Intersectional Trauma Informed Care for Providers with Sly Sarkisova

This is Part 1 of a 2 part series.

Historically, our approaches to responding to mental health have followed a western diagnostic and medical model that pathologized the individual as the source of their own problems. This two part webinar series will explore critical understandings of mental health through a trauma informed, structural lens that situates illness in the individual in tandem with their surroundings.

In Part 1 of this two part webinar, we will explore an intersectional, decolonizing approach to helping clients manage distress. We will investigate intergenerational, interpersonal, and systemic harms as they figure into coping presentations and issues our clients bring to psychotherapy. At the end, we will endeavour to understand mental health as a product of past and cumulative experiences and social situatedness.

In Part 2 of this webinar, we will expand upon a reconceptualization of mental illness and integrate this knowledge into our practice approaches. We will explore further, mental health symptoms and diagnoses as patterns of responses to distress and coping in the social sphere. As providers we will develop tools for moving from an individual model of distress/survival, to an integrative model of social functioning per the client's identified needs.

Webinar Objectives
Deconstruct how mental illness has been understood
Provide an integrative model of understanding trauma and mental health symptoms
Unpack traditional conceptualizations (diagnoses) of mental illness
Unlearn mental health myths created by western medicine
Expand our understanding of trauma and coping responses

Presenter:
Sly Sarkisova, MSW, RSW Psychotherapist & Consultant

Sly Sarkisova is a Toronto based queer and non binary trans-identified psychotherapist who has been a leader innovating in the field of mental health, addictions and trauma counselling for the past 20 + years in occupied Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh, and Squamish territories (Downtown Eastside, Vancouver) and Mississauga, Anishinaabe (Regent Park, Toronto). In his private practice Sly provides Consultation, Clinical Supervision, and training around trauma informed integrative psychotherapy, and mental health practices to organizations and individuals. Communities needing support related to identity, poly, kink, sex work, addictions, mental health, and trauma related concerns see him for psychotherapy.