2026 UVU Conference on
MENTAL HEALTH

How Happiness Extends Healthspan: Neuroscience Lessons from a Blue Zone

This keynote examines the neuroscience of happiness and social connection as critical drivers of healthspan and sustained well-being, drawing on research from global Blue Zones and contemporary brain science. Dr. Paul Zak explores the neural mechanisms that support thriving, including the role of trust, connection, and purpose in regulating stress, resilience, and overall health. Framed for clinicians and mental health providers, the presentation emphasizes how relational experiences shape brain function and influence both psychological and physical outcomes. Participants will gain a clearer understanding of how connection operates as a measurable, biological process rather than a purely subjective experience. The session also introduces emerging neurotechnologies that can be used to assess well-being and evaluate interventions aimed at improving happiness and thriving. Integrating neuroscience, clinical implications, and real-world applications, this keynote offers a practical framework for understanding happiness as a modifiable factor in promoting long-term health and holistic care.

This Is Your Brain on Phones: Compulsive Screen Use and the Path to Cognitive Recovery

This session explores harmful digital media use through the lens of behavioral addiction, highlighting how social media, gaming, and streaming can drive compulsive engagement, cognitive fatigue, and emotional dysregulation. Participants will learn to distinguish clinically significant patterns from high but non-problematic screen use and understand “brain rot,” a progressive erosion of attention, motivation, and executive control. Drawing on current research, the session covers how chronic digital overstimulation impacts anxiety, depression, and social withdrawal, and introduces practical strategies for prevention, harm reduction, and recovery, including environmental restructuring, habit redesign, and motivational alignment to support cognitive and emotional health.

Managing Digital Drift

This session explores the neurobiological impact of screen overuse and its role in addictive behavioral patterns among youth. Participants will examine how modern technology hijacks dopamine reward systems and bypasses the prefrontal cortex, contributing to impulsivity, emotional dysregulation, and weakened executive functioning. The presentation introduces the 10 Laws of Screen Management as a clinical framework for addressing digital dependence. Attendees will gain practical tools to identify digital triggers, reduce compulsive use, and support healthier family dynamics by strengthening attachment and promoting more intentional technology use.

Understanding Sexual Addiction as a Behavioral Addiction

This session examines sexual addiction as a behavioral addiction through a recovery-oriented framework. Participants will review research on compulsive sexual behavior, including cue reactivity and neuroplasticity, to improve diagnostic clarity and clinical communication. The training introduces two screening tools, PATHOS and SAST-R, with guidance on interpretation and when further assessment is needed. Emphasis is placed on recovery planning, including stages of change, early versus long-term expectations, and risk management. Attendees will gain practical strategies for safety planning and interrupting addictive cycles, with a focus on stabilization before deeper clinical exploration.

How Relationships Heal the Addicted Brain: An fNIR Study

This presentation examines how relationship quality impacts brain recovery in individuals with alcohol use disorder (AUD). Using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIR), the study explores how family functioning relates to prefrontal cortex (PFC) activity during recovery. Findings suggest that individuals reporting healthier family relationships show greater activation in key PFC regions linked to decision-making and relapse prevention when exposed to alcohol-related stimuli. Grounded in systems theory, the presentation highlights how relational dynamics influence neurological healing. Implications for treatment include integrating family and support systems to strengthen recovery outcomes and reduce relapse risk.

The Dance of Co-Regulation: Neurobiology of Relational Safety

This training equips caregivers, educators, and community members with practical, neuroscience-informed strategies to reduce children’s anxiety through play and co-regulation. Participants learn to map their own nervous system, recognize signs of calm, activation, and shutdown, and use simple anchoring techniques to return to regulation. The workshop emphasizes that the adult state shapes how actions are received, highlighting tone, pacing, and presence. Participants also identify personal triggers and early warning signs of reactivity, developing tailored strategies to prevent escalation. Through hands-on, play-based practice, attendees gain adaptable tools to foster safety, connection, and resilience across home, school, and community settings.

Money Matters in Mental Health: Practical Strategies for Addressing Financial Stress

Financial stress significantly impacts mental health, contributing to anxiety, depression, relational conflict, and chronic stress, yet it is often overlooked in clinical practice. This presentation introduces financial wellness as a key psychosocial factor in healing and offers practical, evidence-informed strategies for integrating it into therapy. Participants will learn client-centered approaches, including psychoeducation, behavioral interventions, and collaborative goal-setting, to address financial stress within their scope of practice. Emphasis is placed on adaptable tools that build awareness, skills, and confidence without providing financial advice. Attendees will gain actionable insights to incorporate financial considerations into holistic care and better support clients’ overall well-being.

Trauma-Informed and Trauma-Focused Supervision: A Theory-Driven Framework for Clinical Practice

This presentation explores contemporary best practices in trauma-focused counseling supervision, integrating theory, applied practice, and reflective discussion. Designed for counselors, supervisors, and mental health professionals, it emphasizes the supervisor’s role in reducing supervisee anxiety and promoting resilience. Grounded in trauma-informed principles—safety, trust, collaboration, empowerment, and cultural humility. The session covers recognizing supervisee distress, vicarious trauma, and burnout, modeling regulation strategies, and applying evidence-based trauma interventions. Participants will learn to create emotionally safe supervisory environments, integrate ethical frameworks with trauma-focused approaches, and gain practical tools to strengthen supervisees' competence, confidence, and readiness to meet complex client needs.

Beyond Postpartum Depression: Recognizing the Full Spectrum of Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorders

Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorders affect up to one in five birthing people, yet care often focuses narrowly on postpartum depression. This broader spectrum includes anxiety, OCD, trauma-related disorders, bipolar disorders, intrusive thoughts, and postpartum psychosis—conditions frequently misdiagnosed. These errors carry serious ethical and clinical risks, including mood destabilization, suicide, and inappropriate intervention. This session equips mental health professionals to improve diagnostic clarity across perinatal presentations (pregnancy to 18 months postpartum), differentiate key symptoms, and identify when higher levels of care are needed. Emphasis is placed on ethical practice, accurate assessment, and reducing harm through informed, responsive care.

Cool, Cool… I’m Totally a Therapist: Navigating Imposter Syndrome Ethically

Imposter syndrome is a common yet often unspoken challenge among clinicians, fueled by isolation and clinical ambiguity. Self-doubt can pull focus from clients, impacting presence, attunement, and ethical care. This training reframes imposter syndrome as an ethical and clinical concern rather than a lack of competence. Drawing from ACT and professional ethics, participants will explore how internal experiences influence clinical judgment. The session emphasizes awareness and values-based strategies to stay grounded and engaged in the session. Through reflection and practical tools, clinicians will strengthen presence, flexibility, and client-centered care while navigating self-doubt.

Safety Planning in a Climate of Deportation Fear: A Trauma-Informed Clinical Practice to Support Immigrants 

This presentation equips clinicians with trauma-informed strategies to support Latino and immigrant families navigating deportation fears, separation risks, and chronic uncertainty. It introduces safety planning as an ongoing therapeutic process, addressing both practical preparation and emotional responses such as fear, grief, and trauma. Participants will learn to support children impacted by stress, collaborate with schools, and prevent misinterpretation of trauma behaviors. The training also emphasizes advocacy, systems collaboration, and culturally responsive care. Clinicians will leave with practical tools to strengthen family stability, reduce harm, and provide ethical, contextually grounded support.

Stuck for a Reason: A Trauma-Informed Lens on Change in Marginalized and Underserved Populations

This presentation reframes therapeutic stuckness as a nervous-system-based protection rather than a lack of motivation or insight. Drawing on attachment theory, developmental psychology, and parts-based approaches, it explores how anxiety, trauma, and relational patterns can make change feel unsafe. Participants will learn to recognize hidden loyalties, protective strategies, and nervous system thresholds that contribute to stalled progress. The session offers practical tools to pace insight with safety, reduce shame, and strengthen the therapeutic alliance. Emphasis is placed on collaborative, trauma-informed interventions that support sustainable change while maintaining clinical depth and promoting emotional regulation and resilience.

Digital Fight-or-Flight: Social Media Polarization and Its Toll on Mind, Body, and Relationships

Social media often increases tension, reactivity, and emotional exhaustion by amplifying conflict and emotionally charged content. This can activate the nervous system’s stress response, and over time, contribute to dysregulation, anxiety, and reduced cognitive flexibility. As reactivity rises, empathy and openness to differing perspectives may decrease, impacting relationships and increasing social disconnection. These effects often extend beyond online spaces into daily life. From a clinical perspective, the goal is not avoidance but intentional engagement. Strategies such as setting boundaries, noticing signs of activation, and practicing regulation can help maintain emotional balance, preserve connection, and support healthier interactions in high-stimulation digital environments.

Rooted in Play: Cultivating Inclusion and Belonging for Queer Children

Play therapy uses structured, theory-based approaches to help children resolve psychosocial challenges through play. For queer and gender-expansive youth, play supports expression, regulation, and relational safety. This presentation explores treatment stages, highlighting how metaphor and symbolism allow authentic yet developmentally appropriate expression. Grounded in attachment theory, it examines building secure base and safe haven dynamics, co-regulation, and caregiver involvement. A queer-contextualized family life cycle is introduced, addressing identity development and cultural influences. Using a “garden” metaphor, participants assess growth and belonging. Ethical considerations and policy impacts are discussed. Attendees gain practical, affirming interventions to support children and families.

Creating Safety, Building Capacity: Nervous System Regulation in Treatment

Trauma, anxiety, and depression are deeply physiological, often rooted in chronic nervous system dysregulation. This presentation highlights the need to integrate “bottom-up” somatic practices alongside traditional talk therapy. Participants will explore how symptoms like shallow breathing and tension reflect adaptive survival responses. Modalities such as Yoga Therapy, Somatic Experiencing, and EMDR will be introduced, with practical tools to assess and shift clients toward regulation through breath, movement, and body awareness. The role of the clinician’s own nervous system is emphasized as a therapeutic tool. Attendees will gain experiential strategies to support clients while reducing burnout and secondary trauma.

Beyond the Common Factors: Understanding the Basics of Psychological Healing

Originally presented at SEPI 2025, this session examines the biological mechanisms underlying Common Factors—the therapist qualities and behaviors most predictive of successful outcomes. Despite longstanding awareness of the importance of the therapeutic relationship, outcomes have not significantly improved. This presentation bridges that gap by linking physiological processes in depression with effective therapeutic engagement. It offers clinicians a simplified approach to case conceptualization and intervention, especially for treatment-resistant depression, helping restore direction, hope, and the potential for meaningful healing in clinical practice.

From Burdened to Thriving: a Whole-Person Framework for Hope and Healing

Depression and chronic emotional distress often stem from multiple, interconnected factors rather than a single cause. This presentation introduces a whole-person framework that addresses emotional, cognitive, relational, physiological, and existential dimensions. Clinicians will learn strategies to help clients process unresolved emotions, reduce daily emotional burden, and build psychological flexibility. The model emphasizes three key connections: self, others, and purpose, highlighting their role in fostering hope and resilience. Attendees will also explore identity development, value alignment, and meaning-centered interventions. The session equips practitioners with practical tools to support lasting healing and help clients move beyond symptom relief toward sustainable, purpose-driven wellbeing.

From Relief to Real Change: The Role of the Therapist in Ketamine Treatment

Ketamine offers rapid relief for some patients with treatment-resistant depression, but its benefits are enhanced when paired with therapy. This presentation explores the crucial role therapists play before, during, and after ketamine treatment. Preparation sessions help patients feel grounded, in-session support promotes safety and regulation, and integration sessions allow processing of emotions and applying insights to daily life. Ketamine is not a cure or replacement for therapy; without support, benefits may be fleeting. Clinical examples and practical guidance on screening, collaboration with medical providers, and ethical practice will equip therapists to help patients engage safely and effectively.

Get Curious: Critical Memory Integration (CMI) Explored

This session explores limitations in conventional trauma approaches and introduces a neuroscience-informed framework to enhance relational attunement, cultural responsiveness, and clinical depth. Traditional symptom-focused models can pathologize adaptive survival responses and overlook meaningful emotional and somatic signals. Drawing on memory reconsolidation, interoception, and affective neuroscience, the session presents Critical Memory Integration (CMI) as a conceptual model that complements existing modalities. Clinicians will learn to reframe distress as a signal rather than a symptom, discern when symptom-management is insufficient, and apply strategies that support integration, deepen therapeutic connection, and strengthen clients’ internal capacities for sustainable healing.

Stabilizing the Self: Identity Formation and Expressive Modalities in Treating Depression and Anxiety

Depression and anxiety often reflect a disrupted sense of identity, not just mood and cognition. Drawing on Narrative Identity Theory and Self-Determination Theory, this presentation reframes treatment as supporting identity reconstruction alongside symptom reduction. Clinicians can restore agency, challenge distorted self-beliefs, and rebuild narrative coherence using CBT, ACT, and behavioral activation. Expressive modalities such as music and art enhance emotional regulation, meaning-making, and connection. Research supports their effectiveness in reducing depressive symptoms. Through examples in residential and hospice settings, participants will gain practical strategies to help clients strengthen identity, resilience, and a sense of authorship in their lives.

A New Perspective on Anxiety and Depression: How the fear response may be driving your symptoms

This presentation emphasizes personal agency in shaping one’s life, highlighting how thinking patterns influence outcomes (CBT). Challenges, or “The Wall,” are a normal part of growth and often trigger fear responses, which can present as anxiety (fight) or depression (flight). Rather than viewing these as failures, they signal opportunities for learning and problem-solving. Participants will learn to regulate fear and apply a practical framework (Questions, Answers, Decisions, Action) to navigate challenges. The “Creation Code” introduces key elements such as vision, action, supportive relationships, perseverance, and self-care, helping individuals build resilience and intentionally create meaningful, values-driven lives.

Dad's Left Behind: Closing the Gap in Perinatal Mental Health Screening and Support

Fathers are often present in perinatal and NICU settings but are rarely screened for depression, anxiety, trauma, or suicide risk. While maternal mental health is routinely assessed, paternal mental health lacks standardized screening despite evidence of significant risk, including persistent depression and elevated suicide rates. This presentation highlights systemic gaps that leave fathers overlooked during high-stress transitions. Participants will learn practical, trauma-informed strategies to better identify and support fathers, including expanded screening approaches and engagement techniques. Integrating research and lived experience, the session aims to improve mental health outcomes by ensuring fathers are recognized and supported in perinatal care systems.

Better Than Human? The Ethical Case for AI in Mental Health

Artificial intelligence is rapidly shaping mental health care, from documentation and risk assessment to CBT and exposure tools. This presentation explores a key ethical question: what if AI systems deliver more consistent, scalable, and evidence-based care than clinicians? Grounded in standards of competence, informed consent, and scope of practice, it examines legal considerations, ethical principles, and risks such as bias, confidentiality, and overreliance. Participants will review real-world applications and distinguish augmentation from replacement models. The session provides a practical framework for responsible integration, including guidance on documentation, consent, risk mitigation, and implementation.

From Triage to Treatment: Trauma-Informed Clinical Care in Campus Settings

Clinicians working in universities must address trauma within time-limited, resource-constrained systems. This presentation provides a practical, trauma-informed framework for assessment and intervention across the continuum of care, from intake to referral. Participants will explore early identification of trauma, ethical considerations, and coordination with campus resources. Common trauma responses and evidence-based approaches (e.g., CPT, EMDR, ACT, DBT) are reviewed through a brief-treatment lens. Emphasis is placed on grounding, psychoeducation, and relational safety. The session also highlights clinician presence, sustainability, and maintaining ethical, compassionate care within complex institutional contexts.

Ethical Boundary Development in Multicultural Therapy: Supporting Clients in Navigating Relational and Cultural Expectations

Boundaries are essential to healing, but their meaning and consequences vary across cultural and social contexts. This presentation explores boundary development as a culturally responsive, trauma-informed intervention. Clinicians will learn to help clients set values-consistent boundaries while considering family dynamics, power, and real-world risks. The session distinguishes assertiveness training from culturally attuned boundary negotiation and offers strategies such as graduated limits, indirect communication, and safety planning. Ethical and legal considerations, including informed consent and mandated reporting, are addressed. Participants will gain practical tools to support client autonomy, safety, and dignity while maintaining cultural humility and professional standards.

The Missing Conversation: How Relational Trauma Shapes Mental Health Across the LifeSpan

Mental health concerns are often treated as separate issues, yet many stem from disrupted relationships, chronic dysregulation, and lack of felt safety. Drawing on attachment theory and neuroscience, this presentation reframes behaviors like substance use, depression, and suicidality as adaptive responses to relational trauma. Attendees will shift from asking “What’s wrong with you?” to “What happened to you?” Emphasizing co-regulation and connection, the session highlights that healing requires relational safety, not just insight. Participants will gain a compassionate, integrative framework to better understand behavior and support meaningful, lasting change across clinical and community settings.

Clinical Treatment Pathways for Survivors of Organizational and Ritual Abuse

This presentation addresses the complex needs of survivors of organizational abuse and coercive group involvement, a population often overlooked in trauma care. Drawing on research in complex trauma, coercive control, and attachment, it introduces a phase-oriented treatment framework. Participants will explore group dynamics, clinical presentation, and assessment strategies, along with evidence-informed interventions such as EMDR, parts work, and somatic regulation. The session also examines spiritual trauma, identity reconstruction, and ethical considerations, including countertransference. Emphasis is placed on stabilization, restoring autonomy, and trauma integration, equipping clinicians with practical tools to support recovery from systemic and ritualized abuse.

How Rituals Strengthen Connection and Healing in Group Therapy

This presentation explores how ritual-informed practices can be ethically integrated into group therapy to support outcomes such as reduced anxiety and depression, improved emotional regulation, and stronger group cohesion. Drawing on research, clinical theory, and examples, it examines ritual as a relational and embodied process aligned with core therapeutic factors. Participants will learn key concepts like emotional synchrony and shared meaning-making, while addressing ethical considerations including consent, cultural humility, and avoiding harm. Emphasis is placed on responsible adaptation rather than prescribed practices. Attendees will gain practical guidance for incorporating ritual-informed approaches into group work while maintaining client safety and professional standards.

AFSP Caring Communities

Caring Communities: Guidance for Supporting Survivors of Suicide Loss is a one-hour presentation, available in-person or virtually, designed to provide participants with information, resources, and practical guidance on how to support someone who has experienced a recent loss to suicide. The program is suitable for workplaces and community groups who want to learn how to build more supportive environments for survivors of suicide loss.

The Technology of Survival | Engaging Military & First Responders

This presentation reframes fear, anxiety, and other emotions as adaptive survival systems rather than weaknesses. Fear is designed to “fail safe” into anxiety, while other emotions, such as grief and anger, can over-function into depression or aggression when activated. Understanding this connection helps individuals stop working against their emotions and instead use them as tools for awareness, regulation, and healing. By fostering insight into the role of emotions in survival, participants will learn how to reduce internal conflict, improve emotional communication, and support healthier relationships. This approach promotes emotional resilience, personal growth, and more connected, mentally healthy individuals and communities.

Fighting for Survival: When Client Goals, Ethics, and Suicide Risk Collide in Eating Disorder Care

Mental health clinicians across specialties often encounter eating disorders (EDs), where ethical tensions between autonomy and beneficence are common. This presentation explores when limiting autonomy may be necessary to protect client health, including decisions about higher levels of care and the duty to prevent harm. It examines suicide risk unique to EDs, the role of client competence, and challenges in treatment and referral. Grounded in current research, the session reviews ethical care across body sizes and levels of need. Through case examples, participants will learn to navigate conflicts between client goals and clinical recommendations while strengthening ethical decision-making in ED treatment.

Utah’s New ACE Screening Push: What It Means for Our Next Generation

Sage Hancock, Co-Founder and Executive Director of GenerationAll, will discuss the impact of generational trauma and Utah’s prevention and intervention efforts. Founded in honor of Valarie Clark Miller, GenerationAll highlights how early trauma can affect individuals and families across generations. In partnership with Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, DHHS, and Intermountain Health, the organization is piloting pediatric ACE screening programs to support early detection and intervention. Addressing ACEs is critical, as higher scores are strongly linked to poor mental and physical health outcomes, including increased suicide risk. This work aims to strengthen early support systems and improve long-term outcomes for children and families in Utah.

The Dangers of AI for Mental Health: When Technology Crosses the Line: AI Chatbots, Ethics, and Mental Health Safety

This presentation explores the increasing use of AI-powered chatbots in mental health and the ethical, clinical, and safety risks of their unregulated use. Drawing on research and real-world cases, it highlights concerns such as poor crisis response, reinforcement of harmful beliefs, psychological dependency, and threats to privacy and informed consent. The session examines the limits of AI in recognizing complex human distress and the risks of replacing genuine therapeutic relationships with simulated empathy. Participants will gain practical guidance on educating clients, advocating for safeguards, and integrating AI responsibly while prioritizing client safety, ethical standards, and human oversight.

Working with Chronic Suicidality: Ethical Decision-Making and ACT-Informed Care

This presentation explores how Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) can support engagement, reduce experiential avoidance, and increase psychological flexibility when working with chronic suicidality. While centered on a youth vignette, the clinical and ethical frameworks apply across populations and settings. Key topics include differentiating acute versus chronic risk, balancing safety with growth, and avoiding overly restrictive interventions. The session integrates ethical standards, evidence-informed care, and real-world considerations such as family dynamics and systemic barriers. Participants will gain practical tools to strengthen risk assessment, enhance engagement, and provide responsive, ethically grounded care for individuals experiencing chronic suicidality.

Internal Family Systems and Adolescent Suicidality: A Parts-Based Approach to Safety, Containment, and Hope

Adolescent suicidality often reflects the activation of extreme protective parts within an overwhelmed internal system rather than a true wish to die. This presentation introduces Internal Family Systems (IFS) as a trauma-informed, developmentally attuned framework for understanding and reducing suicidality in teens. Participants will learn to view suicidal thoughts and behaviors as protective strategies aimed at relieving psychic pain or restoring control. The workshop emphasizes safe, ethical engagement with suicidal parts while maintaining containment and reducing internal conflict. Through case examples and reflection, clinicians will gain a compassionate, practical framework for assessment, stabilization, and long-term change.

The State of Mental Health Practice in Utah: Trends, Challenges, and Clinical Realities

This presentation shares key findings from the Utah Mental Health Professional Practice Survey, a statewide study examining clinicians' current practice realities. Drawing from responses across licensure types, settings, and career stages, presenters will highlight trends related to caseloads, demand and capacity, insurance participation, client financial barriers, supervision, and workforce sustainability. Emphasis will be placed on how these realities directly impact clinicians' daily practice and well-being. The session will include reflection prompts and discussion to help clinicians contextualize the data within their own professional experiences.