Evidence-based treatment guidelines, such as the 2017 VA/DOD Clinical Practice Guideline, help clinicians provide effective care for individuals with PTSD, such as prolonged exposure or cognitive processing therapy. However, clinicians may experience difficulties in providing PTSD treatment if they have strong reactions to patients’ sociocultural views. This “elephant in the room,” which may range from a clinician disagreeing with a patient’s political views to a clinician being offended by a patient’s use of racist language, can impact a clinician’s abilities to work well with the patient and to provide effective PTSD treatment.
When clinicians and patients are experiencing shared multiple stressful, overlapping, and prolonged events -- as is happening currently with the COVID-19 pandemic, racial injustice/Black Lives Matter protests, presidential election, U.S. Capitol riots, and severe climate events -- providing strategies and guidance to help PTSD clinicians to manage strong reactions and to use a cultural conceptualization of their patients’ sociocultural views to inform evidence-based PTSD care is highly important. The purpose of this presentation is to help bridge the gap between a clinician having a strong reaction to their patient’s sociocultural views and providing effective evidence-based PTSD treatment.
For a brief overview of the presentation, check out the Bottom Line, Up Front (B.L.U.F.) below!
Learning Objectives:
After this webinar, participants will be able to:
- Develop strategies PTSD clinicians can utilize if they have strong reactions to a patients’ sociocultural views.
- Formulate a conceptualization of patients’ views either within or outside of a trauma framework.
- Employ case conceptualization to determine when and how to address patient views within PTSD evidence-based treatment.