Neuroscience for Clinicians: New Brain Science for Trauma, Anxiety, Depression and Substance Abuse

CPD

Planning Committee Disclosure - No relevant relationships

All members of the PESI, Inc. planning committee have provided disclosures of financial relationships with ineligible organizations and any relevant non-financial relationships prior to planning content for this activity. None of the committee members had relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies or other potentially biasing relationships to disclose to learners.  For speaker disclosures, please see the faculty biography.

Handouts

Speaker

Sherrie All, PhD Related seminars and products

Chicago Center for Cognitive Wellness

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Sherrie All, PhD, is a neuropsychologist and an engaging speaker and writer whose expertise in the principles of neuroscience, functional neuroanatomy, and diagnostics give her a unique insight into the correlation between mental health disorders, therapeutic approaches, and what happens in the brain itself.

Dr. All is the owner of the Chicago Center for Cognitive Wellness where she combines her strong background in CBT with mindfulness techniques, motivational interviewing and dynamic interpretations to help her clients manage depression, stress, anxiety, mental illness and cognitive challenges. A trained neuropsychologist who received her Ph.D. from Rosalind Franklin University, she also brings her detailed understanding of the brain to uniquely address the needs of people with traumatic brain injuries, dementia, and other conditions.

 

Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: Sherrie All is the owner of Chicago Center for Cognitive Wellness. She receives royalties as a published author. Sherrie All receives a speaking honorarium and recording royalties from PESI, Inc. She has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations.
Non-Financial: Sherrie All is a member of the American Psychological Association.

Objectives

1. Communicate how an understanding of neuroscientific research and neurological processes can help mental health professionals improve clinical outcomes.
2. Determine the interrelationship of depression and anxiety and communicate how this information can be used in relation to treatment planning.
3. Employ psychoeducation techniques that improve engagement in therapy by making neuroscience and neurobiology understandable for clients.
4. Analyze how neural pathways regulating stress and reward are related to mental health disorders, and connect this information to your utilization of therapeutic interventions to reduce stress and manage addiction.
5. Evaluate the relationship between memory malleability and trauma and communicate how this information can be utilized therapeutically to help clients cope with traumatic memories.
6. Investigate how mindfulness and meditation impact the nervous system and articulate how mindfulness interventions can be used in your treatment plans for depression.

Outline

• See and understand key brain structures and their function
• Work top down/ bottom up/ horizontally to help target interventions to clients’ specific needs
• Work with implicit and explicit memories to rewrite internal narratives and treat trauma
• Learn how to rebalance key pathways with your interventions:
  • Pain Pathway
  • Reward Pathway
  • Fear-Stress Pathway including Polyvagal Theory
• Understand the physiological components of “Neuroception”
• Turning on the social engagement system for co-regulation

• Understand elements of the social engagement system & use it to build rapport and heal attachment
• Help clients understand how emotions are contagious
• Activate mirror neuron systems for connection
• Help clients build stronger self-regulation

• Neuroplasticity in all its forms – beyond neurogenesis
• How to foster neuroplasticity in clients
• Discover the conditions for ideal neuroplasticity
• Neuroplasticity in action: Exercise your brain!
• Actively engage brain structures for lasting change
• Default Mode (DMN) and Task Mode Networks (TMN)
• Long term potentiation (aka neuroplasticity at the synapse)

• Increase comfort and experience in integrating these interventions into your clinical practice:
  • Sensory awareness
  • Meditation and mindfulness
  • Body work
  • Unconscious and the DMN
  • Experience and activate the direct mind-body link

• How stress alters the nervous system
• Explore techniques to calm the stress/fear pathway
• Develop security through self-soothing methods
• Foster confidence with yoga body positioning
• Reconsolidate implicit and explicit memories

• Distinguish top-down anxiety from bottom-up anxiety
• Implement treatments to effectively match the source of a client’s anxiety
• Treat worry and GAD effectively through worry exposure and planning
• Calm the limbic system bottom up with movement
• Develop alert/relaxed attention for better coping
• Soothe the insula through meditative sensory awareness
• Deconstruct sensations mindfully
• Balance the nervous system

• Brain areas involved in addictions
• Rewire the reward pathway
• Address habits that maintain addictions and lead to relapse
• Detach from pleasure and pain
• Develop prefrontal connections for better judgment

• Depressed brain patterns
• Practice the 4-step method to overcome negative self-suggestions
• Foster joyful relationship through mirror neurons
• Develop compassion and gratitude
• Activate an under-activated nervous system with yoga postures and energy meditations

Target Audience

• Counselors
• Psychotherapists
• Psychologists
• Social Workers
• Addiction Counselors
• Occupational Therapists
• Occupational Therapy Assistants
• Marriage & Family Therapists
• Physicians
• Case Managers
• Therapists
• Nurses
• Other Mental Health Professionals