421 | Institutional Betrayal Trauma within the Reproductive Loss Context: What Clinicians Need to Know

This workshop is crucial in introducing the concept of Institutional Betrayal Trauma (IBT) to practitioners working with individuals and families who have suffered from voluntary and involuntary reproductive losses. Designed to expand awareness and describe innovative treatment approaches, the urgent need to mitigate the harms of IBT is addressed. Institutional Betrayal (IB) involves wrongdoings committed by an institution on individuals who depend on it. In this workshop, licensed mental health professionals and ministry leaders will examine the origins of the concept in Betrayal Trauma Theory, a central precept of which is trauma inflicted by trusted others is linked with lower awareness and more adverse psychological and physical outcomes compared to trauma inflicted by unknown perpetrators. The session ends with attention to Institutional Courage (IC), a recently proposed construct to buffer against IB. A model based on IC is presented to alleviate some of IBT’s damage and prevent future occurrences. Throughout the workshop, primary literature and case examples are relied upon, and attendees will have the opportunity to participate in small group exercises.