Satellite Symposia CBT
Personality Disorders: Manage them before they manage you
December 8 | 9:00AM-12:30PM | 9.0 Mainpro+ | $395 tuition
Greg Dubord, MD is the leading advocate of medical CBT—the integration of cognitive behavior therapy’s tested techniques into normal family practice appointments.
Dr. Dubord is the CPD Director of CBT Canada and the Director of the Fellowship in Medical CBT (FMCBT). Under Dr. Dubord’s leadership, CBT Canada won the National CME Program Award of the College of Family Physicians of Canada for the Certificate in Medical CBT (CMCBT), and CBT Canada became the first institution authorized by the CFPC to provide three-credits-per-hour CME.
In addition to nearly 25 years of teaching with the University of Toronto’s Department of Psychiatry, Dr. Dubord regularly gives workshops for nine other Canadian medical schools. He has provided medical CBT workshops at every Family Medicine Forum since FMF began in 2000 (usually several per year; now over 50 FMF workshops total). He has led trainings in all ten provinces—along with the Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut—and in over a dozen overseas countries. In total, Dr. Dubord has presented over 500 full-day (or longer) workshops on medical CBT.
Dr. Dubord completed his orthodox CBT training under CBT’s founder, Dr. Aaron T. Beck, and was the first Canadian Fellow of the Beck Institute. In the late 1990s the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry (now CAMH) recruited Dr. Dubord to establish the Advanced CBT Institute. He is a recipient of the University of Toronto Department of Psychiatry’s Continuing Mental Health Education Award, and the CME Teacher of the Year award from the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Medicine.
When he’s not training physicians in medical CBT, Greg’s passions include mountain biking and alpine skiing—but most importantly, being the best husband and dad he can be.
How common are the personality disorders? According to a recent meta-analysis (Volkert, 2018), over 12% of your patients likely have one. The rates are much higher among those in your practice with “illness anxiety disorder”: 75% of hypochondriacs have one personality disorder, and nearly 50% have three or more.
Unfortunately, and as you know all too well, personality disorders aren’t found only among our patients. The personalities of our colleagues, family members, and friends can also contribute to some rather profound suffering.
This practical workshop begins with a review of the science of personality assessment. We examine the most popular inventories, doing a fair bit of debunking along the way. Fortunately, some inventories are indisputably evidence-based. You'll have an opportunity to analyze yourself (and your loved ones, if you're so inclined) using one of the very best.
The core of the workshop is the systematic review of DSM-5’s ten personality disorders: the insensitively-named "MAD" (paranoid, schizoid, schizotypal), "BAD" (antisocial, borderline, histrionic, narcissistic), and "SAD" (avoidant, dependent, and obsessive-compulsive) "clusters".
As we review each of the ten personality disorders, our emphases are on 1) rapid diagnosis (when possible); 2) modular treatments (when desired), and 3) clinician coping (always). The complex issue of the diagnosis of children and adolescents will be debated.
Borderline personality disorder necessitates extra time. Today nearly 20% of female university students have significant BPD symptoms, and cutting is rising among tweens (ages 8 to 12). In this expanded section we focus on managing non-suicidal self-injuries, with practical tips harvested from CBT and its relevant derivatives (i.e., DBT and ACT).
Although nobody woke would advocate labeling, there is clearly much value in knowing what kind of person one is dealing with. Many case challenges (e.g., in preventive medicine & chronic disease management)—and a high percentage of interpersonal disputes—gain clarity through the lens of personality.
Personalities and their disorders are by definition enduring and predictable. When you improve your skills in reading others, you give yourself a little "superpower".
That superpower will make both your clinical practice and your life in general a fair bit easier.
GriefWork: Growing from life's inevitable losses
December 8 | 1:00PM-4:30PM | 9.0 Mainpro+ | $395 tuition
Greg Dubord, MD is the leading advocate of medical CBT—the integration of cognitive behavior therapy’s tested techniques into normal family practice appointments.
Dr. Dubord is the CPD Director of CBT Canada and the Director of the Fellowship in Medical CBT (FMCBT). Under Dr. Dubord’s leadership, CBT Canada won the National CME Program Award of the College of Family Physicians of Canada for the Certificate in Medical CBT (CMCBT), and CBT Canada became the first institution authorized by the CFPC to provide three-credits-per-hour CME.
In addition to nearly 25 years of teaching with the University of Toronto’s Department of Psychiatry, Dr. Dubord regularly gives workshops for nine other Canadian medical schools. He has provided medical CBT workshops at every Family Medicine Forum since FMF began in 2000 (usually several per year; now over 50 FMF workshops total). He has led trainings in all ten provinces—along with the Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut—and in over a dozen overseas countries. In total, Dr. Dubord has presented over 500 full-day (or longer) workshops on medical CBT.
Dr. Dubord completed his orthodox CBT training under CBT’s founder, Dr. Aaron T. Beck, and was the first Canadian Fellow of the Beck Institute. In the late 1990s the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry (now CAMH) recruited Dr. Dubord to establish the Advanced CBT Institute. He is a recipient of the University of Toronto Department of Psychiatry’s Continuing Mental Health Education Award, and the CME Teacher of the Year award from the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Medicine.
When he’s not training physicians in medical CBT, Greg’s passions include mountain biking and alpine skiing—but most importantly, being the best husband and dad he can be.
Historically, it was the wisdom traditions—religion and philosophy—that provided us with comfort. Today psychology helps too: the utterly universal experience of loss has spawned much excellent scientific research.
This workshop assumes your appointments are brief, averaging only 5–7 minutes. With that in mind, we teach the CBT tools that are highest in impact and practicality. The goal is to efficiently help patients cope—at least a little better—with the pain of some of life’s inevitable losses.
1. What are the criteria for DSM-5-TR's new Prolonged Grief Disorder? 2. Kübler-Ross’s DABDA is dead. What new recovery model is both evidence-based and empowering? 3. Is it bereavement or is it depression? If it’s “just” bereavement, how should the management differ?
4. Reassurance is helpful—but goodness gracious, only to a point. What concrete tools help the bereaved? And what tricks can we use to boost compliance?
5. People persist to prevent the pain of loss; e.g., with relationships beyond their “best before” dates, and with careers that suck their souls. How can one escape the “sunk cost trance” underlying such maladaptive behaviors? 6. Beyond reducing suffering, there’s the tantalizing prospect of “post-traumatic growth” (PTG). PTG is real—what are non-klutzy ways of facilitating it?
7. Forgiveness (in some form) is often required to overcome a loss. How does the research suggest we define and facilitate that which sounds so godawfully churchy?
8. How prevalent are the so-called “moral injuries”? How can we help those genuinely suffering from them?
9. For some patients, the fear of death is overwhelming. How can we help them overcome that common cause of suffering?