The Arizona Department of Veterans Services is funding training on a kind of therapy for over 450 licensed mental health professionals who work with military personnel.
Kelly Smyth-Dent a licensed clinical social worker with Scaling Up, which provides training for mental health therapists.
“EMDR stands for eye movement, desensitization, and reprocessing,” she said. “I would explain it as a trauma therapy intervention that helps the brain to process and heal from disturbing memories.”
Like fighting in a warzone.
Smyth-Dent said the goal is to expand EMDR therapy for veterans, military members and their families.
“They’re basically trying to create a bigger network of competently trained therapists who can work with that population effectively. So, they've given a generous amount of funding to provide that for free for therapists.”
So far grant funding for this training appears to be secured. She said these virtual trainings typically cost around $1000 per person.
“That's part of the reason that all of these EMDR basic trainings are so expensive is because there's a lot of staff that comes along with creating this high-quality training, and people leave feeling really competent and ready to start using EMDR immediately after the training,” Smyth-Dent said.
These virtual trainings are set to start in August.
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Arizona officials cut funding for a program that provides independent oversight at group homes for people with developmental disabilities, which was created in response to a sex abuse scandal. Advocates say the decision will harm the most vulnerable Arizonans. -
There were more than 2,000 confirmed cases of measles in the U.S. as of last week. That’s according to numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and is only a couple hundred cases away from the total from all of last year. -
The measles outbreak connected to communities along the Arizona-Utah border has come to an end, according to public health officials. -
Advocates say a bipartisan state budget proposal doesn’t include funding for a program providing independent oversight at group homes for Arizonans with developmental disabilities that was created in the wake of a sex abuse scandal. -
An Orthodox Christian group is threatening to sue the city of Phoenix over a controversial new ordinance it passed last month that bans groups from providing medical care and food to the homeless in city parks — unless they have one of two permits that will be available for it per month in some parks.
