Save The Date: Information About June 23 Workshop On Trauma Informed Practice

May 25, 2022

Save The Date: June 23, 2022   

As previously announced, the College is pleased to advise registrants of the upcoming virtual workshop “Trauma Informed Practice: Understanding the Neurobiological and Psychological Effects of Violence and Abuse,” which will be provided by Dr. Lori Haskell on June 23 from 3:00 pm to 6:00 pm. There will be a nominal fee of $50.00 for this workshop and more information about registration will be provided in subsequent notices. As a reminder, this is the first of a two-part series of workshops, and Dr. Haskell will be providing a second workshop in the fall that will focus on practical considerations when providing assessment and therapy services, particularly to Indigenous clients who have a trauma history.

Dr. Haskell has provided the following description of her June 23, 2022 workshop:

The June 23, 2022 educational session provides a conceptual overview of the relevance of the neurobiology of trauma to the practice of psychology. While the information is of general application for psychologists, the session includes some specific attention to the ways in which the conceptual framework and information are specifically relevant to the lives of Indigenous peoples.

Childhood abuse, neglect and parental misattunement can result in complex neurobiological and psychological effects throughout a person’s lifetime. Understanding these effects is imperative for effective psychological treatment. New insights and conceptualizations from the field of neuroscience, and understanding how best to address these neurobiological changes, allow for more effective treatment of clients who struggle with severe dysregulation, attachment difficulties, and dissociative symptoms.

Traumatic experiences associated with childhood abuse and neglect are relational, and they most often begin in early childhood. As a result, they affect many domains of a person’s development and functioning in adulthood; they are often formative. 

For indigenous peoples, disrupted attachments often happen on two levels, not only individual experiences of childhood abuse and neglect, but also the structural and macro-level effects of colonialism that in many cases have severed Indigenous peoples’ attachment to their lands, customs, cultures, and ways of life. The traumatic impacts of these disrupted attachments have reverberated both through Indigenous communities and through the individual lives of Indigenous peoples.

Through utilization of clinical case material, participants will be exposed to a theoretical understanding of complex trauma that is non-pathologizing, developmentally informed and takes into account social contexts.

Dr. Lori Haskell is a clinical psychologist who splits her time between delivering professional training and educational presentations across Canada and her clinical private practice. She is a nationally recognized expert on trauma and abuse, and on trauma informed approaches to mental health service delivery and on legal responses.

• Dr. Haskell has worked on collaborative projects addressing the impact of trauma on Indigenous peoples, trauma and the service challenges for developmentally disabled people, complex trauma and homelessness, and restorative justice and gendered violence. She has provided expert evidence in a number of legal proceedings, including criminal trials and gave expert testimony at the Coroner’s Inquest of the domestic homicide of Sunny Park, her son and parents, in British Columbia. 
• She regularly delivers professional trainings at conferences for Crown Attorneys and other lawyers, to service providers, mental health professionals, professional colleges and to police forces across Canada, on the need for trauma informed criminal justice system responses and enhanced understandings of the neurobiology of trauma. 
• Her recent keynote addresses have included the Maddison Chair Trust Lecture in Northern Justice, in 2018 in the Yukon on “Disrupted Attachment: The Effects of abuse and harm on Indigenous People,” and a 2018 Keynote address to the National Symposium on Sexual Assault Cases in the Criminal Court: The Latest Developments in Law, Science and Practice. (April 21, 2018) on “the Neurobiology of Sexual Assault.”
• Dr. Haskell has also published a book (First Stage Trauma Treatment: A Guide for Therapists Working with Women (Toronto:  CAMH, University of Toronto, 2003) and numerous articles on issues of trauma and abuse, including co-authoring a recent report for Justice Canada, “The Impact of Trauma on Adult Sexual Assault Victims:  What the Criminal justice system needs to know” (2019).