This is an announcement that Quality Improvement of Solano County Health and Social Services (Provider #57883) is offering Redefining Psychosis in two parts – 9:00 am – 12:15 pm on Thursdays, May 14 and 21, 2020.   For details regarding registration, please see attached Registration Form.

This is a 2-part training.  It is recommended that participants attend both days, but it is not required.

This workshop is intended for all levels of trainees. Parts of it are introductory and parts are advanced. It is intended to inspire clinicians to bravely address the issues that are experienced in a psychotic break or what becomes redefined as a special message crisis.

Maximum attendance for this training is 50 participants.

Course Title:      Redefining Psychosis

Date:                    Part 1 – Thursday, May 14, 2020

                              Part 2 – Thursday, May 21, 2020

Time:                   Each session is from 9:00 am – 12:15 pm

Location:             Zoom – Information on accessing the trainings will be sent out closer to the training dates

 Educational Objectives:

Historically, clinicians are trained to avoid engaging with people when they are in an emergency state for fear of escalating symptoms. This workshop is intended to provide a roadmap to the rabbit hole. In other words, it redefines what is happening during a person’s journey through madness in a structured way that justifies intervention and highlights solutions. This can help a clinician feel confident that listening and intervening has value and can be necessary to form an alliance that can help. Interventions and solution strategies that get suggested can be used at any stage of a person’s recovery to explore what is happening or what has been experienced. Often clinicians struggle to know what is and isn’t helpful. This presentation will give attendees not only a better sense of what is helpful, but also hosts of strategies to consider using.

This course is being presented by Timothy C Dreby, M.Ed., LMFT.

Tim states:  “I have been running professional survivor-led psychosis focus groups for the past twelve years in a public Intensive Outpatient Program at Highland Hospital in Oakland CA. I have a Masters of Education from Temple University obtained in 1998 and a MFT License obtained in 2008. I also survived a mid-career “schizophrenia” diagnosis that involved a three-month hospitalization in Montana State Hospital and a two-year emergency state about which I wrote an award-winning memoir. In 2013, I authored an Alameda County Innovations Grant and started to make public presentations with a small band of people with lived experience I trained and hired to promote this methodology. Since the close of this program I have been presenting and developing this material in local venues and through collaborations with the Bay Area Hearing Voices Network. This has involved annual presentations at the California Association of Social Rehabilitation Conference and other local venues.”

Please submit the attached Registration Form via QI fax at (707) 427-2774 or email at QualityImprovement@SolanoCounty.com no later than May 12, 2020.  County employees must receive supervisory approval.

If you register and are later unable to make the training, please cancel at least 24 hours ahead.

Each of the courses meets the qualifications for 3 hours of continuing education credit for LMFTs, LCSWs, and/or LPCCs as required by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences. Solano County Health and Social Services (Provider #57883) is approved by the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists to sponsor continuing education for LMFTs, LCSWs, and/or LPCCs. Solano County Health and Social Services maintains responsibility for this program/course and its content.

Participants must attend the fully scheduled time to receive CEUs – partial credit will not be awarded.  Participants will not earn CE credit if more than 5 minutes late to the training, take excessive breaks, or leave early.

Certificates of Completion will be sent to participants within 3 weeks of participation once attendance is verified.

Professional credit is at no cost to the participant. The course includes course materials and learning activities to all participants.

If any special accommodations are needed, please contact Quality Improvement at least 3 days prior to the date of the training.  Quality Improvement can be contacted at (707) 784-8323 or at QualityImprovement@SolanoCounty.com.

If you would like to make a complaint following this training, please contact Quality Improvement at (707) 784-8323 or at QualityImprovement@SolanoCounty.com.

Thank you!

Quality Improvement

Behavioral Health Division

Solano County Health and Social Services

Phone:  (707) 784-8323

Fax:        (707) 427-2774

Nonproprietary

Redefining Psychosis Registration Form May 2020 Zoom

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Perhaps we all go through periods of time when we are asked to redefine ourselves. As the summer is underway, I find myself challenged to find new ways to commit to my work supporting people who experience psychosis.

If you are receiving this email or post, you are likely familiar with my blogs and efforts to use my experience to help change the way psychosis is approached. A large part of my writing platform depends upon having meaningful work that enables me to share experiences with others and that financially supports me in doing so.

Early this summer, the company I work for announced that programs will be getting cut and closed to address a huge budget shortfall. More information was released and we learned that there is a proposal to merge the urban Highland Program where I work with the suburban Fairmont Program.

This could function to devastate a community that has supported me. It is Highland that allowed me to create my special message group which gave me the opportunity to learn how to redefine psychosis.

The potential loss of this community breaks my heart. I worry for the clients who don’t want to acculturate to the new community. What will they do to stay busy and get support? But I have to confess that sometimes I fear that without this supportive community, it is I who will not be able to thrive and create content that matters. Giving to others and seeing them happy clearly feeds me and keeps me going.

I do believe that I will be okay, but this change ushers in fundamental changes towards who I am and how I have been able to survive. I have already started straining to find an alternative course of income in the event the merge or in the event that my position gets eliminated. Talk from the company has been tough and has made me question the stability of my union entitlement and right to “bump” a less experienced worker.

I have kept my writing practice up to the best of my ability and have some irons in the fire in terms of new blog posts to publish. Still, my confidence as a writer is shaken my need to create a new identity. Relationships with new colleagues will be very different if I am selected to continue my service in Alameda Health System. The issue has caused me to evaluate my values and professional options. How do I make a living without selling out my values and passion for understanding and working through psychosis?

If I go to private practice, how do I fill that practice with people who can benefit from my expertise? How do I get on insurance panels? What if private practice causes me to stray away from my passions? Can I be as open and forthright if I work with people who don’t relate to psychosis? Do I need to hide my identity on my blog and as a writer? These are dilemmas that currently interfere with publishing the posts I am working on

Are there some ways that this change might help me grow for the better?

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