Skill-Building Session 1: Monitoring Safety and Progress While Building Capacity During Faith-Based Treatment for Complex PTSD

Barbara Lowe (Greenlee Psychological and Support Services)

Simple self-rated scales, such as the Beck Scales, can be a unique and valuable tool for assessment in clinical settings because the information is reported directly by the client and can be used for treatment and progress monitoring (Green et al., 2015). This is especially true with Complex PTSD, where rates of suicidal ideation are relatively high (Spokas et al., 2009). Self-rated scales can save valuable time by providing the clinician with the necessary information needed to properly treat the client, and to monitor progress. Furthermore, assessment tools can be used to assess the stability of the client regarding safety, and also readiness for deeper trauma work. This presentation will demonstrate how Beck assessment tools can be used during the three stages of trauma healing in a faith-based context: safety and stabilization, reconstruction work, and integration. This presentation will also give an overview of a trauma healing process, that integrates many evidence-based therapy modalities, including cognitive and somatic therapies, and parts work with faith (Courtois & Ford, 2009). 

 

Skill-Building Session 2: Let the Circle Be Unbroken: Rites of Passage – An Ethnocentric and Spiritually-based Strategy for Substance Use Prevention

Theresa Montgomery Okwumabua, Onyejebose Okwumabua, Kapriya Crosby, Jasmine Plummer, Alicia Haliburton, Pamela Pugh, and Brandon Gibson (University of Memphis)

Substance abuse problems are wreaking havoc in communities across the country. It is particularly problematic within African American and other socio-economically challenged communities. For several years, “Rites of Passage” programs have been used to not only prepare youth for the assumption of responsible adult roles and responsibilities, but to prevent them from engaging in a host of health and life compromising behaviors (e.g., school dropout and failure, substance abuse). Like “Rites of Passage” training conducted in African societies, many local “rites of passage” programs are grounded in an Africentric worldview and designed to heighten young people’s values and spiritual awareness. During this highly interactive session, participants will learn about the “Let the Circle Be Unbroken: Rites of Passage/LCBU” program. Designated as an award-winning and model positive youth development program, the LCBU program has been used in several communities. In addition to learning about the basic tenets and theoretical underpinnings of the program, session participants will learn how to establish and conduct a program within their community. This includes establishing a Council of Elders and others in leadership positions, identifying and recruiting program participants, developing and implementing the curriculum and experiential activities, evaluating the effectiveness of the program as well as financing program activities.  Data, collected in evaluating the implementation of the “Let the Circle Be Unbroken/LCBU” program, will be presented and discussed. Implication of the findings will also be discussed.   

 

Skill-Building Session 3: Empowerment for Psychologists of Religion and Spirituality in the Face of Burnout

Kate Newburgh (University of Denver)

At 66% of the population, burnout is a significant phenomenon affecting the vast majority of Americans, including psychologists of religion and spirituality. It's been shown to lead to numerous health problems up to and including precipitous death. This session dives underneath the standard, surface-level approaches to burnout and uncovers some of the deeper psychological factors that contribute to its persistence. It also offers concrete, strategic tools to help participants create empowerment in the face of burnout. Specific strategies will be suggested for psychologists of religion and spirituality.

 

Skill-Building Session 4: An Introduction to Mixture Regression for Religion and Spirituality Research: Advances in Moderation Analysis

W. Justin Dyer (Brigham Young University)

Moderation analysis is an increasingly common statistical technique in the psychology of religion and spirituality. Moderation analyses are typically conducted using either interaction terms or multiple group analyses. In this way, it can be examined whether the relationship between variables differs across the levels of another variable. However, it may be that the relationships amongst variables differ for certain “unobserved” or “latent” subgroups within a population (i.e., groups that are not directly observed). Mixture regression (a type of finite mixture model/latent class analysis) is a method to examine whether the relationships between independent and dependent variables differ for latent classes. That is, mixture regression identifies classes for whom the relationships between the independent and dependent variables differ. This method to examine moderation is highly flexible, identifying groups for whom variables are differentially related and allows for examining the characteristics of those groups. The purpose of the session will be to introduce mixture regression and provide resources attendees can use to carry out these analyses. The presentation will conceptually overview moderation and introduce how mixture regression is able to capture moderation in ways typical methods cannot. The presentation will then include specific examples of mixture regressions and the demonstrate how to perform mixture regression using Stata and Mplus. One example is a recently published paper in the journal Psychology of Religion and Spirituality (Goodman & Dyer, 2019).