A306 Treating Trauma: A Blueprint for Healing

Although there have been remarkable advances in our understanding of trauma and in the development of effective tools for addressing its symptoms, today many practitioners lack a systematic model for taking trauma sufferers through the stages of recovery. This course will examine a 3-stage treatment model that will provide clear principles for determining how to manage and gather information in each stage, how to introduce interventions at the most appropriate moments in the recovery process, and how to help clients best consolidate their gains. Among the skills you will learn are how to do a contextual assessment that includes familial, social and cultural factors crucial to healing, how to interrupt negative behavioral cycles, how to effectively confront denial, how to do an acknowledgment session, and how to help clients develop a relapse prevention program. You will come away with an ability to work effectively with a wide range of traumatized clients without having to depend on a single clinical method.

Meet The Instructor

Mary Jo Barrett, M.S.W., is director of the Center for Contextual Change in Skokie, Illinois, and teaches at the University of Chicago. She's the author of Systemic Treatment of Incest and Treating Incest: A Multiple Systems Perspective.

Course Contents

Session 1: Overview of the Model for Contextual Change as it applies to trauma • The Three Stage Model and its application to various settings, such as residential, impatient, outpatient, private practice and public practice

Session 2: Creating safety plans • Safety plans and the client/therapist relationship • The use of safety plans in the client's own family and social life • Execute a contextual assessment based on the Vulnerability/Resilience Model • Assess the presenting symptoms of the client through the social/political, familial, neuro-biological and intrapsychic lenses

Session 3: Assessment • Understanding and working with denial

Session 4: Interventions to interrupt dysfunctional cycles

Session 5: Applying skill based interventions from other models • How to integrate interventions into a 3-stage contextual model

Session 6: Consolidation and relapse prevention

Learning Objectives

1. Conceptualize and apply the Model for Contextual Change for Trauma
2. Assess trauma clients based on the Vulnerability/Resilience Model
3. Create and execute safety plans
4. Describe clinical interventions to respond to denial
5. Structure and apply a variety of interventions designed for trauma
6. Create a relapse prevention plan

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