The first of NALGAP's webinar series will be offered on Sexuality, Sexual Orientation and Sexual Identity in Addiction Recovery on Wednesday, May 30, 2012 1:00 PM Eastern

Sexuality is a critical aspect of human psychology and behavior, and every aspect of sexuality is impacted by the disease of addiction. Despite this fact, the topic of sexuality often is not included in therapeutic activities and treatment planning for persons who are receiving treatment for addiction.Treatment programs and professionals may make inaccurate assumptions about patients' sexuality, and may avoid in-depth exploration due to discomfort and lack of skills. In dealing with patients who fall into a sexual minority group, clinicians may have even greater discomfort and uncertainty about how to proceed. This training will discuss basics of sexuality as a component of addiction treatment, and will provide an overview of the special issues and needs of addiction treatment patients who are gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender.

Learning Objectives: Obtain a comprehensive sexual history from patients in an addiction treatment program; assist patient to recognize and understand ways that their sexuality has been intertwined with their progressive addiction; Identify a GLBT patient's stage of "coming out" and develop a treatment plan appropriate to that stage;describe the gender identity spectrum and determine where on this continuum a transgender patient is at the present time.

The speaker for this event will be Penelope Ziegler, a member of the NALGAP board. In addition, she serves as Medical Director of Virginia Health Practitioners' Monitoring Program and is an Associate Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the Virginia Commonwealth University. She is Board-certified in General and Addiction Psychiatry and Addiction Medicine.

For more information and to register click here.