| 2025 Specialty Workshops |
|
ADEC's 2025 Conference Pre-Conference Specialty Workshops- April 2, 2025 ADEC offers a selection of Specialty Workshops on a variety of topics related to the field of thanatology. These specially designed courses provide an in-depth look at the topics and issues of greatest importance in grief and bereavement.
Full Day: 9:00am - 4:45pm MT Loss of Another, Loss of the Self: Reconstructing Identity following Tragic Bereavement (Optional 6 CEs) Radical changes arising in bereavement require us to reconstruct core aspects of our identity in their wake. This workshop offers a model of the impact of bereavement on survivors’ sense of self, illustrated by clinical videos of clients grieving tragic losses. We then present two validated scales assessing undermining of previous identities by loss and the prospect of posttraumatic growth in its wake. We conclude by practicing creative techniques for exploring self-change and fostering resilience in bereavement, including self-portraits, the mapping of identity constellations, and internalized other interviews to recruit support from the deceased in rebuilding a sense of self in a changed world. Learning Objectives:
About the Presenters: 
Robert A. Neimeyer, PhD, is Professor Emeritus of the Department of Psychology, University of Memphis, and maintains an active consulting and coaching practice. He also directs the Portland Institute for Loss and Transition, which provides online training internationally in grief therapy. Neimeyer has published 35 books, including New Techniques of Grief Therapy: Bereavement and Beyond and Living beyond loss: Questions & answers about grief and bereavement, and serves as Editor of the journal Death Studies. The author of over 600 articles and book chapters and a frequent workshop presenter, he is currently working to advance a more adequate theory of grieving as a meaning-making process. 
Carolyn Ng, PsyD, MMSAC, RegCLR maintains a private practice, Anchorage for Loss and Transition, in Singapore, while also serveing as Associate Director of the Portland Institute. She is a registered counsellor, master clinical member and approved supervisor with the Singapore Association for Counselling (SAC), specializing in cancer-related palliative care and bereavement. She is trained in the Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) by the International Critical Incident Stress Foundation, USA, community crisis response by the National Organisation for Victim Assistance (NOVA), USA, and Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST) by LivingWorks, Canada. Her recent writing concerns meaning-oriented narrative reconstruction with bereaved families, with an emphasis on conversational approaches for meaning reconstruction.  Full Day: 9:00am - 4:45pm MT Spirituality & Grieving: When It Feels Like God Has Gone A.W.O.L. (Optional 6 CEs) Religious systems formulate beliefs about “afterlife” and offer rituals for dying and death (Doka and Chou 2021). Individuals grieve within an assumptive world which can collapse following a death. Grievers may struggle reconciling their personal theodicy--belief in a “good, loving, caring” God or Creator--with suffering and death. Individuals may grieve for the deceased and for religious assumptions. Learning Objectives:
About the Presenter: 
Harold Ivan Smith, DMin, FT, served as a bereavement specialist for eighteen years on the teaching faculty of Saint Luke’s Hospital, Kansas City, Missouri, and is now a celebrant for Forest Lawn Memorial Parks & Mortuaries in Palm Springs, California. Dr. Smith has presented scholarly papers at over twenty ADEC annual conferences. Known as a storyteller, his major research area is on grief and bereavement in the White House. His published books number more than 40 with a diversity of leading publishers including Westminster John Knox, Beacon Press, Routledge, and Augsburg. He is now finishing a work on the life and losses of President Harry Truman.
Half Day AM: 9:00am - 12:15pm MT When Images are More Powerful than Words: An Introduction to Art Therapy (Optional 3 CEs) This workshop will provide participants with an overview of the fundamental theories of art therapy, from Freud’s theories on the unconscious and dream analysis to modern day practice. Presentation of client case studies will provide an opportunity to explore the healing and informative power of this modality, as clients move towards integration of their life experience of death and non-death loss. The experiential component of this workshop will afford participants an understanding of the use of various materials, the importance of process and content and the value of directed vs non-directed art. No Artistic Skill is required, as we will explore the “journey” of art together. Learning Objectives:
About the Presenter: 
Nancy Moreau Battaglia, BA, MBA, C.OD, D.TATI, RP, FT
is a Professional Art Therapist, a member of the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario and of the Ontario Association for Mental Health Professionals. She also holds the Association for Death Education and Counseling (ADEC) credential of Fellow in Thanatology: The study of death, dying and bereavement. She is currently the Chair of ADEC’s Credentialing Council and an ex-officio Board member of the Association. She is a previous Member of the Board of Directors of the Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention and a founding member of its People Impacted by Suicide Working Group. For the past 14 years she has been a member of the Conference Planning Committee for the grass-roots Simcoe County Suicide Awareness Conference. Half Day AM: 9:00am - 12:15pm MT Working with Bereaved Parents (Optional 3 CEs) Bereaved parents represent a subgroup of grievers who face tremendous challenges in coping with the death of a child. Factors that make their grief more complicated include violated assumptions about life-cycle expectations, deprivation of anticipated care-giving and nurturing roles, loss of legacy and continuation, and loss of self. Methods from empirically-supported grief treatment protocols as well as contemporary theoretical models can be advantageously adapted with bereaved parents. Videotape examples will illustrate how practitioners can utilize key therapeutic elements derived from these models. Participants may present their own work with bereaved parents for group consultation and practice incorporating these evidence-based interventions. Learning Objectives:
About the Presenter: 
Louis A. Gamino, PhD, ABPP, FT is a Diplomate in Clinical Psychology (ABPP), Fellow in Thanatology (FT), and Division Director of Psychology at Baylor Scott & White Health in Temple, Texas. He is also Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Baylor College of Medicine-Temple (TX). His practice subspecialty is treatment of complicated grief. In recognition of excellence in clinical care of the dying and the bereaved, Dr. Gamino was the 2008 recipient of the Clinical Practice Award given by Association for Death Education and Counseling (ADEC). Dr. Gamino also served as ADEC President in 2018-2019. Half Day PM: 1:30pm - 4:45pm MT Understanding the Grief Needs of Latino/Hispanic Culture (Optional 3 CEs) Like other communities, the Latino Culture is very complex. There are many subgroups under it. Some people have the misunderstanding that because we speak Spanish, we all are the same. That is not true. Among us we have Mexicans, Salvadorians, Guatemalans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and many more. Each group brings their own unique cultural belief system. This workshop will help attendees gain a better understanding of the Latino grief culture. Attendees will learn interventions to better serve the Latino community. As a chaplain, I will share how Latinos process the dying of a loved one. As a Thanatologist, I will share how Latinos grieve after the death of a loved one. I will briefly explore how social media has become the platform for grief intervention in the Latino Community. Learning Objectives:
About the Presenter: 
Mateo Gomez, MDiv, CT is a chaplain and funeral director with Forest Lawn Memorial Parks and Mortuaries.
Half Day PM: 1:30pm - 4:45pm MT Effective Bereavement Intervention: Feedback Informed Treatment & the Practice of Master Therapists (Optional 3 CEs) This workshop draws upon two different sources to challenge practitioners to extend their expertise when working with bereaved individuals. Grief Australia, as a government funded service, must demonstrate the clinical effectiveness of its work to justify its value to taxpayers and stakeholders. Its unique approach tracks change and monitors the therapeutic alliance and clinical outcomes across sessions utilizing Feedback Informed Treatment. This innovative care model is designed for a population approach to bereavement intervention and addresses the findings that those who are most distressed appear to benefit greatest from grief therapy while also being the least likely to seek support. The second source draws upon data describing how “master therapists” practice and attempts to codify the methods they employ. Those principles correlate with what is known about treatment effectiveness from the broader psychotherapy literature. Participants will be engaged in active reflection on their current practices in light of what has been learned from Feedback Informed Treatment as well as how acknowledged experts approach the work. Learning Objectives:
About the Presenter: 
Christopher Hall holds the position of CEO of the Australian Centre for Grief and Bereavement, a government funded specialist bereavement service, based in Melbourne, Australia. As a psychologist Chris has developed a specialization in the field of grief and bereavement over the past 25 years, with strong interests in knowledge translation, traumatic bereavement and community-based interventions following disaster. In 1999 Chris was elected to the International Work Group on Death, Dying and Bereavement and has served as Chair of the organization. For the past 14 years he have been the Editor of the peer-reviewed journal Grief Matters: The Australian Journal of Grief and Bereavement, and more recently as an Associate Editor of Death Studies.
You must login to your Member Profile for your discounted Membership Rates to Apply You're not a Member and want to join? Click here for more info ADEC reserves the right to cancel any specialty workshop that does not attain minimum registration numbers. Registrants in a cancelled course will be informed and given the option to choose another session or receive a refund. |
Print Page
