Annual Conference

September 5-6, 2025
Belmont University
1900 Belmont Blvd.
Nashville, TN. 37212
Beaman Student Life Center
A and B Conference Room

Conference Parking
Curb Event Center Parking Garage
Entrance located off of Bernard Ave.

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Conference Schedule

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Friday Evening, Sept. 5:

2 CE Hours

The Silent Crisis In Psychotherapy

Dr. Bruce Rogers-Vaughn, PhD 

Bruce Rogers-Vaughn, a free-range Baptist minister, is a pastoral psychotherapist at the Pastoral Center for Healing in Brentwood, Tennessee. He has maintained a clinical therapy practice for almost four decades. Bruce has also taught at Vanderbilt Divinity School, under various designations, since the mid-1990s. For some time, he was permitted to call himself “Associate Professor of the Practice of Pastoral Theology and Counseling,” until he no longer had the lung capacity to keep uttering it.

He is the author of Caring for Souls in a Neoliberal Age, as well as numerous articles and chapters. Bruce frequently speaks to professional and academic audiences about how contemporary capitalism is intensifying and mutating human suffering, and the bewildering challenges this poses for caregivers. He is now exploring how today’s monetary system is eroding psychological, relational, social, and political well-being. He serves on the Board of the Alliance for Just Money, and recently addressed the annual conference of the American Monetary Institute on how money might become a form of care, rather than simply a medium of exchange or a means of exploitation. And he incessantly ruminates about what God and religion have to do with all this. His continuing work as a public theologian may be followed on his website:  https://www.brucerogersvaughn.com/

Learning Objectives for “The Silent Crisis in Psychotherapy”

1. Describe how the culture of neoliberalism has altered psychological suffering.

2.   Articulate how neoliberal ideology has changed the education, training, and practice of psychotherapists, making it more difficult to recognize and respond to their patients’ distresses.

3.   Outline some guidelines for forming a psychotherapeutic practice that is congruent with the challenges of this cultural moment.

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Saturday Morning, Sept. 6:

3 CE Hours

Ethics at the Crossroads of Culture and Conviction: A Grace-Informed  Approach to Immigrant Mental Health
Dr. Adrianne McKeon  &  Dr. Mary Payne

Dr. Adrianne McKeon is a psychologist at Psychology Nashville, a private practice in Nashville, Tennessee. She has a Masters Degree in Cross-Cultural Psychology from Brunel University in England, and a Counseling Psychology Doctoral Degree in 2012 from the University of Houston, the second most diverse university in the country.

Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Dr. McKeon is interested in multicultural issues in counseling and creative forms of therapy. The majority of her clientele are Spanish-speaking families and individual children and adults. She also conducts psychological evaluations for immigration purposes. Dr. McKeon is a lifelong learner who is passionate about advocating for her clients through community relationship building and continuous competence development. 

Dr. Mary Payne

Learning Objectives:

Objective 1: Increase awareness of how personal bias and fear-based narratives shape perception and therapeutic practice.

Participants will be able to identify at least two ways in which implicit bias or fear-based media rhetoric can influence their attitudes toward marginalized populations, including immigrants.

Objective 2: Recognize the role of storytelling in promoting empathy and reducing cognitive bias in clinical and community settings.

Participants will be able to explain how narrative sharing can interrupt bias, build emotional understanding, and create space for healing — in both therapeutic and advocacy contexts.
 
Objective 3: Provide a landscape of the current state of immigrant mental health in the Nashville.

Participants will be able to describe the current challenges affecting the mental health of the local immigrant community and identify factors that moderate responses to these challenges.  
 

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Previous Annual Conference (2024)

Interfaith Soul Care
Dr. David Dark
Presentation available on the TNAPT YouTube Channel.

Learning Objectives:

1. Working knowledge of the fact of Christian supremacy.
2. Insight concerning the hybridity of all religion.
3. Practice in applying Earthseed as a living concept in our pursuit of health and wholeness.

Interfaith Soul Care Panel

Imam Ossama Bahloul, PhD
Sister Mary Rachel Capets, OP
Rabbi Philip “Flip” Rice, DMin

Presentation available on the TNAPT YouTube Channel.

Learning Objectives:

At the end of this conference, participants will be able to:

1) Describe and highlight the reality that, though embracing different faiths and speaking different theological languages, we all draw on a rich and everflowing stream of spirituality that is deeper than our words and conceptions. Our common ground.

2) Explain the unique psycho-social needs of families, couples, and individuals across a range of faith backgrounds. Our distinctives.

3) Discuss the breadth and depth of differences in offering therapeutic presence and assistance with people from different faith traditions. Therapy in various shapes.

4) Critique when it’s appropriate to refer, when cross-cultural work can be positive, and be able to provide assistance in determining the ethical limits of responsible practice. Learning from and helping each other.

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Previous Annual Conference (2022)

Connecting Spirituality in Pastoral Counseling: Mindfulness, Mantras, and Memories
Dr. Ryan Noel Fraser
Presentation available on the TNAPT YouTube Channel.

Learning Objectives:

Suicidology
Dr. Mark Loftis
Presentation available on the TNAPT YouTube Channel.

Presentation Description:

Suicidology is now over 60 years old as an area of study in the U.S. Beginning with the pioneering work of Dr. Edwin Shneidman, many others have contributed to research of suicide and suicidal behaviors, yet rates of suicide remain high and in certain groups have increased over the past few decades. The speaker will provide an overview of the study of suicide beginning with Shneidman’s work and look at contemporary theories and interventions.

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Previous Annual Conference (2021)

Spiritual and Racial Abuse and Healing: Clinical and Ethical Response

Spiritual Abuse and Healing – Clinical and Ethical Response
Dr. David Thornton
Presentation available on the TNAPT YouTube Channel.

Learning Objectives:

1. To focus our understanding of the nature of spiritual abuse;
2. To recognize the wide variety of forms it takes in different faith contexts; and
3. To identify therapeutic strategies and responses

Racial Abuse and Healing – Clinical and Ethical Response
J. Bernard Kynes, Jr.
Presentation available on the TNAPT YouTube Channel.

Learning Objectives:

1. To discuss concepts of Racial Abuse and its implications for individual, family, and group counseling psychotherapy.
2. To discuss the ethical issues and implications of addressing Racial Abuse concerns for therapists and their clients.
3. And, to discuss and consider practical ways to ethically and competently manage the trauma experienced from Racial Abuse dilemmas in clinical practice.