This registration page is for those looking to attend the conference on-site at the CT Convention Center in Hartford. To attend virtually via Zoom, click here. You cannot register for single day on-site passes. To register for Monday or Tuesday only, you must click the link above for virtual registration. 

Registration for the full conference includes the following dates:
Monday, October 17th from 9am - 4pm ET
Tuesday, October 18th from 9am - 4pm ET
Wednesday, October 19th from 9am - 12pm ET
You must attend all 2.5 days to receive credit.

The Connecticut Women’s Consortium’s Trauma & Recovery Conference aims to explore the realities of trauma as it manifests through individual and community experiences whilst simultaneously acknowledging the multiple pathways to recovery. With a combination of national and local keynote and breakout session presenters, we strive to push the boundaries of traditional trauma treatment and expand the definition of recovery, creating comprehensive, inclusive systems of care. Join us at this inaugural conference, as we seek to promote evidence-based solutions for the many people across the world struggling with the effect of trauma and searching for recovery. 

Learn more about the Trauma & Recovery Conference at https://www.traumaandrecoveryconference.com/

This program is Approved by the National Association of Social Workers (Approval # 886706082-2648) for 15 continuing education contact hours."

Please note that all times below are Eastern Time. 

Monday, October 17th, 2022

08:00am - 09:00am: Registration, exhibitor floor open, breakfast available

09:00am - 09:15am: Opening remarks

09:15am - 10:15am: Keynote presentation: Scaling up Psychosocial Interventions for Mental Health Problems: Lessons from the Global South with Vikram Patel, PhD

10:15am - 10:30am: Break 

10:30am - 12:00pm: Concurrent workshops (see workshops tab for more details)

12:00pm - 01:00pm: Lunch

1:00pm - 02:30pm: Concurrent workshops (see workshops tab for more details)

02:30pm - 02:45pm: Break

02:45pm - 03:45pm: Keynote presentation: Restorative Justice for Sexual Harm: Why I Fought for a Circle, Not a Courtroom with Marlee Liss

03:45pm - 04:00pm: Closing remarks 

Tuesday, October 18th, 2022

08:00am - 09:00am: Registration, exhibitor floor open, breakfast available

09:00am - 09:15am: Opening remarks

09:15am - 10:15am: Keynote presentation: Transforming Legacy Burdens to Legacy Gifts with Deran Young, LCSW, MPA

10:15am - 10:30am: Break

10:30am - 12:00pm: Concurrent workshops (see workshops tab for more details)

12:00pm - 01:00pm: Lunch

1:00pm - 02:30pm: Concurrent workshops (see workshops tab for more details)

02:30pm - 02:45pm: Break

02:45pm - 03:45pm: Keynote presentation: Dear Stranger: A Journey of Youth Mental Health with Diana Chao

03:45pm - 04:00pm: Closing remarks

Wednesday, October 19th, 2022

08:00am - 09:00am: Registration, exhibitor floor open, breakfast available

09:00am - 09:15am: Opening remarks

09:15am - 10:15am: Keynote presentation: Liberation Psychology: Holistic, Culturally-informed, Systemically Attuned Trauma Recovery Pathways with Thema Bryant-Davis, PhD

10:15am - 10:30am: Break

10:30am - 11:00am: Ignite Session - to be announced!

11:00am - 12:00pm: Keynote Presentation: It Takes a Village to Build Resilience: Systemic Approaches to Supporting Children in the Context of Trauma with Archana Basu, PhD

Monday, October 17th, 2022

Scaling up Psychosocial Interventions for Mental Health Problems: Lessons from the Global South
Vikram Patel, PhD

The large and unequally distributed unmet needs for care for mental health problems have has been worsened by the pandemic. Pouring more money into the existing inefficient and ineffective mental health care system will not shift the needle on this crisis. This presentation will describe how empowering members of the community to deliver evidence based psychosocial interventions could transform our mental health care system.

Restorative Justice for Sexual Harm: Why I Fought for a Circle, Not a Courtroom
Marlee Liss

In 2019, Marlee's sexual assault case became the first in North America to conclude with restorative justice through the courts. In this presentation, Marlee takes a vulnerable and educational approach to sharing this alternative to the punitive system. The focus throughout the program is to inspire folks to create a vision of justice that is synonymous with healing through informative storytelling. In an environment rooted in hope and empowerment, listeners learn about this justice pathway that breaks cycles of harm and ignites cycles of healing.

Tuesday, October 18th, 2022 

Transforming Legacy Burdens to Legacy Gifts
Deran Young, LCSW, MPA

A legacy burden is a belief or emotion passed down generationally through the family tree, ethnic lineage, or environment/society. We carry many legacy burdens in the United States—patriarchy, individualism, and materialism, to name a few. However, the legacy burden of white supremacy culture, rationalized and perpetuated centuries of enslavement, murders, rapes, etc and continues to spread in our society like a virus that infects us all. Despite the recent increase in dialogue regarding diversity, equity and inclusion, we still have a long way to go in addressing the traumatic effects of systemic oppression. Rather than staying stuck in guilt, shame or defensiveness, it’s important to recognize that we all have unconscious bias that stems from fear based "parts" of us that took on protective thoughts, feelings and behaviors during our early years of social conditioning. Given how pervasive racism and anti-blackness, it’s nearly impossible not to have picked it up in some form. Racism, like all collective legacy burdens, is systemic and evident in most organizations, institutions, and policies. Research documents that racism creates significant physical and mental health disparities as well as reduced quality of life overall. The psychological toll that results from racism is known as racial trauma and is the result of people of color navagating overwhelming messages and interactions of discrimination, as well as vicariously witnessing acts of violence geared towards a particular race or community. The good news is that we can all be part of the solution and can support healing from legacy burdens by minimizing and reversing the personal, relational and collective impact. This presentation will discuss the necessary skills and adjustments needed to foster legacy gifts of healing such as accountability, advocacy, and corrective experiences to soothe the systemic and historical wounds of oppression.

Dear Stranger: A Journey of Youth Mental Health
Diana Chao

This presentation tells Diana’s personal story, from aspects of minority mental health like growing up below the poverty line with parents who didn’t speak English, to the power that even the smallest acts of kindness have had on her life. A fusion of spoken word, conceptual art, and letters written by young people around the world, this presentation is a testament to the power of second chances. Incorporated within are actionable strategies for maintaining mental wellbeing for ourselves and each other gathered from 8 years of interviews and frontline interventions.

Wednesday, October 19th, 2022

Liberation Psychology: Holistic, Culturally-informed, Systemically Attuned Trauma Recovery Pathways
Thema Bryant-Davis, PhD

Persons who have marginalized identities face increased risk for trauma and are often underserved by mental health agencies. Liberation Psychology requires attention to the socio-political context of survivors' lives including barriers to their care, cultural resources they carry, and holistic pathways to wellness. This presentation will apply a liberation psychology framework to a transformational approach to survivors' empowerment.

It Takes a Village to Build Resilience: Systemic Approaches to Supporting Children in the Context of Trauma
Archana Basu, PhD

This presentation will summarize mental health outcomes for children who have experienced trauma, as well as research related to protective factors at individual and systemic levels that promote children’s coping and resilience. A trauma-informed population health approach to working with children and families in a health care setting will be briefly presented.

Vikram Patel, PhD

Vikram Patel is The Pershing Square Professor of Global Health and Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow at the Harvard Medical School. He co-leads the GlobalMentalHealth@Harvard initiative. His work has focused on the burden of mental health problems, their association with social disadvantage, and the use of community resources for their prevention and treatment. He is a co-founder of the Movement for Global Mental Health, the Centre for Global Mental Health (at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine), the Mental Health Innovations Network, and Sangath, an Indian NGO which won the WHO Public Health Champion of India prize. He is a Fellow of the UK's Academy of Medical Sciences and has served on the Committee which drafted India’s first National Mental Health Policy and the WHO High Level Independent Commission for NCDs. He co-led the Lancet Commission on Global Mental Health & Sustainable Development and the Lancet-WPA Commission on Depression; he currently serves as co-chair of the Lancet Citizens Commission on Reimagining India’s Health System. He has been awarded the Chalmers Medal, the Sarnat Prize, the Pardes Humanitarian Prize, an Honorary OBE and the John Dirk Canada Gairdner Award in Global Health. He has been awarded Honorary Doctorates from Georgetown University, York University and Stellenbosch University. He was listed in TIME Magazine’s 100 most influential persons of the year in 2015.

Marlee Liss

Marlee Liss is a restorative justice advocate, award-winning speaker, and embodiment coach. She is also a lesbian, Jewish feminist and trailblazer. Marlee made history in the justice system when her sexual assault case became the 1st in North America to conclude with restorative justice through the courts. This means that she fought for her assailant to go to therapy instead of proceeding to criminal trial and eventually, they met in a transformative 8-hour circle. Since then, Marlee has shared her story worldwide - being featured on major media platforms like Forbes, Huff Post, Buzzfeed, Mel Robbins Show, and more. Additionally, with a background in anti-oppressive social work, eating disorder prevention, trauma-informed yoga and somatic sex education, Marlee has coached hundreds of women worldwide in reclaming sensuality and embodied empowerment, especially after sexual trauma, disordered eating, and relationship abuse. A renowned speaker, Marlee won 1st place at the international Speaker Slam competition on Forgiveness and has delivered presentations for: the US Military Sexual Assault Response Team, on an elite panel for the National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence, at Fordham School of Law, CHW Charity, Canada’s Victims & Survivors of Crime Week, and more. Further, her story is currently on contract to be made into a documentary and scripted series, as she works on her memoir. Learn more about Marlee’s work at www.marleeliss.com

Deran Young, LCSW, MPA

Deran Young is a licensed therapist, New York Times Best Selling Author, former military mental health officer, and the founder of Black Therapists Rock, a nonprofit organization that mobilizes over 30,000 professionals committed to reducing the psychological impact of systemic oppression and intergenerational trauma. She obtained her social work degree from University of Texas, where she studied abroad in Ghana, West Africa for two semesters creating a high school counseling center for impoverished students. With a current social media audience of over 100,000 followers on IG and Facebook, Deran has become a leading influencer and public figure committed to spreading mental health awareness and improving health equity. Deran describes herself as someone who loves to learn from various cultures and has visited over 37 different countries and her clinical experience spans across four different continents. She resides in the Washington DC area and loves traveling the world with her 9-year-old son.

Diana Chao

Diana Chao is a first-generation Chinese-American immigrant from Southern California. Diana founded Letters to Strangers (L2S) when she was a sophomore in high school after bipolar disorder nearly ended her life. By beginning to heal through letters, she discovered that writing is humanity distilled into ink. Today, L2S is the largest global youth-for-youth mental health nonprofit, impacting over 35,000 people every year on six continents and publishing the world’s first youth-for-youth mental health guidebook for free. For this effort, Diana has been named a 2021 Princess Diana Legacy Award Winner, 2020 L'Oréal Paris Women of Worth, and Oprah Magazine's 2019 Health Hero. As part of Adobe's inaugural class of global Top Talents, Diana's “Minority Mental Health Month” self-portrait series went viral with 2+ million views, and she teaches and speaks on youth mental health. But most of the time, she is a 2021 graduate of Princeton University trying to figure out how best to navigate life.

Thema Bryant-Davis, PhD

Dr. Thema Bryant, president-elect of the American Psychological Association, completed her doctorate in Clinical Psychology at Duke University and her post-doctoral training at Harvard Medical Center’s Victims of Violence Program. She is currently a tenured professor of psychology in the Graduate School of Education and Psychology at Pepperdine University, where she directs the Culture and Trauma Research Laboratory and teaches Trauma in Diverse Populations, Clinical Skills, Social Foundations of Psychology, and Advanced Multicultural Psychology. Dr. Thema’s clinical and research interests center on interpersonal trauma and the societal trauma of oppression. She provides national and international training on trauma recovery for marginalized communities, embodied psychotherapy, spiritual integration in psychotherapy, and liberation psychology. Prior to becoming president-elect, Dr. Thema has been actively engaged with the APA over many years. She is a past president of the Society for the Psychology of Women and a past APA representative to the United Nations, and she was a part of the first APA team to serve at the United Nations. In addition to being a reviewer for several APA journals on the topics of trauma and culture, Dr. Thema served as an Associate Editor for the APA journal Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy. Dr. Thema is co-editor of the groundbreaking APA book Womanist and Mujerista Psychologies and edited Multicultural Feminist Therapy: Helping Adolescent Girls of Color to Thrive. She is a pioneer psychologist on the trauma of racism, and she has been honored extensively by organizations such as The California Psychological Association, The Institute of Violence, Abuse and Trauma, and The International Division of APA, among others. Her work to raise public awareness of psychology beyond the academy and private therapy office has been featured on Headline News, National Public Radio, OWN TV, BET, CBS, and CNN, among other platforms.

Archana Basu, PhD

Dr. Archana Basu is a Psychologist in the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, at Massachusetts General Hospital/ Harvard Medical School and a Research Scientist in the Department of Epidemiology at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. Using a developmental and life course approach her research aims to understand how protective factors (e.g., sensitive caregiving) shape children’s health in the context of trauma and adversities, with a particular focus on the pregnancy – age 5 developmental period. Dr. Basu also leads Trauma Informed Care initiatives that focus on systemic approaches to addressing the impact of trauma. As a practicing psychologist, Dr. Basu works with children and families to promote coping and resilience in the context of adversities.

Monday, October 17th

Workshop Session 1 - 10:30 am - 12:00 pm ET

Yoga & Mindfulness for Trauma Recovery
Tracey Meyers, PsyD
Yoga and mindfulness are now utilized with growing frequency to treat some of the long-lasting effects of PTSD and trauma on the nervous system. This workshop will provide an overview of trauma-informed approaches to yoga and meditation that can be utilized by mental health professionals treating patients who have experienced trauma along with specific yoga and meditation practices that can be used in a therapy session and as part of a home practice toolkit.

Considering the Hidden Impact & Reimagining of Systemic Family Separation 
Cheri Bragg, MSW student
Participants will learn about a history of family separation and related trauma considerations from multiple system perspectives. An impact panel will share stories of their personal experiences with family separation. Participants will also learn about some innovative work being done in this area followed by an invitation to openly discuss and imagine a different future. 

Intro to LGBTQ+ Trauma and Recovery
Kay Warchol, MSW & Shane Scott, LCSW

This workshop is perfect for anyone looking to learn the basics of the LGBTQ community. Those who attend this session, will walk away with a better understanding of LGBTQ identity and intersectionality. Particular attention will be paid to risk and protective for LGBTQ individuals. In addition, we will review best practices for working with the LGBTQ community, practice with pronouns, and more!

Resilience: The Biology of Stress & The Science of Hope Film Screening & Discussion
Colette Anderson, LCSW

Acting as a natural counter to Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), resilience represents one's ability to thrive, adapt, and cope following episodes of toxic stress or trauma. The more resilient the child, the more likely they are to cope with and move on from a trauma. Despite what many people think, resilience is not an intrinsic characteristic of children but rather something that can be learned from the right environment and people. This workshop will feature a screening of Resilience: The Biology of Stress & The Science of Hope and discussion to foster growth in our understanding of what it means to be resilient and what we can do to support those who have experienced toxic stress and trauma in childhood.

Workshop Session 2 - 1:00 pm - 2:30 pm ET 

Complex Trauma & the Nervous System
Nancy Grechko, PsyD
Complex trauma affects the nervous system and our ability to regulate our emotions, behavior, and relationships. In this workshop, participants will learn how to identify more nuanced forms of trauma and dissociation as well as their impact on the nervous system. The Window of Tolerance framework will be utilized to better understand and identify arousal states and traumatic responses in clients as well inform treatment interventions. 

Combined 45-minute workshops on Juvenile Justice:
ACEs & Juvenile Justice Involved Youth with Tanya Iacono, DSW, LCSW
The presentation will provide an overview of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and then move into discussing ACEs specific to the adolescent offender population. In addition to an overview of ACEs, some of the neurological responses to stress will be discussed. The presentation will conclude with a discussion of treatment implications. 
The Traumatic Impact of the Youth Legal System on Young People with Christina Quaranta, MPA
In this workshop, participants will learn how the youth legal system works and why it is traumatic to become involved in it. Additionally, participants will gain perspective on what Connecticut can and should be doing instead, and where we hope to move forward in the future with best practice. 

The 8 Dimensions of Boundaries: Making Visible the Invisible
Anne Thompson, LPC
The 8 Dimensions of Boundaries is a tool to make the invisible visible, a strategy not just for speaking but also for listening, and thereby addressing issues of hermeneutical justice. Through highlighting the overlap of boundaries' psychological and concrete nature, the framework is a response to prescriptive actions that oftentimes harms when attempting to aid. The tool emphasizes that all individuals are part of intersecting groups, communities and institutions, thus lifting out of a lens pathologizing the individual.

Staying In The Room: Managing Medical & Dental Care After Trauma
Cathy Collyer, OTR, LMT
Trauma survivors frequently struggle to tolerate medical and dental care. Our fractured healthcare system, complex trauma responses, and healthcare provider's limited understanding of trauma make it difficult for survivors to "stay in the room". This presentation reviews the familiar and hidden causes of fear, avoidance, and dissociation happening in appointments. A range of practical strategies, including targeted stabilization techniques and physical treatment adaptations, are presented.

Tuesday, October 18th

Workshop Session 1 - 10:30 am - 12:00 pm ET

Creating Inclusive Trauma-Informed Systems of Care
Michele Klimczak, LCSW
Becoming a trauma-Informed organization requires a strong understanding of a systems approach, and a deep appreciation of the human dynamics underlying any significant organizational change. Most trauma-related initiatives are heavily client and direct-care staff oriented, failing to take into account the key role of administrative functions. This session will discuss how to successfully infuse trauma-informed principles into the everyday operations of all aspects of your organization, in a manner that honors the importance of every role. 

Intimate Partner Violence & Attachment in Children
Nancy Grechko, PsyD
Intuitively, we know exposure to intimate partner violence (IPV) effects a child's attachment but let's look at the "how". This workshop will provide concrete explanations for why and how childhood attachment can become disrupted as a result of exposure to IPV. An overview of IPV will be provided as well as developmental trauma, attachment, and impact of IPV on children. 

The Creative Trauma Therapist: Why & How to Incorporate Arts-Based Approaches
Anna Seidner, LCSW
This session is highly experiential, come prepared to create! We will begin with a bit of theory, exploring how making art (drawing, painting, music, dance, poetry, and more) can be a powerful tool in promoting the post-traumatic growth of our clients. We will then build off of that foundational knowledge and learn how to bring arts-based tools into the therapy hour by experiencing them first-hand together.

Combined 45-minute workshops on supporting veterans:
Post-Service Life: Supporting Women Veterans with Frederick Dombrowski, PhD, LMHC, CASAC, LPC, LADC, NCC, CCMHC, MAC, ACS, BC-TMH, HS-BCP, ICADC
US veterans experience intense physical and emotional training to cope with the exposure of war. Transitioning to home life following deployment can be very difficult. These difficulties can be enhanced by the experiences of women who attempt to resume activities that support others, often limiting focus on self. This presentation will identify ways to support women veterans during reintegration following deployment. 
Women Veterans, the VA & the Community with Tiesha Maddix, PsyD & Mary Sperrazza, OTR/L, CPRP