Description: 
The co-presenters will  offer a data-driven case for faith integration and tailoring of therapy to client religious preferences. Compelled by the potential benefit of adapting any therapy modality to include faith-integrated material, the presenters will discuss the possibility of incorporating Catholic beliefs and practices even when using more strictly ‘behavioral’ strategies. Specifically, they will exemplify a behavioral parent training approach rooted in Catholic anthropology, highlighting traditionally behavioral techniques and infusing them with the spirit of Catholic teaching. Attention will be given to the efforts that Catholic therapists have directed toward the Catholic model of the human person and the critical importance of couching parent education and child behavior management in this model. Pop-up ‘poll’ questions and discussion will engage the audience throughout. In an interactive discussion, clinicians are challenged to think of new ways to incorporate faith/religion/spirituality into their own diverse practices, including with clients of non-Catholic background.

Learning Objectives:

• Define religiously/spiritually accommodative therapy, describing the importance of tailoring treatment to religious preferences and citing data on its efficacy. 
• Describe one application of faith-integrated behavioral treatment (parent training), highlighting several commonly-used behavioral parent training strategies.
• Identify ways to generalize faith integration concepts to various practice settings, faiths, and therapy modalities.

Target Audience: 
Students, psychologists, social workers, counselors, marriage and family therapists. specially, clinicians working with children and families; Clinicians looking to build upon their current child-focused approaches; Clinicians looking to understand behavioral therapy’s potential to be faith-integrated.

This program does not qualify for APA credits. 
This program does not qualify for NBCC credits