Approximately 350 Lakewood mental health professionals turned out at the Eagle Ridge banquet hall on February 23rd to hear from leading rabbonim, therapists, and psychiatric professionals about issues that can arise in the course of their work.
Jointly presented by EmpowerEd and Amudim, the free collaborative summit provided attendees with five hours of informative content, including practical tools that will enhance their ability to continue providing their clients with high-quality care that conforms to both best practices and halacha.
The program included back-to-back concurrent sessions featuring both clinical and psychiatric tracks. On the clinical side, Dr. Bracha Schnaidman Psy.D. discussed ways of maximizing parental collaboration in treatment, while Avi Landa LCPC spoke about treating oppositional and resistant patients.
The alternate track featured Dr. Matis Shulman and Rivky Sklar APN, PMHNP-BC providing the psychiatric perspective of medical interventions in the treatment of mental health issues.
A medical doctors’ panel moderated by Relief Resources’ Rabbi Binyomin Babad had Dr. Joshua Segal, Dr. Shoshana Bacon, APN Shaindy Parnes, PA Shira Verschleiser and MICP Motti Waisbrod all bringing different viewpoints to the table on a variety of medical issues.
And underscoring the role of halacha and hashkafa in realm the mental health, Rabbi Sholom Kamenetsky, Rabbi Uri Deutsch, Rabbi Micha Cohn and Rabbi Eliezer Gewirtzman answered questions posed to them by participant during a rabbonim panel moderated by Relief Resources’ Duvie Kessner, one of the highlights of the conference.
In addition to the structured components of the groundbreaking program, attendees also had the opportunity to build valuable connections by networking with each other, and meeting representatives of various organizations in the field during the summit’s mental health expo.
EmpowerEd is an initiative of Empower Health Center that brings experts in the field together under a single umbrella that is accessible to all. Empower founder and director Dr. Yossi Shafer emphasized the importance of providing mental health professionals with the highest level of training, that incorporates the input of prominent leaders.
“A significant takeaway from the summit that was quite evident to all, was that the frum community may be transitioning from what was once considered a ‘need’ for clinical mastery as therapists and collaboration among psychotherapists, medical providers, and rabbonim— to an unwavering “want” amongst the psychotherapist, medical providers, rabbonim,” said Dr. Shafer.
Those thoughts were echoed by Amudim’s director of education, Avi Landa, who expressed his gratitude to EmpowerEd for providing a platform that made high-quality training available to Lakewood’s many therapists.
“Based on the overwhelming positive feedback from this collaborative summit, Amudim is excited to be able to continue to provide high-quality educational opportunities for the Lakewood community,” said Landa.
“Educational opportunities”, Good pay for it and leave taxpayers alone.