PESI UK Announces International Women, Trauma and Mental Health Conference

PESI UK’s Women, Trauma and Mental Health conference arrives this November amid an epidemic of violence against women and girls. 

Shocking as they were, the recent murders of Sarah Everard and Sabina Nessa – on their local streets, as they went about their daily lives – were not isolated horrors. 

One in three women worldwide experience physical or sexual violence. During Covid-19, instances of rape, sexual abuse and domestic violence against women and girls have only intensified – while prosecution rates remain damningly low. For women from marginalised and racialised communities, the risk of violence and harassment is greater still.

As therapists, we work beneath the headlines. We work with the fear, the flashbacks and the panic attacks, the eating disorders, the substance misuse and the suicidality, the self-blame, the shame and the deep and enduring relational wounds. 

We work with female clients whose pain and trauma may never be shared, or perhaps never fully heard, outside our therapy rooms. 

But we don’t work in isolation from the sexism and misogyny entrenched in wider culture – including the impact that continuing economic disparity and sexual and reproductive health inequality have on women’s mental health.
 
And we don’t work alone. 

On November 18 and 19, we are inviting you to join pioneering women practitioners in the fields of trauma and mental health, and colleagues of all backgrounds and genders, for an international conference that is all about learning together, and standing together. 

This live and online event will bring together some of the leading names in contemporary psychotherapy, including Susie Orbach, Pat Ogden, Janina Fisher, Babette Rothschild and Gail Parker. Running across the PESI stable of companies, including French partners Quantum Way, the conference will be co-hosted by PESI UK director Tracy Jarvis and clinical psychologist Dr Eboni Webb.

We will be offering you a choice of seminars and discussions that cover everything from women’s traumatic grief and race-based stress to intergenerational trauma, BPD as a response to traumatic attachment, and the role of shame in sexual abuse in women.

And we’ll be drawing insights from the latest approaches, including IFS, EFIT, DBT EMDR, Somatosensory Psychotherapy and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, as well as mindfulness and yoga. 

In the company of some of the women who laid the foundations of contemporary trauma work – and with a keynote from Susie Orbach, co-founder of the Women’s Therapy Centre and one of psychotherapy’s most influential feminist voices – this is a chance to resource ourselves, as both practitioners and as women, and to draw on and contribute to our collective strength.

Click here to register for the Women, Trauma and Mental Health conference and for full programme details. Available with an Early Bird Saving for a limited time £799 value for only £199.