Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a common and often debilitating mental health condition characterized by unwanted intrusive thoughts (obsessions) and repeated distress-reducing behaviors (compulsions). Frequently misunderstood, misdiagnosed, and mistreated, this series of lectures will demystify OCD and related disorders and the most effective protocols for helping those who suffer from them. Attendees new to or heavily experienced in treating OCD and related disorders will gain knowledge from multiple perspectives. This unique format features six lectures from top experts in the field, scheduled across three sessions over the Spring season. This series includes experts presenting on the treatment of comorbid OCD and PTSD, the role of the “self” in OCD treatment, how to motivate OCD patients in treatment, recent updates in novel neurosurgical treatments of OCD, understanding and treating Panic Disorder, and the diagnosis and treatment of Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder.

AFFIRM: Affirmative Cognitive Behavioral Therapy with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning (LGBTQ+) Populations is an advanced, three-day training on the science and practice of applying Affirmative Cognitive Behavioral Therapy with LGBTQ+ populations. Participants will receive information about the context for affirmative and strengths-based models of practice, will learn about broad applications of CBT in general and AFFIRM in particular, and will also have an opportunity to practice AFFIRM. Many clinicians receive little or no training in supporting the needs of LGBTQ+ Youth in graduate school or beyond, and this unique training offers the depth needed to work competently with this population.

In his seminal book, The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud (1900) claimed that dreams are an attempt to fulfil primitive, emotionally-charged wishes that become disinhibited during sleep, and that they do so in order to preserve the state of sleep. He claimed that this is achieved because dreaming entails a diversion of motivational impulses away from the motor systems (which are paralysed during sleep) and a regression of them onto the perceptual systems. This gives rise to a fulfilment of the wish in hallucinatory fashion – that is, in virtual reality, instead of actual reality. Freud claimed also that the hallucinatory wish-fulfilment is disguised and censored, the purpose of which is also to protect sleep (to prevent anxiety, etc.). After Freud’s death in 1939, a succession of discoveries between the 1950s and 1970s about the brain basis of dreaming called all of these assertions into serious question. However, a second wave of discoveries starting in the 1990s and continuing to the present day, suggest that Freud might have been right after all. This talk will summarise the neuroscientific evidence for and against Freud’s dream theory, and conclude that we seem to owe Freud an apology.

Racial inequity has become central in the national conversation about physical and mental health care since the Covid-19 pandemic. We know that behavioral and mental health care can be impacted by one’s physical health. Historically marginalized groups that have been denied equitable access to healthcare also experience disproportionate risk of living with untreated behavioral and mental health condition. The constant exposure to the reality of health disparities across racial groups amplifies the need to make what has been invisible, visible. This workshop examines racial differences with the goal of promoting access to equitable care.