LOUISVILLE, Ky. – “Understanding and Coping with Grief” will be the topic of the University of Louisville’s Depression Center’s Fifth Annual Depression Conference Thursday, Oct. 27.
The free conference is open to the public and will be held at the Clifton Center, 2117 Payne St. Registration begins at 5:45 p.m. and the conference will follow at 6 p.m.
Participants will gain insight into what happens when they lose someone close. The mourning process will be examined as well as how to recognize complicated grief, the condition that can occur when painful emotions and feelings of loss are so long lasting that the person experiencing them has trouble accepting the loss and moving on to resume normal activities.
Speaking will be M. Katherine Shear, M.D., the Marion E. Kenworthy Professor of Psychiatry at the Columbia University School of Social Work in New York. Her research in the area of bereavement and grief has resulted in the completion of the first randomized controlled treatment study targeting the condition of complicated grief, showing the efficacy of a modified form of interpersonal psychotherapy.
The author or co-author of more than 200 publications and a frequent presenter at national and international meetings, Shear has developed several assessment instruments, including the Panic Disorder Severity Scale, the Generalized Anxiety Disorder Severity Scale, an instrument to assess adult separation anxiety disorder and several new grief assessment measures.
She graduated with Honors from the University of Chicago and attended medical school at Tufts University. She completed a medical residency and fellowship in infectious diseases and a residency in psychiatry at Payne Whitney Clinic, Cornell University Department of Psychiatry, and a fellowship in psychosomatic medicine at Montefiore Hospital, Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She is board certified in both infectious diseases and psychiatry.
The Fifth Annual Depression Conference is supported by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, The Brook Hospitals, Our Lady of Peace, Seven Counties Services and University of Louisville Hospital.
For more information, contact the UofL Depression Center at (502) 813-6634.