Validation: Part 1: What and Why

by DrKatieBrazaitis | Sep 10, 2024 | Clinical Interventions, Enhancing Competency

If you’re a follower of my blog, you’ve probably noticed I’m a big fan of validation. I talked about it a lot in my post on Inside Out and in my Making Sense of Suicide series. Even when I’m not labeling the role of validation explicitly,...

Chasing Happiness

by DrKatieBrazaitis | Aug 26, 2024 | Clinical Interventions, Clinician Wellness, Pop Culture, Media, and the Arts

In American culture, we’ve been indoctrinated to believe that happiness is attainable. And if we aren’t happy, it’s because we are doing something wrong. Something wrong that we can fix, if only we work hard enough, are dedicated, and willing to make...

Trauma-Informed Care

by DrKatieBrazaitis | Aug 12, 2024 | Clinical Interventions, Enhancing Competency

This Friday, August 16, 2024 at 12 MST I’ll be providing an Arizona Perinatal Psychiatry Access Line (APAL) Grand Rounds on Trauma-Informed Care in a Gynecological Setting. In the talk, I introduce the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services...

Making Sense of Suicide: Part 2 Theory Continued

by DrKatieBrazaitis | Jul 30, 2024 | Clinical Interventions, Enhancing Competency

In Making Sense of Suicide: Part 2 Theory, I introduced Joiner’s Interpersonal Theory of Suicide and Jobes’ Collaborative Assessment and Management of Suicide. In this blog, I’ll round out my discussion on theory by reviewing Marsha Linehan’s Dialectical Behavior...

Distress Tolerance: Holding Ice

by DrKatieBrazaitis | Jul 15, 2024 | Clinical Interventions, Enhancing Competency

Holding Ice is one of my go-to distress tolerance skills.  It is a modification of the DBT TIP skills, which aim to change your emotional state through changing your body’s physiology.  This blog is for clinicians and those seeking healing alike.  You’ll notice some...

Making Sense of Suicide: Part 2 Theory  

by DrKatieBrazaitis | Jul 2, 2024 | Clinical Interventions, Enhancing Competency, Suicide

I am a firm believer that having a strong foundation in theory allows for the creation of rich and compassionate conceptualizations.  This is especially true for making sense of suicide. In this post I will provide a brief review of two of the three frameworks I...