In this two day training program, Dr. Yapko will discuss:
• How the pharmaceutical industry encourages us to ignore the social side of depression- and why several companies are quietly leaving the antidepressant business
• Why depression isn’t fated by brain chemistry, genes, diet, or personal weakness
• How one factor - expectancy - influences every phase of treatment
• How our feelings can misguide us when making decisions, and why decisions should be made according to the result you want, not just the way you feel
• The importance of experiential learning in treatment, especially well-designed hypnosis sessions
• The single factor which most influences how you gauge whether your relationship with someone is good or bad, healthy or unhealthy, worthwhile or a waste of time – and how your awareness of it can ease major suffering
• How depression affects marriages and families adversely
• How to function preventively and reduce a child’s “depression inheritance.”
• The dynamics of employing good task assignments to catalyze progress
• The role of focusing strategies such as hypnosis and mindfulness in fostering e emotional self-regulation
Topics:
Redefining What We Know in Light of New Neuroscientific Evidence
• Biological factors affirming the power of social factors
• Genetics, epigenetics and socialization as key variables to consider
• Advances in the interpersonal model: Depression is contagious
• The possibility of prevention requires us to shift our priorities
• The Social Context of Depression
• Relationships as risk factors or buffers
• Family and culture as the social context for shaping perceptions
• Dating and marrying when depression is a factor
• Depressed parents raising kids
• Designing Active Treatments
• How global thinking affects your outlook and level of life skills
• Therapists as agents of reality: Errors in attributions
• Ambiguity as a major risk factor: Being clear about uncertainty
• Defining appropriate social targets of treatment
• Illusions of helplessness and control
Designing Experiential Treatments
• Mindfulness and Hypnosis: Parallel processes
• The importance of building automaticity into treatment
• Dynamics of delivering strategic hypnotic interventions
• Focus and dissociation as driving forces of change
The Power of Expectations in Shaping Experience
• Expectancy: The strongest determinant of therapeutic responsiveness
• Coping styles as risk factors and targets of therapy
• Rumination and symptom severity
• Avoidance and disempowerment
• Decision making and stress generation
Learning Objectives:
Attend Treating Depression Strategically and enhance your ability to:
- · Describe the epidemiology of depression and relate the rising rates to social factors.
- · Identify key interpersonal patterns that cause and maintain depression in children, couples and families.
- · Develop specific active intervention strategies, especially hypnosis and guided mindful meditations, for facilitating recovery.
- · Understand the interface between individual and marital and family interventions in treating depression.
- · Design structured homework assignments to build the multi-dimensional skills needed to recover and also reduce the risk of relapse.
