- 10.Self-Care Procedures for Coronavirus (SCPC) , Dr. Gary Quinn
The coronavirus pandemic is challenging for mental health practitioners. The ongoing nature of the coronavirus crisis mainly raises concerns about dangers in the present and future.
Dr. Gary Quinn from EMDR Institute of Israel developed SCPC during March 2020 through the consultative process. He is a senior trainer and well known in the EMDR fraternity for introducing emergency protocols and Immediate Stabilisation Procedures for traumatic events. He provided remote training on 26 march 2020 through Zoom for the EMDR practitioner of Asia. EMDR Association members participated in big numbers and applied to the SCPC. Under the leadership of Dr. Mrinalini Purandare and technical support from Mr. Chintan Naik and Dr. Usha Verma Srivastava as well as others from the large team , a research project was floated involving the volunteers as Trauma Recovery Network across India.
The SCP-C attempts to achieve this goal by dynamically adapting to this specific global situation. This procedure can be used once by a mental health practitioner and then becomes a self-care procedure to be used as needed.
- Orientation by Rosalie Thomas to conduct online training:
After COVID-!9 hit and crippled the world, many stood up to turn the challenges to opportunity. The technology helped people to replace face to face teaching to remote teaching by virtual mode. However, a lot of preparations were needed to take initial steps as EMDR Therapy training is not a classroom based usual teaching process as it has nearly 50% of practice components, which is not a role play method. It has an active therapeutic experience component. To convert this training into virtual mode did initially not comprehend. We in Asia were waiting to learn from our seniors the best solutions. Dr. Rosalie Thomas introduced us to the practice manual for the virtual training developed by EMDRIA and applied by Trauma Recovery/HAP. Rosalie conducted an introductory training, which helped us to take the virtual training to a reality by using breakout rooms and individualised supervision.
- Workshop for OCD:
EMDR Association organised a Webinar on 7th August 2020, topic was, “Using EMDR on OCD Clients”. Dr. Sushma was the presenter.
This 2 hours workshop presented the experience of working with OCD clients with EMDR therapy. These clients were resistant to the other modes of therapy and were having a prolonged illness with adverse childhood experiences. The standard protocols with modifications within the AIP scope were applied. There were similarities in the ways the information was represented in their belief system. Their rigid mental framework became the major stuck-points, which was processed by carefully addressing them. EMDR applications of standard protocols were used to process complex childhood issues as well as current symptom reduction.
This was attended by 30 participants.
- Presentation for Drishti:
On 16 December 2020, Drishti, an NGO providing counselling services in schools in Mumbai had organised a webinar on “EMDR Therapy for Trauma Intervention”
Dr. Mrinalini Purandare and Dr. Sushma Mehrotra were invited as presenters which were attended by nearly 200 participants including parents, teachers, counsellors and educators.
- Presentation for Arpan:
Arpan is an organisation working to address the issue of Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) in India. Based in Mumbai, Arpan is the largest NGO in India with over 100 social workers and counsellors providing prevention and intervention services to children and adults. Many of their counsellors are trained for EMDR therapy.
Webinar ‘Talk the Talk’ was organised on 3rd July, 2020 and Dr. Sushma Mehrotra was invited to address counsellors, parents and teachers to discuss trauma and its care.
- Webinar for Association of Rehabilitation Psychologists & Professionals –India (ARPP-India)
1st National conference of Association of Rehabilitation Psychologists & Professionals (ARPP-India). organised a Panel discussion on 22 January 2021and Dr. Sushma Mehrotra was invited as a guest speaker on the topic, “Trauma and Therapy” aims at discussing the process, structural and functional changes due to trauma, how to help improve coping styles, and respond to clients with traumatic experience. She presented on Trauma and EMDR therapy. There were over 150 attendees from all over India and several questions were asked for EMDR Therapy.
- The Inaugural meet of United Psychologists Association (UPA), 14 march 2021
Dr Sushma Mehrotra was invited as a Chief Guest for the inaugural meet of UPA on 14 March 2021and to speak on EMDR Therapy and its applications.
There were nearly 250 participants from across India.
- Workshop on Conversational Model of Psychotherapy and its benefits in attachment trauma treatment (2-part program by Dr. Subhra Bhattacharya)
Conversational Model (CM) is an adapted psychodynamic psychotherapy for patients with borderline personality disorder, intractable depression or somatisation. It was developed by Russell Meares in Sydney and Robert Hobson in Manchester. It is a practical treatment, with an emphasis on understanding and responding to very small shifts in the client’s emotional experience, as well as exploring the client’s difficulties in close relationships that arise out of attachment difficulties as a child. There were 20 attendees from across India. The workshop was well received and appreciated.
- Workshop on using EMDR online
Covid-19 pandemic posed plenty of challenges to mental health professionals, one of them being how to adapt the psychotherapy models to the online formats. As the standard EMDR approach goes, it has always been recommended to practice EMDR in person, and not online on account of many procedural intricacies that the online format won’t facilitate. EMDR therapy having standard protocols is not specifically designed for the digital/ online psychotherapy methods. However, with the lockdown and safety measures of social distancing, EMDR therapy started being used online. Of course, there are cautions and guidelines to make it as effective online as in person. This workshop intended to equip the formerly trained EMDR therapists to use the EMDR therapy standard protocols online. A practice session in small groups was followed using breakout rooms. The session concluded with a question-answer round. The workshop was attended by 36 participants.
