Our Educational Offerings
Per the LARA rules for Continuing Education in Psychology, WPS is self-certifying its educational presentations. LARA requires that the program chair be a representative of a nationally or regionally accredited academic institution or a nationally or regionally accredited hospital. The WPS Program Chair, Dr. Todd K. Favorite more than satisfies these requirements.
Dr. Todd K. Favorite is an Adjunct Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Michigan Medical School (known as Michigan Medicine).
His work is in the Behavioral Sleep Medicine Clinic in the Department of Psychiatry at Michigan Medicine. He is also Co-Principal Investigator for the Back Pain Study at Michigan Medicine.
WPS works with high-quality presenters who are experts in their field.
Prior Educational Presentations
During its 7 years of existence, WPS hosted 73 monthly meetings at which an educational presentation was made by one of our members. The initial 42 were in-person sessions in a rented social hall of a local synagogue. The last 31 were Zoom webinars. A sample of the content follows.
Many talks described therapy approaches for particular disorders. These included treatments for GI disorders, PTSD, insomnia, autism, dementia, obesity, pain, OCD, tics, anorexia nervosa, ADHD, epilepsy, and pornography addiction.
Others were more theoretical in tone, such as overviews of positive psychology approaches, use of progress monitors to improve therapy outcomes, mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), radically open dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), early detection of psychosis in young adults, and Cognitive Based Analytic System of Psychotherapy (CBASP) for chronic depression.
Some examined groups that posed interesting challenges--such as men in therapy, couples, adoptees, and people who were conceived via sperm donation.
We were open to novel therapeutic approaches that used drama and narrative to explore the experiences of holocaust survivors and their children. We provided a forum for innovative interventions that are therapeutic but delivered in novel ways, such as storytelling for people undergoing medical care (The Story Studio), a self-help wellness program based on evidence-based concepts (Mood Lifters), and a preventive program for adolescents and young adults at risk for suicide (Garrett’s Space).
WPS helped members to satisfy relicensing requirements regarding ethics and pain management. We also invited a law professor to speak on Human Trafficking, a one-time requirement for all healthcare providers. We plan to continue this tradition of stimulating and useful educational presentations for our members.