Workshop: Climate Psychology: A New Therapeutic Paradigm, Leslie Davenport LMFT

MARIN COUNTY CHAPTER OF CAMFT

SATURDAY WORKSHOP

I’m sure you hear news about global warming, there is a significant psychological component that is less talked about. The Executive Summary of the Psychological Effects of Global Warming on the United States warns that, “Global warming…in the coming years…will foster public trauma, depression, violence, alienation, substance abuse, suicide, psychotic episodes, post-traumatic stress disorders and many other mental health-related conditions.” As climate change-induced anxiety, trauma, and grief broaden and deepen, in the years to come meeting the mental health needs of humanity will be a critical and central challenge.

Mental health perspectives can also have a preventative focus with addressing climate change. Psychology is a powerful way to explore the emotional underpinnings of climate denial, understand motivators for change, and identify the most effective communication strategies. As mental health professionals, we have valuable tools for guiding powerful transitions in consciousness and behavior – and these tools can also be used to foster the kinds of sustainable lifestyles that will support a healthy humanity and planet.

Today we are seeing a broad societal dysfunction that allows us to detach our pursuit of personal fulfillment from its environmental impact. The field of psychology is revered for offering a path toward growth and transformation – but it also runs the risk of becoming yet another of our cultural institutions that sanctions the disconnection of individual satisfaction from the laws of nature, contributing to the dangerous unsustainability of life on our planet. 

I’m proposing that it is time for the mental health field to evolve so that it can contribute instead to the systemic shift required to address runaway climate change and global warming. Where better to examine values and inspire a more inclusive vision of change than in the hearts and minds of people who are already willingly exploring their internal and external worlds?

I have a textbook on this subject coming out in the Spring entitled Emotional Resiliency Handbook: A Clinician's Guide for the Era of Climate Change (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, London), and will be teaching a CE course on the material at JFK University, a 3 hours workshop at CAMFT Davis and lecturing in Romania, Canada and Spain in 2017.

Leslie Davenport, LMFT is a founding member of the Institute for Health & Healing, one of the nations’ first and largest hospital-based integrative medicine programs. Her 25 years of medical experience developing

Learning Objectives

• Identify key theoretical underpinnings of coping with the impact of climate change.
  
• Prepare for effective treatment of climate disruption mental health symptoms in clinical practice.
  
• Identify the growing relevance of climate change in psychotherapy.
  
• List techniques for helping clients process emotions related to climate provoked anxiety, depression and grief and for building emotional resiliency.
  
• Analyze a variety of ways to incorporate climate psychology perspectives into clinical practice.
  
• Provide reputable resources for furthering competency in climate psychology.

Saturday's time outline 

Overview of workshop  9:00 – 9:15

Syllabus overview, logistics

Foundations of Climate Psychology  9:15-10:30         

Overview of climate psychology and why it is emerging in the field. Climate science summary. The psychology of climate denial, climate change grief cycle and way to effectively talk about climate change. Discussion and questions.        

Discussion and questions. Evaluations  11:45 - Noon