 16, 2009 || link to more info, handouts
Treating clients and ourselves with positivity
Barbara Fredrickson, PhD
As psychotherapists, we spend considerable time on “negative emotions” – we help our clients to name them, tolerate them, understand them within a context, reduce their intensity, and change them. In this workshop, Barbara Fredrickson provides compelling reasons to focus on the “positive” in our clients’ lives and in our own. Drawing from her groundbreaking research on the hidden value of positive emotions, Dr. Fredrickson describes how unlike negative emotions, which narrow people’s behavioral urges toward fight or flight, positive emotions increase our resources in some surprising ways, contributing both to a momentary and a cumulative effect on our experience.
Barbara L. Fredrickson is Kenan Distinguished Professor of Psychology and principal investigator 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 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 is regularly invited to give keynote addresses nationally and internationally. Her book, Positivity (2009), shares the science of positive emotions with a general readership with an emphasis on how to apply it to overcome negativity and thrive.
4. January 25, 2010 || link to more info, handouts, video
Beyond the gender binary: Broadening our lens and strengthening our work
Avery Cook, MSW, LCSW and Melisa Bailey, MA
People often think about gender in terms of two categories, but this may not adequately fit our clients’ experiences. Clinicians can benefit from cultivating a lens that encompasses the continuum of gender identity and expression. Our sense of ourselves as gendered individuals affects our self evaluation, our preferences, and our relationships. As clinicians, it is important to understand our own gender assumptions and the ways that we may collude with or challenge our clients’ experiences. This workshop will help us to explore our own beliefs about gender and gender roles and presents an approach to broaden our options for working with clients.
Avery Cook, MSW, LCSW is a Clinical Coordinator at the Counseling and Wellness Services at UNC-Chapel Hill, where she supervises MSW students and engages in clinical work with individuals on issues involving gender identities and expression, LGB culture and identity development, as well as anxiety, depression, and crisis intervention. She currently serves on the board of the Mental Health Association Orange County, collaborates with the LGBTQ at UNC to serve transgendered students, and conducts Safe Zone trainings for the UNC community. She also has a private practice in Chapel Hill.
Melisa Bailey, MA is completing her pre-doctoral internship at UNC’s Counseling and Wellness Services in clinical psychology. Her professional interests include feminist theory, LGBTQ issues, the process of meaning making with clients, and work with trauma survivors. She is currently a liaison to the LGBTQ Center at UNC. She is an adjunct faculty member in the M.A. Forensic Psychology department at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology and has taught courses on Diversity and Clinical Interviewing Skills. She attends The Chicago School of Professional Psychology.
5. February 22, 2010 || link to more info, handouts, video
ADHD: Differential diagnosis and treatment strategies across the life course
Jack Naftel, MD
Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder is a commonly diagnosed childhood disorder with symptoms commonly persisting through adolescence and adulthood. While there may be both under and over diagnosis in children, many adults who suffer from this disorder have never been diagnosed or treated. Dr. Naftel describes the presentation and evaluation of ADHD at different ages, and the treatment approaches that may be most effective for children, adolescents, and adults.
Jack Naftel, MD is the Vice Chair for Child and Adolescent Programs in the Department of Psychiatry at UNC Chapel Hill School of Medicine, where he coordinates outpatient and inpatient programs and oversees the residency training program. He is also the Co-Director of the Dorothea Dix Child Outpatient Clinic and the Wake Pediatric Behavior Clinic. His areas of interest include attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and he has been involved in a large epidemiological study of ADHD in Johnston County, NC. Dr. Naftel has won awards both for his medical research (Eugene A. Hargrove Mental Health Research Award) and practice (“Best Doctors in America,” 2003-2008).
6. March 22, 2010|| link to more info, handouts, video
Cultural trauma: Developing an ear for the unspoken in the room
Michelle Johnson, MSW, LCSW
What does it mean for a therapist to be aware of the history of the person in the room – particularly when the individual is a member of a cultural group that has endured oppression, subjugation, and violence? This workshop presents the concept of “cultural trauma” to enhance therapeutic work with clients who may enter treatment with stories of intergenerational trauma that remain unspoken yet significantly impact their identity, experience, and presenting problem. Using case examples, Michelle Johnson will describe manifestations of cultural trauma and provide tools for therapists to consider their clients’ cultural legacies. This workshop will focus on how to broach the unspoken, collaborate with clients on the telling of their stories, assess for the relevance of cultural trauma, and adjust treatment accordingly. The presentation will also touch briefly on the impact of the cultural heritage of the therapist in this process.
Michelle C. Johnson, MSW, LCSW is the Program Manager for the Pro Bono Counseling Network at the Mental Health Association in Orange County, and an adjunct faculty at UNC-Chapel Hill in the School of Social Work. Her previous positions include Associate Director at the Orange County Rape Crisis Center, where she supervised client service and education programs and coordinated the short-term therapy program; psychotherapist at the UNC-CH Counseling Center; and family specialist at East Chapel Hill High School. Ms. Johnson has a private practice in Chapel Hill and specializes in clients who have survived sexual violence and other traumas. Michelle works with a small training group, Dismantling Racism Works, dRWorks, focused on working with organizations and the community on understanding institutional and cultural racism.
7. April 19, 2010 || link to more info, handouts
Ethics of Becoming Competent in Psychopharmacology
Gary Gala, MD
Our therapeutic interventions come through our relationship and interactions with clients. Yet, many of our clients are also being treated with prescription medications, and others may benefit from them. What is our responsibility as professionals to understand our clients’ experience with medications—especially since they are more likely to confide in us than in their physicians or psychiatrists? Treating clients, who are taking or may be in need of medications, raises ethical issues about the importance of our own competence in this arena. In this workshop, Dr. Gala provides a foundation in psychopharmacology and discusses how to talk with clients about their experiences, including any “non-compliance,” adverse effects, misunderstanding about their medication, and collaboration with their doctor.
Gary Gala, MD, Assistant Professor and Chief of the Psychiatry Consult Liaison Service at UNC School of Medicine, wears many hats. In college, he majored in English and wrote a novel as his senior thesis; in medical school, he took coursework in philosophy and conducted research on word choice in mental illness. Before training in psychiatry, Dr. Gala practiced general surgery for seven years, with experience in trauma/critical care and lab research on the hormonal physiology of shock. He currently directs the consult-liaison service at UNC, where he is responsible for consultations with all the other non-psychiatric services in the hospital. He also teaches, mentors, and supervises medical students and psychiatry residents. His research interests are in philosophy and psychiatry.