It's Back - Motivational Interviewing (MI)

is Returning in April & July!

The Pacific Southwest MHTTC is pleased to provide the second year of learning on Motivational Interviewing (MI).

Last year, the Pacific Southwest MHTTC and Dr. Kristin Dempsey offered a learning series on MI, which is an approach to having conversations about change. (Did you miss it? Watch the recordings now!) 

This year, by popular demand, we're bringing you two more MI learning series! Register for one, some, or all of these upcoming free workshops.

Feedback from last year's MI series:

"The trainer was so engaging and taught in a way that you could easily see it used in multiple areas of practice."

"I’ve already started using what I’m learning, and I’ve been sharing info with therapists I supervise. I encouraged them to join in the remaining segments of the training.”

"In working with the foster care community and those who have experienced trauma, using MI and trauma-informed MI is immensely helpful in keeping with a qualitative approach while working with our clients."

"This is pushing me to think about how I can bring the spirit of MI more into my practice, to serve and not save, to collaborate and reflect more. The practice in the chat at the end with examples was extremely helpful."

"I want all my supervisees to watch this training!"

April Sessions for General Behavioral Health Professionals

While each of these workshops is a standalone training, we highly recommend attending both! You can earn 2 Continuing Education Hours (CEHs) for each workshop.

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Workshop 1:

Spirit of Motivational Interviewing

Connecting with Our Humanity to Support Growth and Change

Tuesday, April 4, 2023

2 - 4 p.m. PT (view in your timezone)

How we show up in our workspaces and the attitudes we hold profoundly impact the work we do. It is impossible to separate our professional skill sets from our beliefs about ourselves and others. In this session, we will learn the “spirit” of MI and how this spirit shapes our therapeutic approach and creates context for our interactions with clients. We will learn how connecting to the “spirit” allows us to create psychological safety for help seekers and how essential it is for promoting trauma-informed care.

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Workshop 2:

Building Strength and Connecting to Intuition

Motivational Interviewing and Affirmation Skills for Youth and Young Adults

Wednesday, April 5, 2023

2 - 4 p.m. PT (view in your timezone)

Whether voluntarily sought or mandated to treatment, help seekers come to address problems in their lives. In this session, we will discuss how building strengths and affirmations helps promote self-efficacy and confidence that can fuel the change process. This session will focus specifically on using affirmation with young adults (although the skills and practice are applicable with individuals of all ages). 

July Sessions for the School Mental Health Workforce

While each of these workshops is a standalone training, we highly recommend attending both! You can earn 2 Continuing Education Hours (CEHs) for each workshop.

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Workshop 1:

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) & Motivational Interviewing as School Mental Providers

Thinking through how to integrate interventions

Monday, July 24, 2023

3 - 5 p.m. PT (view in your timezone)

Motivational interviewing and standard versions of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy are powerful and effective strategies to help students and their families realize change. Although both are very effective, practitioners are often challenged by the decision to use one intervention for a variety of school-based social and emotional issues. In this session, we will consider when to use common MI and CBT interventions based on the stages of change being experienced by the student. We will also explore which MI and CBT interventions overlap, which have specific applications, and which MI and CBT interventions we can apply flexibly to a number of common school-based challenges.

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Workshop 2:

Developmentally Responsive Motivational Interviewing for School Based Providers

Having Strategic Conversations About Change with Young People and their Caregivers

Wednesday, July 26, 2023

3 - 5 p.m. PT (view in your timezone)

Motivational interviewing (MI) is a well-researched and broadly applied practice that enables us to have conversations about change with diverse individuals. Practitioners use MI with adolescents, young adults, and parents to successfully support their values and guide them toward their own desired change targets. In this session, we will discuss research-based MI interventions for youth and specific strategies to reduce resistance and engage young people in conversations about and movement toward personally meaningful change.

Priming Resources for the Whole Series

• About MINT: Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers
• Motivational Interviewing 13: Kristin Dempsey — C4 Innovations
• Talking to Change: An MI Podcast. Episode 46: Reducing Burnout and Compassion Fatigue with Kristin Dempsey, EdD, and Ali Hall, JD
• Talking To Change - A Motivational Interviewing Podcast

Meet the Series Faculty

Dr. Kristin Dempsey, EdD, is a licensed marriage and family therapist (LMFT) and professional clinical counselor (LPCC). She has provided psychotherapy in the Bay Area for almost 25 years in public non-profits and county mental health settings, schools, and medical clinics. Her current psychotherapy practice is located in San Francisco and Burlingame.

Dr. Dempsey's areas of clinical interest include treatments for co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders, complex trauma in childhood and adolescence, eating disorders, panic/anxiety, and behavioral challenges such as anger management and impulse control disorders. She has worked with adults, senior adults, transition age youth, adolescents, and children in individual, family, and group modalities.

In addition to clinical work, Dr. Dempsey trains community behavioral health providers in a number of evidence based and promising practices. She is a member of the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers, and has experience teaching and training cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), cognitive behavior therapy for psychosis (CBTp), and dialectical behavior therapy (DBT). She is a master trainer for Applied Suicide Intervention Skills (ASIST), and has been trained in the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics (NMT) to assess trauma impacts in youth and adults. Dr. Dempsey also provides additional programmatic consultation regarding behavioral health system redesign and implementation of evidence-based practices.

Dr. Dempsey is engaged in behavioral health workforce development research and organizational change projects. She is especially interested in investigating and promoting best practices to recruit and retain underrepresented clinicians in the mental health and substance abuse treatment fields.