More than 30% of women describe their birthing experience as traumatizing. In addition to trauma occurring in the labor and delivery suite, traumatizing and similarly disruptive incidents can occur in the effort to become pregnant (infertility treatment, surrogacy, the adoption process), during the course of pregnancy itself (high-risk pregnancy, bedrest, adverse prenatal diagnosis, premature delivery, pregnancy/fetal complications, antepartum mood and anxiety or psychosis), or complications in the newborn period (NICU care for the newborn or medical complications in the mother including postpartum mood, anxiety disorders (PMADs) or psychosis). Because these events are common, commonly stigmatized, and rarely life-threatening, women often minimize their impact, and family members and physicians may not recognize their repercussions, making them potentially challenging to clinically detect.

This self-paced workshop will introduce attendees to the wide range of disruptive events that can occur in the perinatal period, teach them to identify characteristics of those events that induce ruptures in the normative developmental path of family-building, and to recognize the common clinical presentations of patients suffering in the aftermath of disruptive and traumatizing perinatal events.

It will introduce attendees to the Three Core Tasks parents face during the perinatal period (Davis & Stein, 2003), namely: 1. Development of Parental Identity for the current baby(ies), 2. Managing Emotions, and 3. Managing Relationships. Combining this framework with the adaptive information processing model introduces a comprehensive framework that guides clinicians around history-taking and case conceptualization, allowing them more nuance and specificity as they assess ruptures in the perinatal period.

It will then address some of the complexities that families grapple with, applying the integrated lens to case conceptualization and treatment planning. Topics such as grief, attachment, perinatal OCD, and perinatal hospice and palliative care are addressed.

Note: This workshop combines both Understanding Perinatal Trauma: The Three Core Tasks and Understanding Perinatal Trauma: Treatment Planning. If you prefer to register for one or the other, rather than the combined course, follow the links above.