A one-day symposium bringing Ontario’s mental health professionals together for learning, dialogue, and connection.
🧭 Navigating ethical complexity in trauma-shaped systems
🎤 Insight from clinicians, researchers, and policy leaders
🤝 Connection with professionals across practice settings
🧠 Practical ideas you can apply in your work
📚 Continuing education that supports professional standards
🌱 Space to reflect on sustainable and ethical practice
A snapshot of the day
8:00 AM – 5:00 PM | 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM President's Reception
Eligible for 6 Continuing Education Credits
Symposium Agenda
Session 2: Almuth Weigeldt, RP, OVCS & Marina Borja, RP | Growth, Guidance and Groups
Session 2: Rakshanda Khan, MA, DTATI, RP, RCAT and Kate Moo King-Curtis, HBA, MA, DTATI (Candidate) | The Pop-Up Window: An Arts Workshop on Embodied Ease
☕ Throughout the Day
Breakfast, lunch, networking, and the President’s Reception with colleagues from across Ontario.
Moves with Noor: Movement and Mindfulness Break | Noor AlAssadi, Ph.D., RP (Qualifying)
Who Should Attend
The OAMHP Symposium brings together professionals working across clinical, community, and institutional mental health settings.
- Registered Psychotherapists
- Psychologists, Psychological Associates, and Psychometrists
- Social Workers and Counsellors
- Occupational Therapists and Nurses working in mental health
- Clinical Supervisors and practice leaders
- Students and early-career professionals
- Professionals working across hospitals, community agencies,
schools, and private practice
Featured Speakers
Marina Borja, M.Ed, RP
Almuth Weigeldt, RP, OVCS
Maria Sotos, RP
Joddie Walker, MSc, RP, D.A.A.E.T.S.
Dana Ross, MD, MSc, FRCPC
Session Descriptions
Dana Ross
MD, MSc, FRCPC
Microexposures to Safety and Connection: A Mechanism of Change in Healing from Trauma
This keynote presentation focuses on how healing often unfolds through small, repeated experiences of safety and connection within therapeutic and helping relationships. While especially central in trauma therapy, these learning processes operate across many forms of clinical work. The session introduces six pathways into healing through which safety and connection can be intentionally activated in everyday practice, regardless of modality. The goal is to make these mechanisms visible, practical, and intentionally usable in daily work.
Keisha Greene
MA, Ed.D, RP
Decolonizing Trauma Therapy Work
This session explores what it means to bring a decolonizing lens to trauma therapy. Western psychological models offer valuable tools but do not always capture trauma rooted in history, culture, community, and systems of oppression, including colonialism, racism, displacement, and intergenerational harm. Participants will reflect on power, privilege, and self-awareness in the therapeutic relationship, and on moving beyond individual-focused models toward more culturally grounded, inclusive care relevant across modalities and practice settings.
Almuth Weigeldt
RP, OVCS
Marina Borja
M .Ed, RP
Growth, Guidance and Groups: A guide to psycho- educational online trauma focused group therapy
This interactive workshop introduces the tools and knowledge needed to run online psycho-educational trauma groups. Through presentation, handouts, experiential exercises, and Q&A, attendees will consider group therapy as an adjunct to individual psychotherapy, understand the role of psycho-education in trauma care, and appreciate the benefits of co-facilitation for clinicians. Participants will leave with practical tools and skills to start offering group therapy or strengthen groups they already run.
Maria Santos
RP
Tending to Rage: Tools for Managing Tumultuous Times
This workshop explores the clinical function of rage, including how it emerges in the therapy room through roots in trauma, attachment disruption, systemic oppression, and boundary violation. Participants will learn to differentiate destructive discharge from integrated expression of rage, and will explore practical somatic and relational tools to help clients safely contain, process, and express rage within and beyond the therapy space. An experiential component will help participants identify how rage manifests physiologically and emotionally within their own nervous systems.
Rakshand Khan
MA, DTATI, RP, RCAT
Kate Moo King-Curtis
HBA, MA, DTATI
(Candidate)
The Pop-Up Window: A Clinician Workshop on Embodied Ease
Mental health professionals are often asked to hold crisis, grief, and institutional demands while compartmentalizing their own emotional responses. Grounded in trauma-informed and anti-oppressive practice, this arts-based experiential workshop uses guided movement and multi-sensory artmaking to engage participants in critical self-reflection on the systems that shape them and their clinical work. Participants will create their own artistic representation of their personal Therapist Window of Tolerance and Circle of Capacity, building awareness of embodied ease along the way. No art experience necessary.
Joddie Walker
MSc, RP, D.A.A.E.T.S
A Little Trust, Hope and Pixie Dust: Transforming Vicarious Trauma into Vicarious Resilience
Helpers regularly encounter trauma through their work, and growing evidence shows the impact goes beyond burnout or fatigue, eroding a helper's sense of safety, competence, and purpose over time. This workshop applies the concepts of secondary stress, vicarious trauma, and vicarious resilience to participants' own practice, helping them recognize how these patterns show up personally and identify strategies to build resilience. Participants will also reflect on their values, beliefs, and sources of joy as a foundation for sustainable self-care.
Break Sessions
Noor Al Assadi
Ph.D, RP (Qualifying)
Moves with Noor
Conferences can leave you mentally inspired but physically exhausted. Throughout the symposium, join Noor for three relaxation, mindfulness, and stretching sessions designed to help you reset and recharge between presentations. No experience is needed, and all attendees are welcome to
drop in.
What You’ll Gain from the Symposium
Participants will leave with:
- practical frameworks for navigating ethical complexity
- strategies for sustaining practice in high-demand environments
- insights from clinicians working across sectors
- new professional relationships and connections
Professionals from across Ontario joined the 2025 OAMHP Symposium for a day of learning, reflection, and connection.
“One of the most beneficial conferences I’ve attended in a long time.”
— 2025 Symposium Participant
“Great speakers, relevant topics, and a valuable opportunity to connect with colleagues.”
— 2025 Symposium Participant
“It’s a great way to stay connected professionally and learn what others are doing in the field.”
— 2025 Symposium Participant
Sponsors and Exhibitors
Interested in sponsoring?
Location & Registration
📅 Date: November 18, 2026
📍 Location: OBA Conference Centre
20 Toronto Street, 2nd Floor, Toronto
The Symposium will run from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM, followed by the President’s Reception.
Participants may attend in person in Toronto or virtually via live broadcast. For in person attendees, the President’s Reception will follow the Symposium.
Registration Fees
| Early Bird* In Person |
Early Bird* Virtual |
Standard In Person |
Standard Virtual |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| OAMHP Member | $120 | $90 | $140 | $110 |
| OAMHP Certified Member | $110 | $80 | $130 | $100 |
| OAMHP Student Member | $60 | $45 | $65 | $50 |
| Non-Member | $165 | $120 | $185 | $140 |
| Non-Member Student | $80 | $60 | $85 | $65 |
*Early Bird prices available until July 15, 2026.
All prices subject to HST.
Looking to attend with a group of colleagues? We offer group discounts for 5 or more registrations. Please connect with Becky at bsmit@oamhp.ca for more information.
Student Poster Presentations: Opportunity
We invite Master’s and PhD students in mental health–related programs to submit poster proposals for the OAMHP Symposium. This is an opportunity to share your research, engage with professionals in the field, and contribute to ongoing conversations around ethical and sustainable practice. Selected presenters will receive complimentary access to the full symposium, including keynote sessions, workshops, and networking opportunities.
Symposium 2026 FAQ
Join Us at the 2026 OAMHP Symposium
Anchored in Care: Sustaining Ethical Practice in Trauma-Shaped Systems
📅 November 18, 2026
📍 Toronto + Virtual
Spend the day connecting with colleagues from across Ontario, exploring emerging challenges in practice, and gaining practical insights you can bring back to your work.