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Australasian Conference On Traumatic Stress
CategoriesFiles ACOTS Keynote Speakers & Pre-Conference Workshop
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 KEYNOTE SPEAKERS 
George Bonanno is Professor of Education and Psychology at Columbia University. His research over the past 15 years has examined how adults and children respond to, and cope with, extremely aversive events such as the death of a loved one, war, infectious disease, sexual abuse, and terrorist attack.
In recent years, Professor Bonanno's work has focused more specifically on defining psychological resilience in adults exposed to extreme adversity. Click here to read more about Professor George Bonanno
 Richard McNally is Professor and Director of Clinical Training at Harvard University. He has more than 320 publications, including the books Panic Disorder: A Critical Analysis (1994) and Remembering Trauma (2003). He has conducted laboratory studies concerning: (i) recovered memories; and (ii) cognitive functioning in adults reporting histories of childhood sexual abuse.
His research has been supported by the N.I.M.H and he is an advisor to the DSM-V Anxiety Disorders Sub-Workgroup. Click here to read more about Professor Richard McNally  Beverley Raphael is Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry, University of Queensland; Professor of Psychological Medicine, ANU; and Professor of Population Mental Health and Disasters, at the University of Western Sydney. She has had extensive experience in the development of disaster mental health in Australia and internationally. Professor Raphael was the founding President of ASTSS and was recognised by ISTSS for lifetime achievement. Click here to read more about Professor Beverley Raphael PRECONFERENCE WORKSHOP: Dr Reg Nixon & Dr Vanessa Cobham "Treating PTSD in Children and Adolescents" Dr Reg Nixon (Flinders University, S.A) and Dr Vanessa Cobham (UQ, Qld) will jointly run this half day workshop on the treatment of children and adolescents who have PTSD. Click here to read more about Dr Nixon PRECONFERENCE WORKSHOP: Dr Angela Morgan "Mindfulness Training" The primary focus of the workshop will be the practical applications of Mindfulness-based approaches in the treatment of trauma. Dr. Morgan will provide an overview of the empirical evidence supporting the use of mindfulness with trauma, and discuss cases in which the use of mindfulness may be contraindicated.
This workshop will also address treatment planning considerations for eating disordered clients with a history of trauma.
PRECONFERENCE WORKSHOP: Professor George Bonanno "Resilience in the Face of Loss and Potential Trauma" In this workshop Professor Bonanno will review new research and theory about resilience in the face of loss or potentially traumatic life events. The first part of the workshop will focus how both mental health providers and social scientists have traditionally conceptualized loss and trauma, and how these conceptualizations have limited understanding of human resilience. He will then consider new ways of thinking about resilience and review the growing corpus of research that has demonstrated resilient outcomes following a range of potentially traumatic events. Next, he will consider the growing body of research on predictors of resilience outcomes. During this workshop Professor Bonanno will propose a small but significant change in the way we think about resilience. Rather than asking why some people are resilient, it will be suggested that we should be asking why some people are not resilient. It will be argued and evidence will be presented to show that humans are wired for resilience. In the final portion of the workshop, Professor Bonanno will consider the role of emotion in coping with loss and trauma, specifically the emotions of sadness and fear and, complimentarily, how failure of these natural or in-born emotional mechanisms might lead to the development of PTSD or prolonged grief reactions PRECONFERENCE WORKSHOP: Professor Richard McNally "Memory and Mindfulness" In this presentation, Professor McNally will provide a critical analysis of clinical studies adduced in support of the concept of repressed (or “dissociated”) memory of trauma. Although advocates of the concept of repression have interpreted these studies as showing that trauma survivors are often incapable of recalling their horrific experiences, these studies actually document phenomena other than repression. In the second part of the presentation, Professor McNally will describe studies completed by his research group on people who report having recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse (CSA), report never having forgotten their CSA, or who believe that they harbor repressed memories of CSA. This work points to a third interpretation of recovered memories of abuse that requires neither the concept of trauma nor the concept of repression. Finally, Professor McNally will briefly cover recent historical scholarship that illuminates the origins of the concept of repressed memory of trauma. PRECONFERENCE WORKSHOP: Professor Beverley Raphael "Working with Teachers Following Disaster" This workshop will address schools’ experience of disaster and mental health initiatives that have been developed to address this response. This will be discussed in the All Hazard Prevention; Preparation; Response; and Recovery Model. It will provide input from researchers and practitioners in this field and will address: (i) the roles of government, non-government, external agencies; and (ii) strategies for principals, teachers, school communities, students, parents and families. It will aim to develop guiding principles based on evidence and practice to assist in future planning and response. Click here to read more about Professor Beverley Raphael  |
