Spring 2025 Workshops
Holiday discount: get 30% off all spring workshops through Friday, January 10, 2025. Enter code "GIFT30" at checkout
-
Politicization in Mental Health Care: Outlining the Problem and Showing Ways Forward
2 CE Credits - $75
Saturday, January 25, 2025, 12:00–2:00 PM EST
2-hour live virtual workshop
Political activism has become prominent in mental health care, and it's impacting clients. This workshop will explore the way politicized approaches impact education, training, and practice. Speakers will discuss issues in the field that have arisen as a result of this politicization and suggest some ways to respond. SEE FULL DETAILS
Jonathan Shedler, Ph.D. - Douglas Novotny, Ph.D. - Jon Mills, Psy.D., Ph.D., ABPP - Andrew Hartz, Ph.D. (moderator) - Leslie Elliott Boyce (moderator)
Student registration is discounted (no CE credits)
Members: Log in to get discount
CE available for psychologists and social workers. CE approval for counselors expected soon.
-
Four Overlooked Clinical Populations
2.5 CE Credits - $89
Saturday, February 15, 2025, 12:00–2:30 PM EST
2.5-hour live virtual workshop
Speakers will address four clinical issues that impact countless people but are often overlooked: (1) people experiencing OCD symptoms related to political correctness, (2) reproductive loss and abortion regret, (3) gun owners and firearms culture, (4) and religious and spiritual matters that emerge in treatment. SEE FULL DETAILS
Robin Atkins, LMHC - Jake Wiskerchen, MFT, NCC - Neil Kressel, Ph.D. - Dean McKay, Ph.D. - Andrew Hartz, Ph.D. (moderator) - Leslie Elliott Boyce (moderator)
Student registration is discounted (no CE credits)
Members: Log in to get discount
CE available for psychologists and social workers. CE approval for counselors expected soon.
-
Overlooked Issues in Men’s Mental Health
2 CE credits - $75
Sunday, March 16, 2025, 12:00–2:00 PM EDT
2-hour live virtual workshop
This workshop will address several issues that impact men but are often overlooked in the clinical literature and in therapist trainings. The three talks will discuss: (1) biases against men that often occur in psychotherapy, (2) men’s experiences of discrimination, bias, and anti-male aggression, and (3) the particularly challenging issue of false accusations of sexual misconduct. SEE FULL DETAILS
Joshua Aronson, Ph.D. - Ronald Chau, Ph.D. - Yedidya Lev, Psy.D. - Andrew Hartz, Ph.D. (moderator) - Leslie Elliott Boyce (moderator)
Student registration is discounted (no CE credits)
Members: Log in to get discount
CE available for psychologists and social workers. CE approval for counselors expected soon.
-
Overlooked Issues Related to Race and Mental Health
2 CE credits - $75
Saturday, April 5, 2025, 12:00–2:00 PM EDT
2-hour live virtual workshop
As ideas of “colorblindness” have been upended, new challenges have emerged for psychotherapy patients. People are increasingly seeing themselves in racial terms, leading some people to feel attacked and demonized and others to become more anxious or even paranoid. This workshop will explore these themes in detail, with a special focus on how these issues can shape mental illness and how therapists can improve care related to these experiences. SEE FULL DETAILS
Carole Sherwood, DClinPsy - Jaco van Zyl, MA - Omar Sultan Haque, M.D., Ph.D. - Craig Frisby, Ph.D. - Andrew Hartz, Ph.D. (moderator) - Leslie Elliott Boyce (moderator)
Student registration is discounted (no CE credits)
Members: Log in to get discount
CE available for psychologists and social workers. CE approval for counselors expected soon.
Registration for workshops will close 90 minutes before start. All purchases are final.
Email us at info@opentherapyinstitute.org with questions about membership and purchases.
At all Open Therapy workshop talks, the views expressed are those of the speaker alone and not those of the Open Therapy Institute. The Open Therapy Institute aims to highlight overlooked issues and perspectives, not to take an official stance on each topic. Within this purview, we aim to present a range of views from diverse theoretical orientations and perspectives.
Past Workshops
-
Sociopolitical Bias in Mental Health Care and Clinical Skill for Working with Diverse Viewpoints
-
Speaking Up: Why It’s Necessary and How to Approach It Clinically
-
Three Cultural Trends Shaping Contemporary Psychodynamic Therapy: Authoritarianism, Morality, and Humor
-
Wrestling with Racial and Cultural Reductionism
Workshops in Development
OTI workshops offer insights into overlooked issues in mental health. Workshops are led by professionals with a wide range of theoretical orientations, political views, and areas of expertise. They address topics like: biases in mental health care, how to work therapeutically with overlooked clinical populations, improving cross-political dialogue, masculinity, the role of religion and spirituality in mental health care, racial issues, gender/sexuality, self-censorship, and many others.
-
Socio-political values are often central to people’s lives, and as such they often come up in therapy sessions. These values can impact every area of a patient’s psychological functioning, such as life experiences, values, career choice, and relationships. Effective treatment requires that therapists be comfortable with and understanding of the wide range of socio-political values currently present in the American landscape. Additionally, therapy can be derailed by therapists making overtly political statements in session, attacking patients as racist or sexist, or pathologizing their political or religious views. But biases can also include statements that many therapists think are innocuous, like listing one’s pronouns in an online profile or having an “all gender” sign on the clinic bathroom. Therapists can signal bias by avoiding topics, showing discomfort in their body language or word choice, or by simply not understanding issues and not having anything thoughtful to say about patients’ experiences. Sometimes therapists assume patients want to be seen as victims, want to blame others, or want sympathy, even though many patients may be seeking mentorship or guidance that puts them in a more active role. The use of humor and incorporation of spirituality might strike some therapists as unprofessional, but many patient populations need some engagement in those areas. Because the mental health field is so left-leaning, patients often assume therapists are secular and liberal, even when they aren’t, and some patients may need reassurance to open up about anything that doesn’t ft with these assumed biases. Taken as a whole, these issues can drive people out of therapy, keep people from trying it in the first place, and can lead to antagonistic, stifled, or otherwise limited therapy sessions. All of these concerns will be discussed in detail.
-
Bullying that includes explicit anti-white hatred is shockingly common, especially at schools with a small minority of white students. Children who experience this form of hatred and aggression are often overlooked because their parents don’t understand these experiences and don’t know what to do. School administrators might overlook incidents because they are confused about how to respond, afraid of being attacked for addressing the problem, or don’t see anti-white racial aggression as “racism.” These students typically have no mental health resources, no social supports, and no means of responding assertively. Their experiences may be widely invalidated as they are framed as privileged while their bullies are framed as oppressed. They may be taught these views by teachers or hear them from their parents or peers. All of these experiences make anti-white racial bullying unique. People who experience these forms of hatred may side with their bullies, internalize the hatred, or dissociate the experience entirely. Others hide their experiences because they worry that others won’t understand or be supportive, and some of these victims can be radicalized. Yet the literature on this topic is minimal and clinical resources are non-existent. This talk will give an overview and highlight the urgent need for mental health care in this area.
-
Increasingly, racial consciousness is a central focus of education, media, and other areas of culture. For the most part this change is driven by a commitment to social justice, but this cultural shift has deep and far-reaching psychological implications. Young people in particular seem increasingly primed to notice race first when viewing art, reading literature, watching movies, and consuming other forms of media. Along with a focus on other divides like gender and sexuality, this fixation on “the racial schema” clouds out other important information, such as symbolism, style, psychological dynamics, philosophical questions, and historical trends. As these schemas become entrenched, new psychological dilemmas emerge around identity, relationships, and views on culture, society, and politics. New emotions, perspectives, and experiences can be a double-edged sword, awakening a constellation of new challenges that are only beginning to emerge as the ideal of colorblindness fades from the public sphere.
-
The vast majority men and women broadly adhere to patterns of gender expression and sexual desire consistent with what has been labelled “cis/hetero-normativity.” Yet, many couples are ambivalent and uncomfortable with their desires for gender differences in their relationships, and many have internalized a stigmatized view of this dynamic. Some couples avoid the topic out of fears of conflict. Others have internalized values that conflict with their desires. Sometimes an inability to accept their attachment to features of gender normativity or gender differences in their relationship can lead both partners to feel unfulfilled, to increase conflict, or to experience a loss of sexual desire/gratification. These feelings, if unspoken or repressed can then “come out sideways” and derail relationships. Still, many couples therapists are unsure how to broach these issues or suggest that a couple may function well with some features of gender normativity, and many patients in couples therapy share similar fears about expressing these feelings. This talk will discuss how this dynamic may manifest, how it can impact relationships, and how to foster patient-centered discussions around gender normativity that enables couples to find sustainable, equitable, and mutually-fulfilling relationships.
-
Terror Management Theory (TMT) argues that anxiety about death has a powerful impact on human psychology and culture. TMT is derived from existential psychoanalysis, but it has become a rich area of empirical research. It argues that death anxiety influences phenomena from the Great Pyramids to narcissistic personalities. However, one area this research overlooks is the role death anxieties play in pushes for ever-increasing government regulation. The fantasy of an omnipotent state that can protect everyone from death likely animates discussions about what might otherwise seem mundane discussions of regulatory policy. The impact of a drive to regulate on society and mental health will be examined in detail, with a specific focus on responses to the COVID-19 pandemic as a case example.
Jewish Students in Therapy Training Programs: Exclusion and Alienation
The Mental Health Toll of DEI: How Common Dynamics in DEI Programming Can Damage Social and Psychological Dynamics and Possibly Contribute to Mental Illness
Snowflakes and Hand Grenades: The Link Between Hypersensitivity and Aggression
Split Identity Politics: The All-or-Nothing Framing of Demographic Groups in Social Justice Discourse and Its Link to Cluster B Social Dynamics
Law Enforcement Mental Health after 2020: Stress, Invalidation, and Trauma: Findings from Recent Research
“Aggression Doesn’t Cure Trauma”: False Assumptions about Mental Health in the Activist Discourse
DBT for Political Conflict in Families: Using Evidence-Based Approaches
Fluency in Faith: Crucial Concepts to Help Therapists (Believing and Nonbelieving) Understand and Connect with Patients’ Experiences of Faith in Psychotherapy
Surviving the Mob: Case Studies of People Who Were “Cancelled,” Publicly Shamed, Fired, Ostracized, or Blacklisted for Their Beliefs, and Their Implications for Treatment
Political Bias in the Replicability Crisis: How Widespread Questionable Research Practices Can Combine with Political Bias to Make False Claims Appear “Evidence-Based”