In a joint effort between Climate Psychology Alliance- North America and Climate Psychiatry Alliance, we are offering a six-session course for mental health clinicians to provide an overview and grounding in the complex factors at play in the climate crisis and embedded social injustices, including ways to work with our own responses and those of our clients in climate-aware therapy. We will cover concepts at the macro level, focusing on a complex- systems understanding; the mezzo level, where we consider sociocultural factors and bring in an important Indigenous perspective; and the micro level, where we work with the clinician’s emotional reactions to the climate emergency as well as ways to address clinical issues in the consulting room and beyond. Class size will be limited to facilitate experiential participation and discussion.
Dates and Times:
Wednesdays, November 9 and 16; December 7 and 14, 2022; January 11 and 18, 2023
7:00pm - 8:30pm Eastern Time/4:00pm - 5:30 Pacific Time, on Zoom
Fee: $250
Sample learning objectives:
Participants will receive an overview of climate science realities and concepts, including an understanding of complex systems and their meaning in the climate and ecological crisis.
Participants will understand sociopolitical factors and disparities embedded in climate impacts, including an Indigenous perspective and approach, and will also understand social and cultural factors that impede or promote facing and intervening in climate and environmental harms.
Participants will understand why it is important to recognize and process their own emotional reactions to the climate crisis and ways to expand their conceptualizations and ways of working when providing climate-aware therapy.
Faculty:
Janet Lewis, M.D. is a private practice psychiatrist in the Finger Lakes region of New York State, Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Rochester, a founding member of the Climate Psychiatry Alliance, and co-chair of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry’s Climate Committee . Her presentations and papers on climate mental health have been given to professional, community and religious groups, and appeared in Psychodynamic Psychiatry, and the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease. She teaches a climate seminar series for psychiatric residents and established a continuously meeting climate change study /support /consultation therapists’ group in Ithaca NY.
Elizabeth Allured, Psy.D is a psychologist/psychoanalyst who co-founded the Climate Psychology Alliance – North America, currently serving as its co-president. She has been writing and publishing papers on the intersection of mental health and the environment since 2007, presenting nationally, internationally, and locally. She has held workshops for clinicians and university students in clinical aspects of climate psychology, and the development of emotional resilience. She has been quoted in the media, and is in practice on Long Island, N.Y. She is on the faculty of the Adelphi University Postgraduate Programs in the Adult Clinical and School Psychology programs.
Mary Hasbah Roessel, M.D. , DLFAPA, is a Navajo psychiatrist practicing in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She grew up on the Navajo nation with her grandfather, a revered medicine man. She worked with Navajo medicine people to work on ways to integrate Navajo cultural concepts for behavioral health staff. She has given presentations on Indigenous knowledge and climate change and wrote a chapter in the book: Groundswell Indigenous knowledge and a call to action for climate change. Her chapter: “Essential Elements of Change”, focuses on living within two worlds—Indigenous and Western cultures in this climate crisis.
Wendy Greenspun, Ph.D. is a psychologist/psychoanalyst on the board and steering committee of the Climate Psychology Alliance- North America. She is on faculty at the Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis, the Adelphi University Postgraduate Program in Marriage and Couples Therapy and the William Alanson White Couple Therapy Training and Education Program. She has published and presented papers, workshops, and courses for clinicians on working with climate distress. She provides workshops on building emotional resilience for climate activists, high school, and university students. She has run groups (climate cafes) for processing climate emotions. She is in private practice in New York City.
Edward Joseph Neidhardt, M.D., LFAPA, is a psychiatrist in private practice in Santa Fe, N.M. He worked with Navajo Medicine Men and together with his wife, a Navajo Psychiatrist, developed ways to integrate Western Medicine and Navajo Healing. He wrote and co-edited “Groundswell: Indigenous Knowledge and a Call to Action for Climate Change” with his daughter, Nicole Neidhardt. He presented at COP26. His recent publications include “Indigenous Knowledge Is Crucial to Confronting Climate Change and Supports Psychiatric Practice” Psychiatric News, February 2022. He is a passionate ally for Indigenous people in addressing mental health and climate change