When Reality Breaks: Understanding and Treating Psychosis with CBTp, ACT and Recovery-Oriented Therapies

When Reality Breaks: Understanding and Treating Psychosis with CBTp, ACT and Recovery-Oriented Therapies

Trainer: Jennifer Gerlach, MSW, LCSW

Event Information

• This event is will offer CEU credits totaling 1.5 hours for LPCs, LCSWs, LMFTs
• If you are a Psychotherapy Saint Louis member this training is free; please be sure you are logged in when registering.

Event Description: Psychosis has been called one of the most common problems that we do not talk about. While the lifetime prevalence for a psychotic disorder is estimated between 1-3% of the population, as many as 1 in 20 people are likely to experience some psychotic symptom at some point in their lives. Symptoms of psychosis can range from hearing voices to subtle paranoia, and can be caused by a whole spectrum of things including medical causes, stress, severe mood disorders, PTSD with secondary psychotic features, and Schizophrenia. While many therapists do not seek out to treat psychosis, chances are that you have met or even currently are meeting with at least one client coping with this. In this workshop we will overview some simple strategies based in CBT for psychosis and Recovery-Oriented therapies for identifying and assisting with these challenges.

Learning Objectives:

1. Recognize signs of psychosis as an umbrella symptom
2. Learn how to use engagement strategies most helpful to clients with psychosis including normalizing, ‘befriending’ interventions, and how to ask probing questions without invalidating a person’s experience
3. Learn strategies for assisting clients with common psychotic symptoms including voices, paranoia, loss of sense of self, and loss of motivation
4. Learn about anasognosia as a common experience and how to assist clients who do not recognize the illness as well as learn when and how to effectively refer a client experiencing psychosis when needed

Instructor bio: A person in mental health recovery herself, Jennifer Gerlach, is a clinician with extensive experience and training in treating psychosis. She currently works in private practice, but has also worked historically within a first episode psychosis specific program and has completed training in CBT for Psychosis, First-Episode Psychosis specific interventions, and Acceptance Commitment Therapy. She has an upbeat and hopeful perspective of psychosis and individuals who face this.