Leslie Davenport (born Leslie Dunn) is an American writer, teacher, psychotherapist, and consultant in the mental health specialization of climate psychology. [1] [2] [3] Also, she is the program and faculty lead for the Climate Psychology Certificate program at the California Institute of Integral Studies. [4]
Leslie Davenport was born in Glendale, California, and raised in the San Fernando Valley. Her father, originally from Northern Ireland, worked in the dairy industry, while her mother was from Appalachian Tennessee. Davenport moved to San Francisco in her early 20s to pursue modern dance. In 1976, She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Dance as a Performing Art from San Francisco State University and in 1978 completed a Master of Arts in dance from Mills College in Oakland, California. After graduation, she joined the dance faculty at Mills College. In 1990, she completed a Master of Science in Counseling Psychology from Dominican University in San Rafael, California. [5]
Leslie Davenport's career began in the late 1970s when she served as a faculty member in dance at various San Francisco Bay Area institutions, including Mills College, California State University, Holy Names College, and the University of San Francisco, from 1978 to 1986. [6]
Transitioning into psychology and integrative health, Davenport became a founding member of the Integrative Medicine Faculty and a psychotherapist at the Institute for Health & Healing/Humanities Program at California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC) and Marin General Hospital (MGH), a role she held from 1989 to 2014. [7] [8] [9] [10] Since 1992, she has also been employed as a Climate Aware Integrative Psychotherapist, working with clients in both the San Francisco Bay Area and in 2019, expanded to include Washington State. [11]
Davenport's focus on dance evolved from performing arts to exploring the mind-body connection. She taught dance as a form of epistemological inquiry from 1983 to 1986 and again from 1992 to 1993 at the Institute of Culture and Creation Spirituality, founded by theologian Matthew Fox. In 1986, she also taught in the Department of Arts and Consciousness at John F. Kennedy University in Orinda, California. [12]
From 1994 to 1997, she founded and supervised the Guided Imagery Program at Brookside Hospital and, from 1998 to 2005, continued this work at Alta Bates Comprehensive Cancer Center. From 1995 to 1996, she also served as a Guided Imagery Consultant for Planetree. [13] [14]
From 1993 to 1996, she was part of the core faculty for the Transpersonal Psychology Graduate Program at John F. Kennedy University. [15] [16] Later, between 2009 and 2021, she contributed as a core faculty member in curriculum development for the Certificate Program in Deep Imagination at the same institution. [17] [18]
In the early 1990s, she became increasingly aware of the existential threats posed by climate change. In response to natural disasters, Davenport worked with Marin County Disaster Response Team's Psychological Support Services from 1994 to 1996, providing psychological aid to those displaced by environmental catastrophes. [19] Between 2014 and 2017, Davenport worked on the 350.org Clean Energy Solutions Committee in Marin County, supporting local clean energy initiatives. [20] [21] In 2016, her environmental views were further enriched by her involvement with the Pachamama Alliance, which focuses on protecting the environment and supporting indigenous communities. [22] [23]
In 2008, Davenport joined the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) as an off-site clinical supervisor, a role she held until 2015. From 2013 to 2023, she was an associate professor in the School of Professional Psychology and Health at CIIS. In 2022, she became the Program and Faculty Lead for the Climate Psychology Certificate Program, where she integrates climate psychology into mental health practices, a position she continues to hold. [24] [25] [26]
Davenport has authored numerous works that have advanced the field of climate psychology. In 2017, she published Emotional Resiliency in the Era of Climate Change: A Clinician’s Guide with Jessica Kingsley Publishers, a foundational text for mental health professionals addressing climate-related distress. [27] [28] She also produced training materials with the American Psychological Association (APA), including a professional video titled Working with Clients Experiencing Climate Distress, co-created with Wendy Greenspun. [29] [30] [31] For younger audiences, she authored All The Feelings Under the Sun and What to Do When Climate Change Scares You, both published by the APA's Magination Press, addressing climate-triggered psychological distress in children. [32] [33]
Today, Davenport remains active in clinical practice and public advocacy as a Climate Aware Integrative Psychotherapist, utilizing mindfulness, EMDR, Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), and guided imagery to help clients foster emotional resilience and healing. [34]
Psychotherapy is the use of psychological methods, particularly when based on regular personal interaction, to help a person change behavior, increase happiness, and overcome problems. Psychotherapy aims to improve an individual's well-being and mental health, to resolve or mitigate troublesome behaviors, beliefs, compulsions, thoughts, or emotions, and to improve relationships and social skills. Numerous types of psychotherapy have been designed either for individual adults, families, or children and adolescents. Some types of psychotherapy are considered evidence-based for treating diagnosed mental disorders; other types have been criticized as pseudoscience.
Music therapy, an allied health profession, "is the clinical and evidence-based use of music interventions to accomplish individualized goals within a therapeutic relationship by a credentialed professional who has completed an approved music therapy program." It is also a vocation, involving a deep commitment to music and the desire to use it as a medium to help others. Although music therapy has only been established as a profession relatively recently, the connection between music and therapy is not new.
Rolfing is a form of alternative medicine originally developed by Ida Rolf (1896–1979) as Structural Integration. Rolfing is marketed with unproven claims of various health benefits, is recognized as pseudoscience and has been characterized as quackery. It is based on Rolf's ideas about how the human body's "energy field" can benefit when aligned with the Earth's gravitational field.
Dance/movement therapy (DMT) in USA and Australia or dance movement psychotherapy (DMP) in the UK is the psychotherapeutic use of movement and dance to support intellectual, emotional, and motor functions of the body. As a modality of the creative arts therapies, DMT looks at the correlation between movement and emotion.
Focusing is an internally oriented psychotherapeutic process developed by psychotherapist Eugene Gendlin. It can be used in any kind of therapeutic situation, including peer-to-peer sessions. It involves holding a specific kind of open, non-judging attention to an internal knowing which is experienced but is not yet in words. Focusing can, among other things, be used to become clear on what one feels or wants, to obtain new insights about one's situation, and to stimulate change or healing of the situation. Focusing is set apart from other methods of inner awareness by three qualities: something called the "felt sense", a quality of engaged accepting attention, and a research-based technique that facilitates change.
Art therapy is a distinct discipline that incorporates creative methods of expression through visual art media. Art therapy, as a creative arts therapy profession, originated in the fields of art and psychotherapy and may vary in definition. Art therapy encourages creative expression through painting, drawing, or modelling. It may work by providing a person with a safe space to express their feelings and allow them to feel more in control over their life.
Creative visualization is the cognitive process of purposefully generating visual mental imagery, with eyes open or closed, simulating or recreating visual perception, in order to maintain, inspect, and transform those images, consequently modifying their associated emotions or feelings, with intent to experience a subsequent beneficial physiological, psychological, or social effect, such as expediting the healing of wounds to the body, minimizing physical pain, alleviating psychological pain including anxiety, sadness, and low mood, improving self-esteem or self-confidence, and enhancing the capacity to cope when interacting with others.
Wounded healer is a term created by psychologist Carl Jung. The idea states that an analyst is compelled to treat patients because the analyst himself is "wounded." The idea may have Greek mythology origins. Victor et al. (2022) found that 82% of applied psychology graduate students and faculty members in the United States and Canada experienced mental health conditions at some point in their lives.
Digby Tantam is a British psychiatrist, psychologist and psychotherapist. He is an Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Sheffield., and a director of the Septimus group. His main research interests are social and emotional wellbeing, emotional contagion, nonverbal communication, applied philosophy and autism spectrum disorders.
Connirae Andreas is an American author and psychotherapist who is known for her work within the field of Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP).
Emotionally focused therapy and emotion-focused therapy (EFT) are related humanistic approaches to psychotherapy that aim to resolve emotional and relationship issues with individuals, couples, and families. These therapies combine experiential therapy techniques, including person-centered and Gestalt therapies, with systemic therapy and attachment theory. The central premise is that emotions influence cognition, motivate behavior, and are strongly linked to needs. The goals of treatment include transforming maladaptive behaviors, such as emotional avoidance, and developing awareness, acceptance, expression, and regulation of emotion and understanding of relationships. EFT is usually a short-term treatment.
Vicarious trauma (VT) is a term invented by Irene Lisa McCann and Laurie Anne Pearlman that is used to describe how work with traumatized clients affects trauma therapists. The phenomenon had been known as secondary traumatic stress, a term coined by Charles Figley. In vicarious trauma, the therapist experiences a profound worldview change and is permanently altered by empathetic bonding with a client. This change is thought to have three requirements: empathic engagement and exposure to graphic, traumatizing material; exposure to human cruelty; and the reenactment of trauma in therapy. This can produce changes in a therapist's spirituality, worldview, and self-identity.
Nude psychotherapy was the use of non-sexual social nudity as an intentional means to improve the participant's psychological health. This practice is now largely forgotten, never having achieved mainstream acceptance. The practice traces its origin to the 1930s with psychological studies of the effects of social nudity on the lives of naturists. It developed in the 1960s along with the encounter group movement as a way to challenge preconceptions and promote intimacy and trust, but suffered a decline in the 1980s. In contemporary America, nudity has been incorporated into workshops and therapies for health and wellbeing generally conducted outside the medical and psychological professions.
John C. Norcross is an American professor, clinical psychologist, and author in psychotherapy, behavior change, and self-help.
Ambiguous loss is a loss that occurs without a significant likelihood of reaching emotional closure or a clear understanding. This kind of loss leaves a person searching for answers, and thus complicates and delays the process of grieving, and often results in unresolved grief. Causes include infertility, termination of pregnancy, disappearance of a family member, death of an ex-spouse, and a family member being physically alive but in a state of cognitive decline due to Alzheimer's disease.
Audio therapy is the clinical use of recorded sound, music, or spoken words, or a combination thereof, recorded on a physical medium such as a compact disc (CD), or a digital file, including those formatted as MP3, which patients or participants play on a suitable device, and to which they listen with intent to experience a subsequent beneficial physiological, psychological, or social effect.
Paul Newham is a retired British psychotherapist known for developing techniques used in psychology and psychotherapy that make extensive use of the arts to facilitate and examine two forms of human communication: the interpersonal communication through which people speak aloud and listen to others, and the intrapersonal communication that enables individuals to converse silently with themselves. His methods emphasise the examination of traumatic experiences through literary and vocal mediums of expression, including creative writing, storytelling, and song. He is cited by peers as a pioneer in recognition of his original contribution to the expressive therapies.
Eco-anxiety is a challenging emotional response to climate change and other environmental issues. Extensive studies have been done on ecological anxiety since 2007, and various definitions remain in use. The condition is not a medical diagnosis and is regarded as a rational response to the reality of climate change; however, severe instances can have a mental health impact if left without alleviation. There is also evidence that eco-anxiety is caused by the way researchers frame their research and their narratives of the evidence about climate change: if they do not consider the possibility of finding any solution to overcome climate change and for individuals to make a difference, they contribute to this feeling of powerlessness.
Donald H. Meichenbaum is an American psychologist and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Waterloo, Ontario. He is also a research director of the Melissa Institute for Violence Prevention and Treatment at the University of Miami. Meichenbaum is known for his research and publications on psychotherapy and his contributions to the development of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). In 1982, a survey of 800 members of the American Psychological Association voted Meichenbaum the tenth most influential psychotherapist of the 20th century. At the time of his retirement from the University of Waterloo in 1998, Meichenbaum was the most-cited psychology researcher at a Canadian university.
Luke Beardon is an English academic in the field of autism studies. As of March 2024, he is a Senior Lecturer with The Autism Centre at Sheffield Hallam University, as well as a service coordinator with the National Autistic Society. He received a Doctor of Education degree from Sheffield Hallam University.
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