Progressing Forward in Relapse Prevention: Dealing with Stigma & VAPA annual meeting

Meeting open to all

Registration deadline 4/23/2025

SCHEDULE:

Check-in & Coffee: 7:30am – 8:00am

VAPA Annual Meeting (All are welcome!): 8:00am – 9:00am

AM Session 9:00am – 12:15pm

Lunch 12:15pm – 1:15pm (Lunch is NOT included)

PM Session 1:15pm – 4:30pm 

Trainer:

Samson Teklemariam, LPC, CPTM, is the Vice President of Clinical Services for Behavioral Health Group (BHG). Samson also serves as the Southeast Regional Vice President for NAADAC, the Association for Addiction Professionals. He is an accomplished leader with a history of driving organizational results with learning and development solutions. He was formerly the Director of Training and Professional Development for NAADAC and National Director of Learning and Development for Phoenix House Foundation. Samson is a certified lea trainer for the Cognitive Behavioral Interventions for Substance Abuse (CBISA) curriculum, Calm Every Storm: Crisis Prevention & Intervention curriculum, and experienced in treating trauma-related disorders using trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (TFCBT) and Seeking Safety.

Description:

Substance use disorder (SUD) is most often defined as a chronic disease involving a common repeating
cycle of abstinence and relapse. ‘Relapse’ refers to a return to a previous level of substance use after a
period of considerable reduction or abstinence from substance use. It is common practice to
communicate with patients that even when a person with SUD is in remission and no longer using
substances, a relapse is always a possibility. Just as it is with every patient struggling with a chronic
medical condition, the goal during an exacerbation is to restore the patient to stability and keep them
motivated and connected to treatment. However, when helping professionals who are both providing
care and in recovery themselves experience relapse, reactions vary. These reactions are often driven by
negative stigma and impact treatment decisions for both professionals and patients in recovery.

Agenda:

Morning: 9:00 am – 12:15pm
 Welcome & Introductions
 Understanding Relapse throughout the years
 The Stigma of SUD Recurrence
 Examine the data
 Exercise: Brief Pop-Quiz URL – destigmatizing ‘relapse’
Break 10:30 – 10:45am
 Dealing with stigma: what our patients usually get vs. what they need
 Addressing Stigma with SUD Care
 Introducing the Harm Reduction Acceptability Scale (HRAS)
 Exercise: Complete the Harm Reduction Acceptability Scale (HRAS)
 Exercise: Breakout groups: HRAS Discussion
 Understanding why Harm Reduction Acceptability is important to deal with stigma
Lunch: 12:15 pm to 1:15pm
Afternoon: 1:15 pm to 4:30 pm
 What we know about the research of relapse: lit review and hearing from Joe Powell
 Understanding ADA protections for the SUD workforce: Hearing from Dr. Oce’ Harrison
 Addressing Shame: Hearing from Dan Griffin
 Top 5 Most Common Myths about Relapse
 Exercise: Group Competition – MythBusters: Facts vs. Fiction of Relapse
Break 2:30 – 2:45pm
 Apply Gorski’s Early Warning Sign Model for Relapse Prevention
 Apply Marlatt’s CBT Model for Relapse Prevention
 Adopting a Progressive Paradigm for Relapse Prevention
 Learning from a Lapse: Normalizing Drift
 Exercise: Pair-up: Identifying High Risk Situations to Personalize Relapse Prevention
 Reactive vs. Affirming Responses
 How to Assess patient readiness for MAT?
 It Begins with Us: Recovery-Ready Workplace
 Wrap-Up: Q&A
Adjourn: 4:30 pm

Learning Objectives:

1. Participants will be able to develop a progressive paradigm in relapse prevention for a chronic medical
   condition.
2. Participants will be able to summarize four reactive responses, commonly found in MAT settings, that
   contribute to the negative stigma of relapse in recovery.
3. Participants will be able to utilize a guided discussion tool to address the stigma of treating a
   condition that’s both chronic and relapsing.