Adapting, Building, Changing: Rethinking Normal in a Post-Pandemic World

September 23, 2021 – October 2, 2021

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OAMHP’s 2^nd Annual Conference, Adapting, Building, Changing: Rethinking Normal in a Post-Pandemic World, will be held virtually this fall from September 23 to October 2, 2021. Our conference this year will focus on the topic of the mental health implications of COVID-19.

We will also showcase the latest in student psychological research. Students, please send us your Poster Abstract by May 31, 2021.

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Additional FREE Events

AGM Registration

How we responded: Discussing Mental Health Professionals’ Capacity to Respond to COVID-19

September 23

7:00PM-9:00PM

Speaker: Dr. Mary Bartram

We are pleased to announce that we will be kicking off the conference with a keynote address from the Mental Health Commission of Canada. Dr. Mary Bartman from the Mental Health Commission of Canada will be speaking on the capacity of mental health professionals across Canada to meet the needs of new client populations and service delivery changes during the COVID-19 pandemic. She will speak to her current study titled “Mental Health and Substance Use (MHSU) Workforce Capacity to Respond to COVID-19” including data collection and what has been learned.

The keynote address is FREE and open to ALL OAMHP MEMBERS and CONFERENCE REGISTRANTS (including non-OAMHP members).

Intended for:
Conference Attendees and OAMHP Members

CBT for Substance Use Disorders

September 24-25

8:30AM-4:00PM

Speaker: Patrick McElwaine, Psy.D.

Substance use disorders are multifaceted; they can significantly affect many parts of an individual’s life including family, work, school, and social life. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) has been shown to be an effective treatment for a wide range of addictive behaviors as well as an efficacious approach to treating substance use disorders. CBT targets specific beliefs and behaviors as well as other areas of one’s life affected by substance use. Led by Patrick McElwaine, Psy.D., this workshop will focus on essentials of CBT and applying the CBT model to the substance abuse population through the lens of a trauma-informed approach. You will learn how to implement effective cognitive and behavioral interventions that can help clients to identify and change thoughts and beliefs associated with addiction and addictive behaviors. You will learn how to elicit and respond to feedback, measure progress, and prevent relapse. Through didactic, demonstrations, and practice, participants will learn about the impact of trauma and how to use values and aspirations to guide their clients’ CBT treatment to live effectively without relying on substances.

Intended for:
All Mental Health Professionals

Learning Level:
Intermediate

Qualifies for:
12 CECs

Intended for:
All Mental Health Professionals

Learning Level:
Intermediate

Qualifies for:
12 CECs

ADHD for Therapists in the Community: Assessment, System Navigation & ADHD-Adapted Psychotherapy

September 24

1PM-4PM

Speaker: Christina Crowe, H. BSc. MACP, RP, (Cert) OAMHP (she, her)

80-90% of adults with Attention Hyperactivity Disorder are undiagnosed, and hiding in plain sight in our therapy offices. If you like mental health detective work, this workshop will outline what ADHD is, how it presents in the private practitioner’s office and why it is so important to uncover this lifespan mystery. Through use of real cases, we will connect the dots to understand appropriate opportunities for assessment, coordinate care with primary medical care and dramatically improve the quality of your client’s life and relationships. We will address issues across the lifespan, break down evidenced-based interventions and share all of our hard-won tips and clinical pearls (a.k.a. hacks).

Intended for:
Mental Health Professionals

Learning Level:
Introductory

Qualifies for:
3 CECs

Focus on adults with common conditions (e.g. anxiety, depression)

Intended for:
Mental Health Professionals

Learning Level:
Introductory

Qualifies for:
3 CECs

Focus on adults with common conditions (e.g. anxiety, depression)

Food Junkies: Recovery from Food Addiction

September 25

1PM-4PM

Speakers: Clarissa Kennedy RSW, FAC, SUGAR Certified, Mental Health/Addictions Certification, Molly Painschab LCPC, LAC, FAC, Dr. Vera Ingrid Tarman, MD, MSc, FCFP, ABAM, Specialist in Addiction medicine

In our field we have seen a rise in cases in regards to the additional emotional eating behaviour of ultra-processed foods during the COVID-19 isolation. Food addiction is a lifestyle and health concern confronting men and women of all ages and from all walks of life. Significant emotional, physical and relationship trauma can result from the inability to manage a healthy relationship with food.

In this session Dr. Vera Tarman will explain the science behind Food Addiction from a clinical perspective. She will address how obesity is a metabolic issue and how that relates to the bodies hormonal structure and the neurochemistry involved. She highlights: Normal Hunger and Satiety, Ghrelin, Insulin, Leptin, Cortisol, The Limbic / Reward Pathway and the how our Neurotransmitters: Dopamine, serotonin, endorphin are involved in Food Addiction.

Molly and Clarissa will demonstrate how to support clients identifying with Food Addiction. They will present assessment and screening tools, speak about abstinent and withdrawal, abstinent food plans, recovery and craving management, addiction interaction disorder, and relapse prevention. They will also share resources to help connect clients with free support groups and introduce them to the Food Addiction Professional Community for additional information and education on the topic.

Intended for:
Mental Health Professionals

Learning Level:
Intermediate

Qualifies for:
3 CECs

Intended for:
Mental Health Professionals

Learning Level:
Intermediate

Qualifies for:
3 CECs

Empathy, Compassion, and the Body: Building a sustainable practice from the heart

September 26

1PM-4PM

Speaker: Meaghan Johnson, MSc, RP

We are often taught that empathy is the key to connection and rapport with clients. However, an overuse of empathy can tax our nervous systems, as our bodies and minds react as though we are going through experiences similar to those of our clients. Compassion, however, is the act of ‘being with’ suffering, and can lead to a generative state of energy.

Finding the difference between empathy or compassion is not, necessarily, an intellectual endeavour. Your body is a resource for creating a posture that creates a warm and caring atmosphere for your clients while maintaining a boundary on our own inner experience. Drawing on theories of structural dissociation, Buddhism, and somatic disciplines, we will explore a variety of ways to be in a compassionate stance that will support you as a therapist.

It has been an extraordinary year to be a therapist. While you may have had different circumstances than your clients, you as the therapist were going through a lot of the same fears, challenges, and distress. It was likely harder than ever to maintain the same boundaries you were trained to create. You might also find yourself now, over a year later, exhausted from the need to take care of yourself and your own family in the same way you supported your clients. You may have been overtaxed before the pandemic began and now are finding yourself feeling burnt out and feeling less connected. My hope is that this workshop will provide space and time to reconnect to the empathy and compassion that led you to this career and learn somatic tools that can help make this work more sustainable for you.

Intended for:
Mental Health Professionals

Learning Level:
Intermediate

Qualifies for:
3 CECs

Intended for:
Mental Health Professionals

Learning Level:
Intermediate

Qualifies for:
3 CECs

How to help families survive and thrive, at home, school and beyond pandemic ups and downs

September 27

6PM-9PM

Speakers: Sara Dimerman, Psychologist
Janyce Lastman, LL.B.

Over the course of the session, Sara and Janyce will blend their areas of expertise to cover both home and school related topics, especially as they apply to pandemic ups and downs, adapted for whatever phase of COVID we may find ourselves in, by that time.

Sara will focus on how emotional ups and downs during the pandemic have impacted home life and families. She will also talk about how we have managed this period and what factors contribute to successful outcomes. She will offer practical tips that mental health workers and other professionals may share with their clients, in addition to ones they can use themselves, to continue to survive and thrive through pandemic ups and downs.

Janyce takes a practical, accessible approach to all her presentations, and promotes positive solutions to education and parenting-related matters. From the time COVID-19 initially shuttered classrooms worldwide in March 2020, she began systematically tracking and evaluating new ideas and practical solutions for classroom and community use. She will discuss how mental health professionals can help clients continue to ride this curve that has no definable end nor any predictable patterns. Examples of accessible and much-needed small-scale solutions will be discussed to share with clients (and perhaps use for themselves!) to survive and thrive during and post-COVID. She will reference cutting-edge best practices for effective instruction and cross-communication, an overview of new but essential tools for e-learning, and basic survival strategies for schools, teachers, families and students alike.

Intended for:
Mental Health Professionals & School psychologists

Learning Level:
Intermediate

Qualifies for:
3 CECs

Focus on children and families

Intended for:
Mental Health Professionals & School psychologists

Learning Level:
Intermediate

Qualifies for:
3 CECs

Focus on children and families

Creative Adjustments of mental health workers to Covid-19 and post-pandemic recovery

October 1

1PM-4PM

Speaker: Emanuela Nardella, RP

This workshop will introduce and present key concepts and structure in gestalt theory and practice that most apply to the workshop title. Topics will include: contact styles (communications that support our early survival by creatively adjusting), the cycle of experience (learning points in this process), and how the two interrelate.

Targeted questions to encourage reflection and increased awareness will be given to address in break-out groups. Participants will identify their own personal contact styles and where this energy lies on the cycle of experience in order to address where our movement can go next. The workshop will also include an experiment in recovery where participants, in small groups, will be guided by imagery (psychosynthesis style). Participants will then be given the opportunity to ground in their small group by sharing a phrase, word, feeling or image to capture their guided imagery experience. The final portion of the workshop will be the coming together of the whole group to give our closure/withdrawal to our working together in this workshop.

This workshop is designed to move our personal energies to fuller learning to not only benefit us intrapersonally but to then have us be more available and more fully present to the ‘others’ we want to affect and be affected by.

Intended for:
Mental Health Professionals

Learning Level:
Introductory

Qualifies for:
3 CECs

Gestalt Therapy

Intended for:
Mental Health Professionals

Learning Level:
Introductory

Qualifies for:
3 CECs

Gestalt Therapy

COVID through an IFS and Grief Lens: What’s Lost? What’s Left? What’s Possible?

October 2

9AM-4PM

Speaker: Derek Scott, RSW, IFS

Janov Bullman uses the term “Shattered Assumptions” when describing traumatic loss. We can see in our individual and community responses to the pandemic the aspects of our protective systems that have helped us to cope: “We’ll get back to normal soon”, “The vaccines will save us”, “There is no pandemic – it’s a lie”. These parts of us help to buffer the impact on our lives so that we can gradually absorb the meaning of the impact of the pandemic.

What is that meaning? it will differ for individuals. How can we begin to process and integrate the “New Normal”?

In this session participants will be introduced to the Internal Family systems (IFS) model and the understanding of how our inherent multiplicity informs our responses to the inevitability of attachment and loss. We will explore how early losses and our caregivers’ responses shape our internal capacity to journey through the oscillations of loss and restoration. Participants will be invited to explore how grief may be held in the body (somaticized) and how it may be witnessed and released.

Once freed up to have the conversation about what we have lost we can find our appreciation for what’s left and vision, individually and collectively, what’s possible.