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ABCT 2023 Convention Call for Abstracts
Cultivating Joy With CBT
Program Chair: Emily Bilek, Ph.D.
Associate Program Chair: Krystal Lewis, Ph.D.
ABCT President: Jill Ehrenreich-May, Ph.D.
The past few years have been difficult. COVID-19 and other health emergencies, climate change, political instability,
and the worsening mental health crisis are taking a toll. Recently, a bright spotlight has also been cast on the historical
and present-moment pain caused by pervasive racism and discrimination targeting minoritized and marginalized
groups. These recent and ongoing challenges have greatly impacted health and well-being on a global,
local, organizational, and individual scale. As a field, we are also reckoning with the ways we’ve contributed to injustice,
navigating barriers to care, addressing mental health stigma, contending with the replication crisis, bringing
attention to financial hardship experienced by many trainees and early-career professionals, and coping with professional
and personal burnout.
As we work to address these challenges head-on, and atone for our roles in creating them, how can we begin
to heal? How can we connect with our values and demonstrate a spirit of perseverance in our research, teaching,
and clinical positions? How can we use our expertise to savor and create moments of joy in our own and others’
lives? How can we improve our treatments, or construct new ones, to address injustice, to center and celebrate
populations that have and continue to face discrimination, inequity, and exclusion by the mental health field? How
can we cultivate and sustain our own well-being while working in a meaningful but demanding profession?
ABCT is well positioned to address these questions. The 2023 Convention will highlight advances across research,
practice, and education that feature approaches to addressing inequity and injustice within our field, as well as improving
mental health, physical health, meaning, and well-being in the world. Please join us in Seattle in 2023 as
we say, “It’s been a minute, tell me how you’re healing”1 and celebrate the convention theme of Cultivating Joy
With CBT.
We interpret this theme broadly and encourage related submissions. Topics consistent with this theme
include, but are not limited to:
- Improving well-being by reducing burden of disease (broadly defined) or overcoming large-scale challenges.
Examining interventions that focus on improving well-being, meaning-making and fulfillment, in addition to
reducing burdens. - Increasing inclusivity to combat systemic injustice and historical exclusion of minoritized populations in
research, clinical practice, and educational settings. - Highlighting scientific advances that ignite excitement or passion for your work.
- Identifying facilitators of dissemination and/or implementation of interventions.
- Improving access to evidence-based care through technological advances or other avenues.
- Understanding risk factors and systemic barriers facing mental health professionals and identifying strategies
for overcoming burnout or pandemic fatigue. - Increasing joy in the field of mental health through teaching and/or supervision.
- Combating stigma in mental health and clinical research by centering scholars, change agents and
collaborators with lived experience, including public figures.
Submissions may be in the form of Symposia, Clinical Round Tables, Panel Discussions, and Posters. Submissions
outside of this theme are also welcome and will not be penalized. Submissions that are judged to be especially
thematic will be recognized in the online program for the 2023 Convention.
1 Slatkin, B., Frederic, E., Price, L., McLaren, M., Jefferson, M., Larkins, R., Hague, S., Thomas, T.M. (2022). About damn time [Song recorded by Lizzo]. On Special. Nice Life and Atlantic Records.