UPCOMING EVENTS:
April 13, 2012
Spiritual Caregiving to Help Addicted Persons and Families
St. Pius X Catholic Church
Owensboro, Kentucky 42303
Sponsored by Owensboro Area Treatment Provides
Jeff Georgi will present: Spiritual Caregiving To Persons With Co-Occuring Disorders
Pastors are many times the first contact someone makes for counseling. High unemployment, stressful economic situations, family struggles and addiction issues rip families apart and cripple lives. The variety of needs challenges those who provide ministry to those in need of spiritual and emotional healing. Increasingly, substance abuse surfaces in the sessions, even though the “presenting problem” fails to mention the topic. It “bubbles to the top” as the hurts of life are discussed. Behaviors resembling some type of mental illness—i.e., bipolar mood swings, paranoid and reclusive family members, etc— become the focus of some sessions as the person struggles to define their feelings and frustration.
9am to 4pm
Purpose: To educate clergy, lay ministers and mental health/addiction professionals in how to distinguish between the two and how to determine appropriate referral.
For more information contact:
Fred Goodwin: 270-689-6539 or
fredgoodwin@rvbh.com
May 2 – 5, 2012
IECA Spring Conference
Boston, MA
www.IECAonline.com/conferences.html
More information to follow
June 15, 2012
Grief Loss Workshop
Location: Camp Lejeune, NC
Eastern Area Health Education Center (AHEC)
Debbie Caton Rogers, MA Director Mental Health Education
PO Box 7224 Suite 200 Greenville
NC 27835-7224
Tel: 252/744-5215 FAX 252/744-5969
Catond@ecu.edu
http://eahec.ecu.edu:
8:00AM—3:30PM (6 hours)
More Information to come
June 20-22, 2012
South Carolina Statwide Training
This intensive three-year training experience will provide a comprehensive and unified definition of the Disease of Addiction. It will directly challenge an oversimplified monolithic vision of addiction providing clinicians with a depth of understanding that will allow them to bring the science into treatment. Utilizing two evidence-based group interventions, Modified Interpersonal Group Process (MIGP) and Cognitive Behavioral Group (Rational Behavior Training (RBT)), participants will learn how their understanding of the disease informs their treatment. They will be given the opportunity to compare and contrast a traditional “process group” with the familiar Cognitive Behavioral Group. As they do so, participants will be given insight into the nature of the process itself and learn to help patients experience that process, no matter what type of group in which they participate. In essence, participants will learn how to infuse spirituality into the treatment experience of their patients, as a direct assault on the isolation, fear, shame, and determinism which are the symptoms of addictive disease.
This training is a bold undertaking. If embraced it will change the way the treatment community in South Carolina understands addictive disease and thus change the way treatment is administered. Its ambitious goal is not merely a cognitive shift but also the goal is to identify the next generation of treatment professionals, providing them with a training experience that changes them, so they can become the true change agents of the evolving Recovery Oriented Systems of Care.
Those choosing to participate in this intensive experience will be challenged by exposure to the evolving science and its repercussions in terms of treatment. Despite their already busy professional lives, they will be expected to complete “homework” assignments in between training sessions, tape their own group work to be shared in a group supervisory format and to fully participate in a training group experience. As the training experience moves into its second year, participants will be expected to hone their clinical skills through supervision and begin the process of becoming trainers themselves. By the end of the third year the now new “trainers” will be supported to take what they have learned and experienced into their own treatment settings. Just as patients are given individualized treatment plans, trainers will be asked to work with their agencies to develop an individualized implementation plan, congruent with the overarching principles they have learned and experienced. This third phase of the training will be supported by long-distance learning and teleconference supervision. When necessary on-site intervention will be arranged. By the end of the third year, trainers will be expected to develop an ongoing South Carolina Institute for Advanced Alcohol and Drug Studies and come up with a mechanism to fund it.
More Information to come
Location:
LRADAC Education Center
2711 Colonial Drive
Columbia, SC 29203
Contact: John Coffin, Shoreline Behavioral Health Services, john.coffin@shorelinebhs.org.
July 15-19, 2012
Kentucky School of Alcohol and other Drug Studies
The Kentucky School of Alcohol and Other Drug Studies is held annually during July. Hundreds of alcohol and drug prevention and treatment professionals from across Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio attend each year. The site of this event is the campus of Northern Kentucky University in Highland Heights, Kentucky.
Each year we attempt to provide state of the art training opportunities that focus on the basic skills for new people in our field. It is also our intent to provide advanced training opportunities for those who are looking to expand their knowledge of chemical dependency, prevention and treatment.
The Brochure will be available online in May
Jeff Georgi will present: Shame and Addiction, Substance Abuse in Geriatrics, Group Therapy
Contact: Justina Keathley, Director
229 Mattox Hall
521 Lancaster Avenue
Richmond, KY 40475
Phone: 859-622-4968
Fax: 859-622-3084
E-mail: justina.keathley@eku.edu
1st International US/European Conference
on Alcohol and Drug Abuse:Youths Dying
DATE TO BE ANNOUNCED
Algarve, Portugal
Villa Monte Resort Conference Golf & Spa
www.vilamonte.com
Sponsored by Recovery in Reality, Portugal
Sponsored by GECS, United States
(More information on registration will follow)
Why This Conference?
Substance abuse and dependence accounts for one of the major disease groups in Europe within mental health in terms of prevalence as shown in the previous section, but has earned little attention in previous health economic research (Rehm and Gmel, 2001).
Prevalence of addiction in Europe is high and affects more than 10% of the population, with nicotine dependence being the most prevalent, and illicit drug dependence the least prevalent of SUDs. However, data on alcohol and drug dependence are scarce in several European nations, especially in the new admission countries. As SUDs constitute a major public health problem, for healthcare planning as well as for health policy it is indispensable to be able to quantify the problem. Although a fair amount of cost studies exist in addiction in Europe, there is a strong need for further studies in the field. Most studies identified are from the early 1990s and are based on methodology of varying quality. Moreover, most studies are top-down studies incorporating assumptions about the resource use in people suffering from addiction. Moreover, all studies identified were conducted in the major European countries or the Nordic countries, and thus no studies were found from the Central and Eastern European countries.
Five Conference Topics
- Adolescent Brain Development – The Learning Brain
- Review of Problem with Alcohol and Drugs Nationally
- Impact of Alcohol and Drugs
- Treatment and Strategy That Has Worked
- Best Practice For Adolescent Treatments (How Adolescent is Defined)
If you would like to be a sponsor for this conference please contact GECS at jeff@georgicounseling.com.