Speaker(s):

Jeremy Lotz, MA, LPC, NCC

Presentation: Bad sleep, endless screen time, sedentary lives, and junk food! Do you encounter clients who are frustrated, not meeting their goals, and for whom nothing seems to help? As society becomes less and less healthy, mental health services are being increasingly tasked with needing to offer support and challenge to our clients in areas of health and wellness. Deficits in health and wellness practices are increasingly being observed in the mental health community as foundational to helping our clients meeting their goals.

Objectives:

• Define ways technology and screen time habits can adversely affect our brains
• Identify ways that physical movement and exercise can be implemented in even the most challenging of client cases
• Define ways participants can leverage modern research on nutrition in nutrition and neuroscience to help address depression and anxiety
• Identify barriers to sleep hygiene and learn strategies to help ourselves and our clients overcome them
• Gain understanding of ways to improve “The Big 4” in our own lives (Nutrition, Screen time, Exercise, and Sleep)

Slides and Handouts:

Lotz_Proven Ways to Incorporate Client Health & Wellness into Your Work with Difficult Cases

Speaker(s):

David Pitonyak, PhD

Presentation: Neuroscientists now tell us that 80% of what our brain is up to at any given moment is thinking about social relationships. This keynote explores some revolutionary findings about our social brains and the implications these findings will have on our service system. Helping people to heal and recover will depend on our capacity to support them in developing enduring, positive relationships.

Objectives:

• Explore recent research findings which suggest ours is a social brain
• Describe ways in which we are bio-mechanically set up to seek relationships and to be frightened of relationships, and why self-confidence matters
• Explain how being disconnected to social relationships can create physiological and psychological distress in the bodies