
SHARON, Pa. — Penn State Shenango hosts its annual Stamp Out Stigma event on Wednesday, March 5, at 12:15 p.m. The program is free for all community members to attend and will be held in the Shenango campus’ Forker Lab Forum. This year’s event will focus on occupational trauma. The program is free and open to the public, and registration is not required.
Michelle Kahl, clinical trauma specialist and the founder of Life Walk Counseling Services, will give the keynote address. Kahl is an EMDRIA-certified therapist and is also an approved EMDR consultant who trains clinicians in EMDR therapy and co-facilitates trainings on other topics related to trauma treatment. The talk will focus on traumas that are commonly experienced through the professional front-line work of those who serve in fields such as nursing, EMT and law enforcement, as well as the vicarious traumas that can occur for individuals in other helping professions, such as those who provide various kinds of therapy and social services.
“Many folks in helping professions are walking wounded and may not realize it,” said Tony Paglia, Penn State Shenango’s mental health counselor. “This can contribute to burnout in professions that are essential to the health and well-being of our communities.”
The goals of the program are to define occupational trauma; to bring awareness to the fact that occupational trauma frequently occurs in some of these professions and workplace environments; to teach about some of the warning signs that someone may have experienced trauma through their work; to encourage help-seeking behaviors for individuals so that they might heal from work-related traumas and become healthier in both their professional and personal lives; and to acknowledge some of the barriers that sometimes keep individuals from seeking needed help.
“We are offering this program to benefit our Penn State Shenango students as well as area professionals so that folks can more readily begin to recognize when they might be experiencing symptoms of trauma, to normalize these occurrences, and to get the word out that effective treatments are available,” Paglia said.
Stamp Out Stigma was established at Penn State Shenango by alumnus Jack Luchette as a mental health awareness program. This year marks the 11th annual Stamp Out Stigma event.
For more information about this event, please contact Tony Paglia at [email protected] or 724-983-2841.