1st “Psychological and Pastoral Care in the Pandemic” Conference

1st “Psychological and Pastoral Care in the Pandemic” conference is organized by Hedra. This CME webinar will be held from Aug 18 - 19, 2021.

Course Description:
This conference joins together academics, psychologists, psychiatrists and counselors, priests, chaplains and pastors from all global faiths, media analysts and commentators, and healthcare educators and practitioners from a broad variety of fields, for a collaborative, multidisciplinary exploration of the ways in which the pandemic has influenced the global ways of working and governance. We welcome papers on spirituality in healing and health, grieving and loss, in the time of the pandemic. We welcome papers from all faiths and traditions. Abstracts are reviewed. Themes and concerns for the conference include, but are not limited to:

Stream A: Psychological counseling
What is mental health, in a time of pandemic? How do we assist people to deal with distress, trauma, sleep disorders, anxiety, depression, addiction, PTSD, and suicide, among other problems? What are the immediate, and the longer-term social and individual consequences of the pandemic, social distancing, and isolation? How has the pandemic affected first responders, crisis hotline workers, people who are grieving, helpless youth and children at risk, caregivers, medical practitioners, and other healthcare workers, and psychological caregivers themselves? How does it map problems and concerns to identity and diversify? What will the longer-term consequences of the pandemic be, and how can we plan to address these mental health issues?

Stream B: Pastoral care
How can practitioners and communities of faith react to the mental health issues resulting from the pandemic such as addiction, trauma, and family problems along with the marriage breakdown? How can they give support for vulnerable youth and children at risk, the elderly, and those who have lost a loved one? How can they support people through the process of grieving? What results have been on offenders and former offenders? To what degree can personal and social resilience be encouraged, in the aftermath of the pandemic? How should communities care for the carers who have borne significant overwork and emotional strain and may experience compassion fatigue, including pastors, counselors, teachers, and their staff?

Stream C: Representing the pandemic
The pandemic has been produced continually in print, tv, film, and online media, for months. What have the impacts been, on concepts of care? How has it transformed advertising and marketing, concepts of narrative and drama in film and television, how we represent illness and care, and how we create and share conspiracy theories? How have questions of identity been intertwined in this? How has the community gone online, how have policymakers enabled and/or constrained the media and how do these variations affect the care given to real people? As pandemic personnel become influencers and social media stars, many governments have limited freedom of expression. In a world of managed press conferences, how has this crisis shaped the construction of characters, frames, and stories? In the world after the pandemic, what will the consequences be on our expectations for care?

Stream D: Data analytics and the pandemic
In order to know how the pandemic is influencing those providing and those representing care, we are soliciting papers from academics, researchers, psychologists, people working in pastoral care, and media analysts involved with healthcare. These papers ask to use structured interviews and evaluate the data with content analysis software. Conference participants interested in cooperating with this effort will publish papers in a journal special issue with HEDRA advisory board members.