Trauma Talks

Keynote Presentations

Advocating for Trauma-informed Care: Moving from Construct to Reality
Presenter: Dr. Janice LeBel, PhD, ABPP

Dr. Janice LeBel will be presenting: Advocating for Trauma-informed Care: Moving from Construct to Reality in which shewill offer pragmatic recommendations and strategies for trauma-informed system change.  Dr. LeBel has direct experience of advancing a trauma-informed agenda with multiple health and social service systems and concretizing trauma-sensitive practice into practice standards, program operations and funding streams. Her presentation will review beginning and more advanced steps in these processes.  Specific strategies to move from theory to practice include: foundational content knowledge, focused leadership skills, key data elements, full inclusion of persons-served and more.  Finally, she will also offer typical pitfalls and challenges, and suggestions for mitigating ‘false steps’ along the way of system transformation.


Treating the Complexities of Complex Trauma: Integrated and Evidence-Based Treatment Approaches
Presenter: Christine A. Courtois, PhD, ABPP

Complex trauma is the result of repetitive and layered forms of attachment trauma and childhood abuse, along with other forms of prolonged and repetitive trauma. The aftereffects are themselves complex and span neurobiological, psychological, interpersonal, and spiritual domains. They can have lifelong impact or can appear periodically in rather disguised form. This presentation will provide an overview of aftereffects and their associated diagnoses, with emphasis on their neurobiological and dissociative aspects. A sequenced treatment that extends beyond the treatment of posttraumatic symptoms has received consensus support but is being questioned by some who instead recommend the early application of evidence based trauma-focused treatment. This presentation will focus on the need for integrated care and collaboration between therapist and client. The treatment is founded on a solid and trustworthy relationship between client and therapist to provide a catalyst and a container for therapeutic issues to be addressed.

Learning Objectives:

  1. Attendees will be able to describe dimensions of complex trauma.
  2. Attendees will be able to describe several aftereffects of complex trauma.
  3. Attendees will be able to outline the sequence of treatment for complex trauma and identify components of integrated care.
  4. Attendees will be able to identify several types of evidence-based trauma-focused treatments.
Women's College Hospital