Treating Treatment-Resistant Depression: The Impact of Developmental Trauma

This workshop is designed to help you improve your effectiveness treating chronically depressed clients. You will learn about the multiple areas of the brain effected by developmental (childhood) trauma. Specific types of developmental traumas which form early maladaptive schemas will be identified, defined, and examined. Imagery re-scripting, an evidence-based therapeutic technique, designed to reduce cognitive avoidance and modify schemas, will also be taught. Research studies have implicated the psychological processes of rumination, attention bias, and cognitive avoidance, as mechanisms that complicate and exacerbate depression. The impact of these processes on the brain, making depression resistant to treatment, will be explored. Therapeutic techniques such as somatic & cognitive de-fusion, mindfulness, and acceptance techniques, designed to reduce the psychological processes of rumination, cognitive avoidance, attentional bias, will be taught. Case examples, using these techniques will be presented.

Host or Publisher Stephen Silliman, M.S.Ed., LPCC-S, CST