Dr. Peter Breggin Announces Exciting New Counseling and Therapy Conference April 2011

PRLog (Press Release) - Sep. 17, 2010 - "Plan ahead and register soon for this unique opportunity to spend three days with me and some of the most innovative and forward-thinking physicians, counselors, therapists, advocates, educators and authors I have ever gathered together," Dr. Breggin urged.

The Empathic Therapy Conference will serve the needs of professionals, interested laypersons, and individuals and families who have encountered biopsychiatry and are seeking better ways of improving and enhancing their lives.  The theme of Bring Out the Best In Yourself! relates both to individual growth and life improvement as well as specifically addressing ways that counselors, social workers, psychotherapists, teachers, psychiatrists and others can be their very best professionally with their clients, patients and students.

"As professionals and advocates, we need to evolve humane and empathic ethical services for the many folks who go through a period of emotional crisis or mental illness," Dr. Breggin said.  "Our Empathic Therapy Conference is on the cutting edge of ne and forward-thinking person-centered approaches offering genuine help and best chances at client improvement and recovery."  

The Empathic Therapy Conference is the only conference Dr. Breggin is organizing and overseeing.  He will be Master of Ceremonies for the three day event.  "This is a unique and special chance to really catch up with Dr. Breggin and many of his closest colleagues," said Ginger Breggin, Executive Director of their new reform organization Center for the Study of Empathic Therapy.  

"I am no longer involved at all with the organization I founded and directed from 1971 through 2002, the Center for the Study of Psychiatry," said Dr. Breggin.  "In April 2010 I broke completely with my old organization, informally known as the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology, and am not attending or participating in their Fall conference at all.

Some of the many speakers lined up for the Empathic Therapy Conference April 8-10, 2011 include:

Charles Whitfield, MD, internationally known physician and psychotherapist and best-selling author of Healing the Child Within, with over 1.5 million copies sold.  Dr. Whitfield will discuss the many aspects of working with persons with addictions.  He will also address childhood traumas and how they influence adults.  Dr. Whitfield is a consultant at the Centers for Disease Control, is on the editorial boards of several professional journals, and was faculty at Rutgers University for decades.  

Howard Glasser, founder of The Nurtured Heart Approach and author of Transforming the Difficult Child, will introduce attendees to his exciting and inspiring Nurtured Heart perspectives that have been embraced successfully by schools and families and therapists around the country and around the world.  

Alberto Fergusson, MD, is a psychiatrist in Columbia, South America and an international innovator in the field of helping  deeply disturbed and homeless patients without resort to psychiatric drugs, Dr. Fergusson works at  the institution, Fungrata, dedicated to the rehabilitation of homeless, so-called psychotics.  Dr. Fergusson's work with hundreds of persons diagnosed as schizophrenia  has given him the clinical experience to develop the approach he now calls Accompanied Autoanalysis.

Melanie Sears, RN, MBA, is a psychiatric nurse and author who  has been a trainer for the Center of Nonviolent Communications since 1991. She works with  businesses, hospitals, nursing homes, hospices, individuals, couples and parents to transform their  usual ways of dealing with conflict to one which is more compassionate, conscious and effective.

Dee Ray, PhD, is a counselor and Director of the Child and Family Resource Clinic at the University of North Texas, as well as Associate Professor in their Counseling Program.  Dr. Ray is author of the Child Centered Play Therapy Treatment Manual.She is the recipient of the 2008 Outstanding Research Award for Association for Play Therapy.

M.N.G. (Graham) Dukes, M.D. is a lawyer and a medical doctor specializing in international law and medicine.  Dr. Dukes has spent a lifetime examining the intersecting issues surrounding medicine and the law, especially in the fields of drug and device regulation and patient protection from malpractice and product liability on the part of corporations.  His publications include the long-term editorship of Meyler’s Side Effects of Drugs and the associated Annuals as well as books on drug policy including The Effects of Drug Regulation, The Law and Ethics of the Pharmaceutical Industry and (with Prof. Frederick Abbott), Global Pharmaceutical Policies.

Bart Billings, PhD, is a retired U.S. Army Colonel and a licensed clinical  psychologist and marriage and family therapist. He has been senior faculty at the William Glasser MD Institute for  thirty-five years. During Dr. Billing's service as commanding officer for a general hospital section in the U.S. Army Reserves, he founded and directed  the military-wide Human Assistance Rapid  Response Team (HARRT) program.  Dr. Billings will be examining the growing crisis of active military and veteran PTSD and better treatment approaches than the polydrug prescription epidemic currently employed unsuccessfully to help our emotionally wounded warriors.

Pamela Glasner, nationally known speaker, historical researcher and best selling author of the novel Finding Emmaus, a book that examines the worlds of psychiatric abuse and the desires and needs for empathic human connections.

Doug Smith, MD is a retired U.S. Public Health Service  Officer, and an active psychiatrist and mental health consultant who currently lives and practices in  Juneau, Alaska. Dr. Smith is board certified in psychiatry extensive post-graduate training in  psychoanalysis. He  was Chief of Mental Health Services at Davis-Monthan AFB from 1990-1994 and Chief of Psychiatry at  Mount Edgecumbe Hospital in Sitka, Alaska from 1994-1996,  Dr. Smith has testified in dozens of civil  commitment hearings and since 1996 has been director of mental health services at the Juneau Medical  Center. In 2001 he became the clinic's medical director. Dr. Smith continues to practice psychiatry with an emphasis in empathic understanding.

"Dr. Peter Breggin will be providing key information and up to the minute data about the dangerous effects of psychiatric drugs, the devestating fallout from psychiatric diagnoses, and hazards of other biological treatments such as Shock Treatment (ECT)," added Ginger Breggin, conference organizer.

"Our Center for the Study of Empathic Therapy has two purposes: First, to carry forward Dr. Breggin's 40-year effort to expose the scientific and ethical hazards of biopsychiatric theory and practices including psychiatric diagnoses, drugs, and ECT.  And second, to encourage and inspire humane and ethical social services and therapies that assist individuals and families toward better and more successful lives without the harmful effects of biopsychiatric interventions."

"Our Empathic Therapy Conference welcomes professionals from the varied specialties engaged in delivering human services to those who are labeled mentally ill and who have been given psychiatric diagnoses, from school children labeled with ADHD, bipolar disorder, or autism spectrum to adults diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder(PTSD), schizophrenia, depression, or bipolar disorder," said Ginger Breggin.  "We welcome all professionals and will be providing CEUs, and are also ensuring that our conference offers useful and real world information for advocates, families and laypersons who want to really examine the problems with psychiatry and better ways to approach and help each other and ourselves."

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Peter R. Breggin, MD, has been opposing the overuse of biopsychiatric treatments and promoting empathic therapy for decades. His new reform organization is located at http://www.empathictherapy.org, his professional site is http://www.breggin.com.

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