Continuing Education Center

Practitioners and parents alike have seen the dramatic increase of sexually explicit media (SEM) across various digital platforms, extending beyond traditional adult websites to social media and mainstream online spaces. This presents new challenges for parents, educators, and health professionals in guiding adolescents and children through their media consumption.

As media outlets evolve to keep viewers engaged, so too must our approaches to media literacy and education for young people. However, professionals and caregivers face many challenges when teaching youths how to be sophisticated consumers of media.

Join us for an upcoming Our Safe Haven session, featuring a discussion moderated by Seth Wescott and David Prescott. These sessions provide a forum for professional dialogue on the challenges associated with SEM and its dangerous impacts on youths. These sessions offer attendees an opportunity for open discussion, support, and skill development. Your contributions will enrich the collective understanding and help shape best practices in this evolving field.

We invite mental health providers who are allies for LGBTQ+ clients, as well as LGBT+ practitioners, to participate in our upcoming “Our Safe Haven” session series. These gatherings provide a space for open dialogue and shared insights on how to establish and sustain safe spaces for individuals with diverse sexual orientations and gender identities.

During each session, we explore several discussion topics, including but not limited to:

Stress, including the chronic social pressures faced by stigmatized minority groups.
Professional biases, including those faced by both LGBTQ+ clients and practitioners
Resources for specialized knowledge and training
Ethical and professional challenges
Creating and maintaining safe spaces for clients and providers can be daunting, often feeling overwhelming. However, by fostering collaboration and mutual learning, we can create supportive environments for our work and ourselves.