Tuesday 1-4 pm @ the Hilton
Participants can choose between two concurrent sessions:
The LOSS Team Clinician – The Quiet Navigator!! presented by Dr. Don Belau
This preconference workshop will be provided by Donald P. Belau, Ph.D., experienced LOSS team clinician, and member of the National LOSS Team Conference Planning Committee. This workshop will offer insight into the mission of this critical member of the LOSS team process. An overview of tips that the clinician can utilize in assisting the team with recruitment of prospective team members, training, and supports that can be provided to LOSS team members will be provided. In addition, a brief look at the impact of suicide loss upon the newly bereaved as well as LOSS team members will be offered as well.
This interactive workshop is designed for licensed professionals such as mental health providers, physicians, social workers, and others who are experienced in recognizing suicide risk, and trauma associated with suicide loss LOSS team coordinators are also encouraged to attend, as this training can enhance the collaboration process between coordinators and clinicians. A certificate of attendance will be provided.
Overview of the 3-Day Long-Term Survivor of Suicide Retreat presented by Dr. Frank Campbell & Dr. John McIntosh, Ph. D.
This overview workshop will provide an introduction to understanding the needs of those who are long-term survivors of suicide. Very little research has been conducted into how those bereaved by suicide are doing mentally and emotionally after a decade or more of their loss to suicide. This retreat was developed and piloted in 2019 with 21 participants who spent three days processing their loss in small groups of seven and a large group of 21 with three presenters who are content experts in the field of Suicidology. The three-hour pre-conference workshop will be an overview of the retreat and provide a rationale for conducting such retreats in communities where survivor support services and or LOSS Teams have been operating for long enough to have participants interested in a reflective process experience. Participants in the workshop will be invited to experience some of the methods used in the retreat in order to observe this process first hand. The presenter is the developer of the retreat and hopes to encourage others to investigate how those who are expected to be doing better in their community are actually doing with their personal grief journey.
Dr. Belau has been actively involved in suicide prevention and suicide postvention efforts in Nebraska and nationally for over 40 years. Dr. Belau has worked in K-12 settings as a school psychologist, and is a licensed independent mental health professional in Nebraska. He is currently an active consultant for youth crisis systems on a local and national level, and is an active school psychologist where he provides suicide risk assessments, threat assessments, e.g. He was instrumental in the development of the Nebraska K-12 Suicide Prevention – Postvention Online Training in which over 40,000 staff has completed the training in the past three years.
He has provided training for faith communities, law enforcement, mental health staff, K-12 educational programs, e.g. , and has led the development of Local Outreach to Suicide Survivors (LOSS) teams across the nation, is a member of the National LOSS Team Planning Committee, and is an associate of Dr. Frank Campbell, the originator of the LOSS team concept.
Dr. Belau has been a trainer for the Assessing and Managing Suicide Risk (AMSR) program and AFSP Suicide Bereavement Clinician Training Program (SBCTP) for a number of years as well. On a personal note, Dr. Belau enjoys the beach with his wife, connecting with 7 grands, and is suicide loss survivor, as well as a cancer survivor. Dr. Belau can be reached at dpbelau72@gmail.com.
Dr. Campbell is the Executive Director Emeritus of the Baton Rouge Crisis Intervention Center, where he founded the National Suicidology Training Center (NSTC) in 2018. Dr. Campbell also serves as a volunteer Assistant Coroner in East Baton Rouge Parish. In addition to his volunteer activities, he is the Senior Consultant for Campbell and Associates Consulting where he consults with communities on Active Postvention efforts and Forensic Suicidology cases. During his nearly forty years of working with those bereaved by suicide he introduced his Active Postvention Model (APM) in 1997 it is most commonly known as the LOSS Team (Local Outreach to Suicide Survivors).
His work with survivors and victims of trauma has been featured in three discovery channel documentaries, professional journals and book chapters. He is a past-president of the American Association of Suicidology, a recipient of both national and international awards for his contributions to the field of Suicidology. Dr. Campbell is also an Army veteran and is most proud to have been a consultant and contributor to the TAPS program for military family members who attend the survivor seminars and National programs for the past fifteen years. To learn more about his work in the field of Suicidology you can visit his website www.lossteam.com or the NSTC at www.BRCIC.org
Dr. McIntosh is currently Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Indiana University South Bend and is Past President of the American Association of Suicidology (AAS). His research focus areas include suicide bereavement and survivors of suicide loss, suicide statistics, as well as suicide in late life, and he taught courses on suicide and depression. He received the AAS’s Edwin Shneidman Award (1990) for early career work in suicidology, the Roger Tierney Award for Service (1999), and the Louis Dublin Award (2018) recognizing lifetime achievements in suicide prevention. He also received the Charles T. Rubey LOSS Award (2011) from Catholic Charities in Chicago for extraordinary impact on the lives of survivors of suicide.
Among Dr. McIntosh’s 8 books on suicide, the most recent are Devastating Losses: How Parents Cope With the Death of a Child to Suicide or Drugs (co-authored with Bill Feigelman, John Jordan, and Bev Feigelman) which has been praised as “a thorough and elaborate American study has appeared on the grief and mourning process of bereaved parents” (LAVA) and Grief After Suicide: Understanding the Consequences and Caring for the Survivors (edited with John Jordan), which is geared towards mental health professionals, grief counselors, clergy, and others who work with survivors in a professional capacity.
