There is a growing call for clinicians to shift away from formulating neurodevelopmental differences as signs of pathology or deficit, and to move toward seeing these differences as part of normal human variation, much in the same way as other diversity factors (e.g., race, sexual orientation). This webinar will highlight the clinical implications of working from a neurodiversity perspective, with emphasis on the benefits of approaching care from a frame of inclusivity. Using autism spectrum disorder (ASD) as an example, Dr. Hong will explain how neurodiversity-related differences can completely shift CBT formulations of maladaptive or unwanted behaviors and how not including neurodiversity factors into the formulation can lead to poor progress and, at times, harmful outcomes. She will then offer concrete ways to incorporate neurodiversity-related differences into the formulation while also ensuring an evidence-based approach to care. Dr. Hong will also touch on ways to adapt interventions to account for neurodiversity related differences and give patients language to explain their differences and needs to others. Throughout the presentation, Dr. Hong will use real-world clinical examples to inform concepts presented. The webinar aims to help clinicians feel empowered with ways to reframe difficulties that come with holding an (often invisible) minoritized identity and use existing evidence-based treatment strategies more effectively with neurodiverse individuals.

According to the CDC, nearly 80,000 people died from opioid-related overdose deaths in 2022 in the US. The opioid epidemic remains an urgent concern that requires continued attention and treatment, particularly by medical and mental health providers. This 90-minute presentation will provide a brief overview of the current state of opioid use within the US along with a review of the best practices to assess, diagnose and treat individuals with opioid use disorders (OUDs). The primary focus will be on the evidence-based treatments including pharmacologic and therapeutic interventions. Ethical considerations and barriers to treatment will be explored in addition to important sociocultural factors and resources available to aid providers in effectively treating individuals with OUD in outpatient settings.

Pediatric anxiety disorders are common, with prevalence rates ranging from 9-20% (Bitsko et al., 2022; Costello, Egger, & Angold, 2005). Excessive symptoms of anxiety that are impairing but do not meet diagnostic thresholds are also common (Costello & Shugart, 1992; Rapee et al., 2012) and the COVID-19 pandemic has led to significant increases in anxiety (and other youth mental health problems; Ravens-Sieberer et al., 2021; Castagnoli et al., 2020). Moreover, it is well established that untreated anxiety has a broad range of negative effects on academic, social, and familial functioning (Swan & Kendall, 2016). Despite the high prevalence of impairing anxiety, the majority of these youth remain unidentified and untreated. One approach to address the service utilization gap, is to deliver interventions in schools. School-based interventions improve access to care –especially for youth in rural and under-resourced communities where mental health specialists are sparse. This webinar will present the basic components of school-based interventions for youth with anxiety. The talk will also focus on efforts to enhance the capacity of non-mental health specialists, such as school nurses and teachers, to assist youth with anxiety.

This workshop describes ethical issues in treating suicidal patients and distinguishes between the roles of laws, risk management, and ethics. Using safety planning-type interventions as an example, the presenter will illustrate how psychotherapists can enhance the quality of their interventions by paying particular attention to ethical principles.

Savoring is the purposeful enjoyment of positive emotion. It involves generating, amplifying, and sustaining pleasant emotions from enjoyable experiences. Those with anxiety disorders and depression not only have deficits in positive emotion and reward response (e.g., LaFreniere & Newman, 2019), but also tend to dampen pre-existing positive emotions (e.g., Eisner et al., 2009). Intentional engagement with positive emotions may counter core symptoms and maintenance factors of psychopathology. Recently, savoring practices have shown significant clinical benefits when compared to active treatment controls in both randomized controlled trials (RCTs; e.g., Craske et al., 2019; LaFreniere & Newman, 2023a) and single-session experiments (e.g., Rosen & LaFreniere, 2023). Savoring practices have significantly reduced pre-existing worry, anxiety, depression symptoms, and “kill-joy thinking” in clinical samples. They have also increased positive emotion, prioritization of positive activities, and optimism (LaFreniere, & Newman, 2023a; 2023b; 2023c), which have a host of benefits across life (Fredrickson, 2013). Savoring practices can feasibly complement existing behavioral techniques, weakening symptoms while strengthening joy. In this virtual clinical training workshop, attendees will develop skills for the clinical use of intentional engagement with positive emotions. They will first learn about the theoretical foundations, mechanisms, and empirical support of savoring. Clinical outcomes of savoring practices for anxiety and mood disorders in scientific research will be emphasized. The majority of the workshop will then focus on active training in a variety of savoring practices, tools, and tips. Attendees will also participate in savoring exercises themselves.

Questions of life and living, joy, and thriving beg more of educators and researchers who think and theorize about power, privilege, and oppression. This session confronts living in and against norms that contend for holistic wellness. It will offer recommendations for cultivating habits and creating environments that afford opportunities to affirm affective capacities, specifically, joy as a present and persistent way of being.

This workshop is designed for clinicians with moderate direct clinical experience conducting CBT or ACT with school-aged/teenage youth and caregivers. It’s a universal problem for parents. Their intentions are well-meaning. Their verbally-stated values and personal principles might even be clear and well-reasoned. And yet... in the moment of truth, it can all go wrong. Tempers flare, feelings are hurt, and defensive, angry or avoidant reactions result. How can therapists help parents and caregivers stay true to their values, even when things start to go off course? The current workshop aims to provide a conceptual framework and tools for helping caregivers (a) assess their values, as distinguished from specific goals, and (b) identify common parenting/family interaction traps that impede responding in line with stated values. We will introduce participants to the ACT Matrix (Polk et al., 2016) as a way of assessing, conceptualizing, and illustrating caregivers’ experiences and behaviors as they relate to values. We will provide additional guidance on how to help caregivers articulate their values, using role-plays and experiential exercises. Attendees will then be introduced to common parenting traps (e.g., accommodation cycle; aggressive-coercive cycle; Chu & Pimentel, 2023) and practice using functional analysis to help caregivers identify where they depart from stated values. Finally, we will demonstrate how to integrate values clarification with results from the functional analysis, to present cognitive and behavioral solutions that bring caregivers’ actions back in line with their stated values. The presenters will share worksheets and handouts from Dr. Chu’s newly published text and other sources to illustrate common parent interaction traps and family-based chain analysis. Attendees will also be encouraged to bring local examples for group consultation. Presenters will moderate a discussion of integrating values-based assessment and intervention into their daily practice with families.

Acceptance-based behavioral therapy (ABBT) is an umbrella term that encompasses mindfulness-, acceptance-, and contextual-based cognitive therapies (Roemer & Orsillo, 2020). ABBT’s principles and strategies have been adapted to effectively address Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) by reducing GAD, worry, depressive symptoms, and comorbid diagnoses, while also increasing quality of life (e.g., Roemer, Orsillo, & Salter-Pedneault, 2008; Hayes-Skelton, Roemer, & Orsillo, 2013). Further, preliminary studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of ABBT’s central elements (i.e., mindfulness and decentering skills, acceptance-based strategies, and values clarification and values-based action) in addressing distress in various contexts, including acculturative and racism-related stress. As a result, we have developed a range of adapted ABBT programs to promote well-being with specific populations. In this workshop, we will present a brief overview of the central principles of ABBT as a foundation for adaptations. We will highlight examples of adaptations to illustrate how these principles may be adapted for use in specific contexts and with specific populations. First, we will discuss adaptations for university students and the way we took ABBT out of therapy room and into in person workshops and online. Then we will share adaptions we made to align with the Latinx student experience. Lastly, we will focus on the ways ABBT can be adapted to address racism-related stress and increase values-based living. We will then engage in a group activity to develop new adaptations that audience members’ can use in their own contexts. This workshop is open to clinicians across all experience levels, including students and trainees.

Parental and caretaker accommodation in pediatric Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is common. It is also known to contribute to greater symptomatology and complicate treatment. While interventions such as SPACE and exposure and response prevention (ERP) focus on specific techniques to target parental and caretaker accommodations, there is less available explicit guidance on its specific functions, causes, and maintaining factors. While arguably not directly necessary for treatment, a deeper understanding of the various functions and processes involved in this type of accommodation may afford greater clinical improvement. Through direct validation of caregivers and targeting of the drives for parental action tendencies, clinicians may be better equipped to facilitate reductions in accommodation behaviors and/or the generation of more effective response substitutions.

A key goal of implementation science (IS) is to increase access to quality mental health services. Despite many notable and important strides achieved, the mental health crisis has only worsened in recent years in the U.S. and many other countries around the world. To address the challenge, implementation science may benefit from refocusing its efforts in several different directions. This keynote will identify these multiple avenues for research, directions with potentially large returns on investment with regard to increasing access to quality mental health services. First, a focus on workforce development, recruitment, and retention, a major challenge for many states and localities, needs additional scholarly attention. Furthermore and relatedly, service financing, especially payment for evidence-based services, would benefit from increased scrutiny by implementation scientists. Last, service coordination systems, grossly underresourced, reliant on limited and out-of-date information, and operating in a mostly opaque manner to families who need services, warrant scientific inquiry. Potential paths to addressing these areas of concern are outlined and examples from ongoing work in Virginia will be highlighted. Last, future directions that implementation scientists could take will be identified.