On April 1, 2022 Ellenhorn and The Menninger Clinic are partnering to put on Shifting The Addiction Paradigm – a conference aiding the shift toward humanistic and client-centered values in behavioral care. This conference is a hybrid event and will take place both virtually and in-person at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, CA. Our panel of speakers is made up of practitioners who are helping lead the mission to reshape and rethink treatment for addictive processes.

Presentation topics include

• Sustainable Concepts as Harm Reduction Organizations,
• The Use of Psychedelics in the Care of Problematic Habits,
• Shifting the Addiction Paradigm,
• The Scientific Revolution: From Addiction as Disease to Psychobiosocial Process,
• From Abstinence-only to Integrative Harm Reduction Psychotherapy.

Attendees have the opportunity to earn five and one half (5.5) contact/credit/clock hours upon completion of this conference. 

In the five years since Ellenhorn’s Shifting the Addiction Paradigm conference series began with a focus on “Attachment and Addiction,” we have seen massive changes in the field of problematic habits. Indeed, “harm reduction,” a term that was considered practically taboo when we held that 2017 conference, is increasingly being permitted space in the language of addictions treatment; harm-reduction clinicians are being offered room to speak at more “traditional” treatment conferences; and an ever-growing number of programs are adding elements of the approach to their work. We are witnessing a paradigm shift in approaches to psychological and psychiatric suffering, one in which we’re moving away from mechanistic models to more humanistic and humane ones—models that see our connectedness as central to our well-being. Acceptance Commitment Therapy, Mentalization-Based Treatment, Open Dialogue, Internal Family Systems treatment, Intensive Emotion-Focused therapy, the attention to trauma, and the rebirth of an interest in attachments, integrative medicine and mind/body orientations: These models appreciate human beings as infinitely connected, both socially and to the natural world around us. As we increasingly appreciate the brain and mind as organs of connection, dependent on both natural and social events in our environments, we begin to recognize that any coercive act on our part holds real potential for damage, and that our best work is conducted in collaboration with those who come to us for help. 

We can see the outlines of this new paradigm in the treatment of addiction as a new framework emerges based on psychotherapeutic values, a non-judgmental curiosity about why a person might engage in seemingly self-destructive behavior, a belief that a person is making the best choices they can when they use, a respect for the autonomy of the individual, and a firm belief that lasting change never happens through confrontation or coercion. These paradigmal cracks in the disease model for addiction represent the chance for greater creativity in treatment approach, broader treatment choice, and a new freedom in deciding how to handle substances in one’s life. Cracks in the disease model also potentially mean a decrease in stigma and a much more nuanced view of the use of substances. It fractures a cookie-cutter approach to the use of substances and the engagement in other habits, allowing for care, if desired, to be truly individualized. As this paradigm shift in the treatment of psychiatric and addictive issues occurs before our eyes, we can also detect a meeting of these once seemingly separate experiences and approaches, as our care of a person’s psychological suffering is no longer bifurcated by the grand categories of either mental health or addiction recovery.

As we attempt to continue to push the paradigm shift in the area of problematic habits, it is our goal at this 2022 conference to bring together experts at the vanguard of new, humanistic, and non-coercive forms of care who will help keep this enlightening, liberating endeavor on course.

For more information and to register for either the in-person or remote CEU event, visit www.theshiftingparadigm.com