2021 Annual Statewide OCEACT Conference 

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2021 Annual Statewide OCEACT Conference will be virtual.

June 14th – ACT Leadership Session: Networking & Statewide Innovations @ 1pm – 2:30pm (PT) –

**The team lead session registration will be sent out separately to team leads and supervisors. 

June 15th – June 17th – Statewide Conference

Conference Handouts, Links, & Presentations

Keynote Speakers

Gabor Maté, MD

Gabor Maté (pronunciation: GAH-bor MAH-tay) is a retired physician who, after 20 years of family practice and palliative care experience, worked for over a decade in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side with patients challenged by drug addiction and mental illness. The bestselling author of four books published in twenty-five languages, Gabor is an internationally renowned speaker highly sought after for his expertise on addiction, trauma, childhood development, and the relationship of stress and illness. His book on addiction received the Hubert Evans Prize for literary non-fiction. For his groundbreaking medical work and writing he has been awarded the Order of Canada, his country’s highest civilian distinction, and the Civic Merit Award from his hometown, Vancouver. His books include In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction; When the Body Says No; Exploring the Stress-Disease Connection; Scattered: How ADD Originates and What You Can Do About It; and (with Gordon Neufeld) Hold on to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers. To learn more, go to www.drgabormate.com.

Patricia E. Deegan, PhD

Patricia E. Deegan Ph.D. is a principal with Pat Deegan & Associates. For over 30 years Pat has been a thought leader and disruptive innovator in the field of behavioral health recovery. Pat founded a company run by and for people in recovery. The mission: To safeguard human dignity by bringing individual voice and choice to the center of the clinical care team. Toward this end she developed the CommonGround Program that includes the award winning CommonGround software, the online Recovery Library, the CommonGround Academy for peers and practitioners, and the Hearing Distressing Voices Simulation. Since 2009, Pat has worked as a consultant helping to develop and evolve the OnTrackNY model for coordinated specialty care teams for young folks experiencing early psychosis. Pat is an activist in the disability rights movement and has lived her own journey of recovery after being diagnosed with schizophrenia as a teenager. She has held a number of academic appointments, has numerous publications, and has carried a message of hope for recovery to audiences around the world. She received her doctorate in clinical psychology from Duquesne University.

Shaun McNiff, PhD

Shaun McNiff is author of Imagination in Action: Secrets for Unleashing Creative Expression; Trust the Process: An Artist’s Guide to Letting Go; Art as Medicine; Art Heals; Depth Psychology of Art; Integrating the Arts in Therapy; and other books. His writings have been widely influential and translated into many languages and he has lectured and taught throughout the world. The recipient of numerous honors and awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Journal of Applied Arts and Health for his leadership in advancing art as research and the Honorary Life Member Award of the American Art Therapy Association. He established the first integrated arts in therapy and education graduate training programs at Lesley University from which the field of expressive arts therapy emerged and in 2002 Lesley appointed him as its first University Professor. His lifework is committed to furthering universal access to artistic expression as a source of individual community well-being and understanding.

James Condos

James is a self-taught artist with the lived experience of mental illness and has been making art for most of his life. James has had solo shows at the Grants Pass Museum of Art and the Wiseman Gallery at Rogue Community College. He was the subject of a documentary film, “I Wish I was That Bird,” which won best documentary at the 2016 Massachusetts Independent Film festival and received the Voices of Experience award at the Scottish Mental Health and Arts Festival in Glasgow, Scotland.

Becky Emmert, MS, CRC

Becky is the first Head of Accessibility at Portland Art Museum. As a Disabled individual and member of the Deaf Community, Becky brings a unique perspective and passion to the work. In this new role she has prioritized building relationships with visitors, artists, community members, and staff with the goal of making the museum galleries and programs accessible and welcoming to all visitors and uplifting the work of Deaf and Disabled artists. Prior to this position, Becky coordinated programs focused on serving Deaf, DeafBlind, and hard of hearing individuals including youth transition, career exploration, job development, and case management. She also has experience as a mental health counselor, has taught multiple Rehabilitation Counseling courses at Western Oregon University, has presented at various conferences and workshops, and has served on several committees at both local and state levels. Becky has witnessed repeatedly the power of art to impact lives individually and collectively and she seeks to provide opportunities for meaningful engagement with art and each other for all community members.

Lisa Jarret, MFA

Lisa Jarrett is Associate Professor of Community and Context Arts at Portland State University’s School of Art + Design. She is co-founder and co-director of KSMoCA (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr School Museum of Contemporary Art) and the Harriet Tubman Middle School Center for Expanded Curatorial Practice in NE Portland, OR, and the artists collective Art 25: Art in the 25th Century. 
 
Her intersectional practice considers the politics of difference within a variety of settings including: schools, landscapes, fictions, racial imaginaries, studios, communities, museums, galleries, walls, mountains, mirrors, floors, rivers, and lenses. She exists and makes socially engaged work within the African Diaspora. She recently discovered that her primary medium is questions.

Will Kendall

William Kendall has been teaching music and art to youth experiencing homelessness for over 27 years. As founder of the Artist Mentorship Program (AMP) and Arts Program coordinator at p:ear William has made it a priority to make music and art accessible and a priority for the youth of Portland and San Francisco who are experiencing homelessness. With a focus towards relationship building and utilizing the arts for healing William’s focus is on building meditation, nonverbal communication skills and skill building to address trauma. With a background in professional art and music, and a graduate of PNCA with a focus on graphic design, William has hosted thousands of art and music workshops over the past 27 years and is passionate about the healing power of art.

Peggy Swarbrick, PhD, FAOTA

Peggy Swarbrick, PhD, FAOTA has published and lectured around the country and internationally on wellness promotion models, employment, peer support, and recovery. Her work has focused on a strength based 8-dimensional wellness model to promote recovery from mental health and substance use conditions. She is well known for collaborating with the peer community and family groups to identify and address social determinants that present barriers to recovery, such as homelessness, poverty and under/unemployment. Peggy has developed many peer support certification courses, a peer health navigator training and peer wellness coaching practice model. She has created health promotion initiatives and also wellness self-care programs for caregiver’s families and youth. She has made significant contributions to the body of literature in occupational therapy, nursing and community behavioral health care practice. As a co-investigator, consultant, and collaborator on Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute grants as well as National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research, National Institute of Mental Health, and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration, she has contributed to significant research and been a lead for developing trainings and intervention manuals for many of these projects. Peggy was a co-investigator on Perspectives on the International Classification of Diseases (11th revision); Using lived experience to improve mental health diagnoses in the United States: INCLUDE – US Study. Peggy is the Wellness Institute Director at Collaborative Support Programs of New Jersey and Research Professor and Associate Director of Center of Alcohol and Substance Use Studies Rutgers University

Janina Fisher, PhD

Janina Fisher, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist in private practice, Assistant Educational Director of the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute and a former instructor, Harvard Medical School. She completed a post-doctoral fellowship in trauma treatment at the Victims of Violence Program, Cambridge Hospital, and was an instructor and supervisor at the Trauma Center from 1995-2011. Considered an international expert on the treatment of trauma, she is co-author with Pat Ogden of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy: Interventions for Attachment and Trauma (2015) and author of Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors: Overcoming Self-Alienation (2017) and Transforming the Living Legacy of Trauma: a Workbook for Survivors and Therapists (2021). She is best known for her work on integrating newer neurobiologically-informed interventions into traditional psychotherapy approaches.  More information can be found on her website: www.janinafisher.com.

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