Many clinicians have faced personal and professional challenges due to the current sociopolitical environment and may feel unsure how to respond to these issues in CBT. This webinar will offer practical strategies for clinicians to sensitively help to clients that are affected by political anxiety, concerns about immigration and discrimination while maintaining fidelity to CBT protocols. Ethical dilemmas and considerations related to client interactions and clinician burnout will also be discussed.

Gambling opportunities are rapidly expanding across the United States with many states legalizing sports betting, online gambling, and casinos. Gambling disorder affects about 2-4% of the general population. These individuals, their families, and communities experience significant harms due to their maladaptive gambling behavior. This workshop will review the disorder and its etiology, identify high-risk populations, and discuss evidence-based treatment options for individuals and families.

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are proliferating and have the potential to offer engaging and scalable ways to support treatment offer between-session support for patients, and even fully-automated interventions, as well as therapist training. We will provide an overview of these technologies, focusing on large language model based tools (e.g., those based on models like GPT-4o, Claude, or other language models). We will also discuss considerations for their development and evaluation, including user experience research, rigorous safety testing, and collaborating with patients and clinicians during development. We will share a framework for evaluation and key directions for establishing safety, efficacy, and equitable access to effective treatment.

Previous research has found that knowledge of ethics codes, laws, and regulations does not necessarily ensure that psychologists will make ethical decisions. Ethical competency in practice requires a complex set of skills including critical thinking, the ability to navigate ambiguity, and the emotional strength to make difficult decisions. The current model of ethics training focuses on coursework and supervised clinical training, but after graduate school, psychologists must maintain ethical competency independently. Regulatory measures, such as licensing boards, credentialing, and continuing education, primarily serve as safeguards against unethical behavior rather than fostering excellence. Furthermore, our profession’s focus on individual responsibility for maintaining ethical competency leaves many practitioners feeling confused, isolated, and burnt out when faced with the day to day demands of clinical practice. In contrast, a communitarian approach to ethical competency emphasizes building communities of mental health professionals who can support and collaborate with each other towards common professional goals. This interactive workshop will focus on developing strategies for creating a positive ethical culture within your clinical practice. It will utilize a combination of lecture, interactive exercises, and group discussion to facilitate a personalized and deep understanding of the material.

Despite CBT being one of the most effective treatments for sexual health concerns, many clinicians don't want to touch sex therapy with a 10-foot pole! And it makes sense, because most of us were never trained in sex therapy and let's face it, there's much taboo around sex. In this presentation, you'll learn that sex therapy isn't as scary (or as sexy) as it sounds. You'll learn easy assessment options to ask your couples about their sexual health, important sexual health clinical pearls to share with your clients, and a basic behavioral sex therapy intervention (Sensate Focus) that any CBT clinician can implement to treat common sexual health concerns.

Telehealth delivery of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) treatments, such as exposure-based therapies, has significantly increased since the COVID-19 pandemic (Morland et al., in press). Exposure based therapies are one of the most effective forms of therapy for treating PTSD (VA & DOD, 2023) and telehealth allows more individuals to access and engage in these treatments. This webinar will review the state of the science of evidence for exposure-based PTSD therapies, such as prolonged exposure and written exposure therapy, delivered via telehealth. Steps to set the stage for the successful delivery of remote exposure-based care for PTSD will be discussed. Clinical case examples will be discussed to illustrate the unique benefits, as well as some common pitfalls and challenges, with using telehealth to deliver exposure therapies for PTSD. This webinar will help clinicians better understand how to successfully engage clients in exposure-based PTSD therapies delivered remotely.