Highlights from Compass Mark's Positive Change Conference 2024
April 04, 2024 |
| My Compass Mark Positive Change Virtual Conference 'Snack Box' - April 2024 |
Good afternoon beautiful people...and Happy April to you all,
By now you know that my world, at least for this semester, revolves around psychopathy and addiction. Beside the classes I am taking, I have attended a Narcan use training facilitated by Blueprints for Addiction Recovery (which I need to blog about), watched a documentary on how a family deals with addiction (read my review of Our American Family), and attended a retreat on recovery and healing facilitated by Erin Jean Warde. I have also been working on a poster that I will be presenting next Tuesday at Made in Millersville Research Conference.
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| Loving this conference 'snack box' - filled with snacks and resources |
As an add-on to all these things, I attended a 2-day virtual conference whose theme was Bridging the Gaps: Building Integrated Systems of Care. The conference was hosted by Compass Mark; a Lancaster based organization that does prevention work on matters addiction - specifically substance and gambling addiction.
The conference had three tracks - 1) Mental Health, 2) Addiction Treatment and Recovery, and 3) Prevention. I attended three sessions under the addiction track - and these are some of my takeaways;
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| Screengrab of Dr. Kimerly Ernest's Intro Slide |
1. From Dr. Kimberly Ernest's session on Parents/Care givers with Substance Use Disorder (SUD) I learn about
- Using family systems theory in treatment and recognizing the sub-systems in the family i.e marital, parental, sibling and extended family.
- Family roles and how the substance becomes a member of the family, forcing everyone to organise themselves around the disorder.
- Family rules, both spoken and unspoken, that arise e.g what the family talks or doesn’t talk about because of the disorder, the level of trust among family members, the need for kids to ‘grow up faster’ so that they can care for their parent/siblings.
2. Dr. Kristi Dively's session on SUD treatment and pregnancy started when I was in class so I caught the last part. Luckily, like last year's APA Convention (whose highlights you can read here), we will get the recordings in a couple of weeks.
- I missed her discussion on the importance of screening pregnant women, the common substances pregnant women use, and related treatments.
- I, however, logged in just in time to learn about Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome aka NAS and how to treat it. NAS is the overall title for new born babies going through withdrawal - they have withdrawal due to substance exposure while in the womb.
- Symptoms include irritability, seizures, asthma and breathing, watery eyes, high pitch cry.
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| Screengrab of Maricelle Sheldon's Intro Slide |
3. On Day 2 (today), I attended Maricelle C. Sheldon's session on how to train families to support loved ones with SUD. From the session I learnt about
- The CRAFT Model - Community Reinforcement And Family Training - which focuses on the significant people in the life of the person with SUD. It is more of providing tools for the family to take care of themselves, so that they are better equipped to take care of the loved one with SUD.
It goes without saying that addiction is a family disease, and a lot of times caregivers are more of an after thought. I liked the first and third sessions because of their focus on the family. I also enjoyed the second one (or the part I caught) because my poster presentation next week is on pregnant women with SUD.
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| Streamed the conference from home - Compass Mark Executive Director, Eric Kennel, giving the closing remarks |
I am still unsure about what angle of addiction I would like to venture into after graduation, but I have enjoyed the aspects I have learnt through out the semester.
For now, I am
1) Thinking of starting a resource page for those struggling with substance use disorder (+ family members).
2) Looking forward to presenting my poster at Made in Millersville next week.
Until the next post,
Sending love and light,
Sitawa
Update: My post on presenting Made in Millersville 2024
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