One of the goals of the Brattleboro Retreat's Uniformed Service Program (USP) is to help uniformed service
agencies and peer support teams establish a continuity of wellness training from preservice to treatment. Due to a highly challenging set of work demands, uniformed professionals like you deal with trauma and other events that can cause severe degrees of stress.
This puts you and members of your agency at higher risk for the kinds of distress that can interfere with important areas of living. Different outcomes depend on your capacities to recover quickly from difficulties. That's why USP has developed a specialized training seminar for your agency and peer support team that we can present at the preservice or inservice training levels--or to your peer support team:
A First Responder’s Life Manual for Mental Health,
Improved Work Performance, and Valued Living
This training seminar introduces a model of mental health and wellness that can influence healthy changes in resiliency, vulnerability, valued living, and work performance. Framed using life and career course perspectives, the training begins with identifying core problems such as getting caught up in thinking and emotional responding that contributes to pain and suffering and behavior problems. Techniques to develop psychologically flexibility – to be aware of the present situation as it is and without needless defenses, and based on what the situation offers, to take committed action toward stated goals and values – are then enumerated, discussed, and practiced. Throughout the training, we use a simple model that teaches you to sort what’s happening in your outside and inside worlds and whether what you’re doing is moving you toward things that are important to you or away from your pain and doing problem behaviors like on-the-job or at home.
For mental health professionals USP also offers specialized training on providing treatment services to uniformed service personnel. Providing quality, patient-centered care in the context of the uniformed professional’s work culture and experience requires knowledge of his or her work role, job functions, work conditions, occupational hazards and stress, and unique aspects of confidentiality. In addition, treatment providers should combine the best available research evidence, clinical practice and expertise to achieve positive treatment outcomes. For the mental health care professional, we have developed a training seminar to assist you in the delivery of psychological services:
Establishing a Practice in Working with Uniformed Service Professionals:
A Mindfulness and Acceptance-Based Approach to Mental Health Care
This training seminar begins with learning about the structural and organizational explanations of the uniformed service professional’s behavior and considering different paradigms and worldviews that shape his or her behavior. Next, there is an introduction to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), which is an empirically supported treatment. You will learn the philosophical and theoretical underpinnings of using ACT as an intervention method to increase the uniformed service member’s valued living and work performance while decreasing his or her struggling with pain and suffering. After that, you will learn about six core problems like experiential avoidance and cognitive fusion that contribute to problem behaviors. The training seminar rounds-out with a case conceptualization, a discussion and exercises that focus on six core clinical processes involving the uniformed professional getting centered, opening up to pain, and engaging in valued living.
In addition to the above training seminars, we would be happy to develop a training seminar tailored to meet your specific needs. For more information about our training seminars on working with uniformed service professionals, call 802-258-6803 or email lstroffeleno@brattlebororetreat.org.