Core training for mental health professionals working with traumatised populations. These two acclaimed, highly practical, science-based professional development workshops will underpin your clinical practice in this field. The content is applicable to both adult and adolescent populations.  The four-day program attracts 42 trauma focused professional development hours and is available as an engaging self-paced online program, a highly interactive livestream, across Australia and New Zealand, and also internationally to groups of 40 mental health professionals upon request. 2025 offerings are listed here

Trauma Education Series background 

Since Judith Herman’s conceptualisation of complex trauma, the past 20 years have seen the emergence of a range of clinically effective treatments for some of our most challenged and challenging clients. A paradigm shift in treatment is occurring, and with that a need for all treatment providers to understand when cognitive behavioural interventions for the traumatised are indicated, and when other, more experiential, but still empirically-validated, approaches are required. A significant controversy has recently emerged in the clinical literature, challenging the current best-practice model of phase-based treatment for traumatised clients:

·         Is Phase One – the ‘stabilisation phase’ – too ‘conservative’, even unnecessary? Is it just a holding period, ‘supportive counselling’, an inefficient use of treatment sessions, even an unethical delay to effective treatment, rather than an active change agent in the traumatised client’s life?

·         Is Phase Two – processing traumatic memories – the ‘real’ therapy or ‘work’, that we should be getting on with as soon as possible, rather than delaying these ‘front‐line trauma‐focused treatments’  (e.g., prolonged exposure, EMDR) because of a possibly unwarranted concern that the CPTSD client will be adversely affected or drop out early? 

Important, well-executed treatment studies have recently been investigating these questions, and evidence has emerged indicating that some complex trauma survivors do benefit from processing their traumatic memories as a priority. There remains, however, a group of particularly severely affected clients excluded from these studies, and for whom a more staged-based, stabilisation approach is indicated. This training will explain when exposure-based interventions are indicated and appropriate and when other therapeutic needs must be addressed first.

This trauma training series takes the position that the goals of Phase One of CPTSD therapy are intensely important therapeutic change agents for Complex PTSD clients (CPTSD).  Underlying the Phase One goals of affect regulation; establishing safety; relationship skills training and establishing a healthy therapeutic relationship are profoundly important human needs that have been unmet in the CPTSD survivor’s life. These include the ability to mentalise; to develop an internal safe base to help tolerate and organise terrifying internal experiences, with a view to being able to securely explore the world and others; to effectively collaborate with people, when people have been the cause of their complex trauma; and to achieve these foundations through a stable, observing and well-bounded therapeutic alliance, which itself becomes a major change agent.

And, of course, clinicians who consider themselves experienced in treating traumatic stress disorders should be proficient in Phase Two, or processing traumatic memories, using one or more of the evidence-based therapeutic procedures that do so. For PTSD clients, the therapeutic path to these treatments may be quite rapid and direct, which may also be the case for some CPTSD clients, while other CPSTD clients may require Phase One treatments first to assist in trust and therapy engagement, emotion regulation, and destructive problem behaviours that are inhibiting client safety, e.g., severe suicidal/ self-harm behaviours, violent relationship status. This approach is in line with the present-day position taken by the originator of the term ‘complex PTSD’, Judith Herman (2020).

The author of this training series has worked and taught extensively in both CPTSD and PTSD and has produced a program that synthesises approaches from a variety of modalities and techniques that are publishing positive outcomes for these clients, and then presents them using actual cases for immediate, practical, clinical application.  There is more hope for our traumatised clients than ever before, and these two training programs will equip graduate clinicians with the knowledge and the skills to improve the lives of their PTSD and complex PTSD patients.

Please note that you are required to attend Day 1-2 (Treating PTSD) before attending Day 3-4 (Treating Complex Trauma), as essential material is covered in the first workshop and not repeated in the second. The programs work together and while people may choose to do the first but not the second; they don't work the other way around. Dr Leah Giarratano has been treating traumatised clients since 1995, and training health professionals across Australia and New Zealand since 1996. These two programs are designed to work together and offer core instruction in the treatment of PTSD and complex trauma.

Watch Leah Giarratano present an overview of: Trauma Education: Day 1-4, Treating PTSD: Day 1-2 and Treating Complex Trauma: Day 3-4

Reference Herman, J. (2020). Forward. In C.A. Courtois & J.D. Ford (Ed.,), Treating Complex Traumatic Stress Disorders: Scientific Foundations and Therapeutic Models. New York: The Guilford Press.