Course Description

Historically, a diagnosis-based system has predominated in mental health. However, as most clinicians know, clients typically meet diagnostic criteria for several diagnoses. This can result in significant deviations from evidence-based practice, symptoms being overlooked, or the intervention being unnecessarily extended as the clinician can be forced to prioritize one diagnosis over another. This can also result in the client feeling invalidated and the therapist feeling overwhelmed due to the client’s unique cluster of presenting issues. Accordingly, there has recently been a shift from a diagnostic-based system to a transdiagnostic model to best accommodate the clients’ individual presentation. This presentation will explore the benefit of a transdiagnostic approach when working with psychopathology. It will demonstrate why EMDR therapy, and the AIP model that underpins it, is an appropriate transdiagnostic approach to improve client prognosis and treatment efficiency. Case studies will also be provided to demonstrate key concepts.

Learning Objectives

1. Participants will be able to identify several reasons why it is helpful to understand EMDR therapy from a transdiagnostic framework.
2. Participants will be able to describe how to conceptualize cases using a transdiagnostic, AIP approach.
3. Participants will be able to apply several methods for identifying EMDR therapy targets when working transdiagnostically.

Presenter(s)

Sarah Dominguez, Ph.D.

Sarah Dominguez, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and an EMDR Association of Australia (EMDRAA) accredited consultant and trainer. She serves on the EMDRAA Board and Accreditation and Standards Committee. Sarah has authored numerous peer-reviewed publications and book chapters and has been an invited presenter at several international conferences. Sarah is the director of The Wattle Centre in NSW, Australia. There, she sees clients and delivers basic EMDR therapy training and other trauma-informed training to therapists across Australia. Internationally, Sarah offers several on-demand courses, such as EMDR Refresher and Using EMDR and Schema Therapy.