Immersive Course in Climate Aware Therapy, Level 1 – OnDemand
In a joint effort between Climate Psychology Alliance- North America and Climate Psychiatry Alliance, this online course for mental health clinicians provides grounding in the complex factors at play in the climate crisis and larger polycrisis, including ways to work with our own responses and those of our clients in climate-aware therapy. Recorded content, readings, and in-depth small group communal learning circles led by faculty, allow room for emergent clinical material throughout. The course culminates in a final extended class of creative small group case discussions led by the instructors.
Unique to this course is its framework of an Indigenous perspective and “Two-Eyed Seeing” (which adds Western knowledge to Indigenous understanding). The multiple and shifting perspectives help to hold the complexity of climate change reality at all levels of our engagement. We cover concepts at the macro level, focusing on a complex- systems understandings including “Futures Thinking”; the mezzo level, where we consider sociocultural factors; 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. Importantly for clinicians in this time, fundamental climate-aware therapy understandings and attitudes are also applicable to clinical work with the larger social polycrisis. Class size will be limited to facilitate experiential participation and discussion throughout the course
Presenter Bios:
Janet Lewis, M.D. is a private practice psychiatrist in the Finger Lakes region of New York State, 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 journals including Psychodynamic Psychiatry, and the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease. She teaches a climate seminar series for psychiatric residents at the University of Rochester and she established a climate change study /support /consultation therapists’ group in Ithaca NY that has been continuously meeting since 2015.
Elizabeth Allured, Psy.D is a psychologist/psychoanalyst who co-founded the Climate Psychology Alliance – North America. She has been writing and publishing papers on the intersection of mental health and the environment since 2007, and 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 co-authored the chapter, “Therapists’ Perspectives: Psychotherapeutic Techniques with Applicability to Climate Distress,” in Climate Change and Youth Mental Health with Barbara Easterlin. She is in practice on Long Island, N.Y. She teaches a seminar in the Yale Psychology Fellows Program.
Wendy Greenspun, Ph.D. is a psychologist/psychoanalyst and a former member of the Executive Committee of the Climate Psychology Alliance- North America, where she currently co-chairs the clinical support subcommittee. She is on faculty at the Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis, and the Adelphi University Postgraduate Program in Marriage and Couples Therapy. 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, clergy, high school, and university students. She facilitates climate emotion groups (climate cafes) and trains facilitators in running cafes. She is in private practice in New York City. https://www.wendygreenspun.com/
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
Timeline:
Recorded 1-hour webinar 1 – Video- Climate Aware Therapy: Macro level view – Janet Lewis, M.D.
Recorded 1-hour Webinar 2: Video- Mezzo level. Welcoming Western Wisdom into Climate Aware Therapy: Elizabeth Allured, PhD
Recorded 1-hour Webinar 3: Video- Micro level I: Preparing the therapist: Personal and clinical considerations. Wendy Greenberg
Recorded 1-hour Webinar 4: Video- Micro level II: Patient Centered Care for Climate Change Joe Neidhardt, M.D.
Learning Objectives
Participants will be able to:
- Summarize several climate science realities and concepts, including mitigation, adaptation, complexity, and emergence in the climate and ecological crisis.
- Identify a social bias that impedes action on the climate crisis.
- Identify two ways that recognizing their own emotional reactions to the climate crisis can be helpful as part of providing climate-aware therapy.
- Categorize three types of climate-related traumatic stress.
- Describe therapeutic attitudes found beneficial in working with climate distress.
- Describe 5 modes of “futures thinking.”
This course content is based on a publication that has been peer-reviewed, the scientific standard for evaluating academic work. All studies and scientifically derived evidence have limitations that should be considered. If you have any questions about the accuracy or limitations of the content, please contact us at
support@ce-classes.com and we will get back to you.
