Spiritual First Aid for Intergenerational Trauma
sponsored by the Lutheran Faith Community Nurse Association
Presented by Jamie Aten, Ph.D -
Psychologist, Survivor, Researcher, and Author
DATE: October 13, 2026
TIME: 3-5 pm AKT, 4-6 pm PT, 5-7 pm MT, 6-8 pm CT, 7-9 pm ET
Registration fee: $30 for LFCNA members/$50 for non-members
Contact Hours: 2.0 (see below)
Course Description: Spiritual First Aid is a practical, peer to peer framework for providing spiritual and emotional care from mild stress to mass trauma. In this one hour session, participants will learn the core Spiritual First Aid approach of Triage, Care, and Refer while exploring how the effects of trauma can sometimes extend across generations. Using intergenerational trauma examples throughout the session, participants will learn to recognize whole person Primary Needs, offer compassionate and practical support, strengthen coping, connection, meaning, and hope, and help people take a next step toward additional care when needed. The session is designed for faith community nurses, clergy, chaplains, deacons, and lay ministry leaders and emphasizes how trusted helpers can provide trauma informed care without assuming the role of a mental health professional.
Learning Objectives: By the end of the session, participants will be able to:
1. Describe intergenerational trauma and how patterns of stress, loss, family experience, and coping can affect physical, livelihood, emotional, social, and spiritual needs across generations.
2. Apply Spiritual First Aid Triage to identify a person’s most pressing unmet Primary Need rather than assuming what matters most.
3. Use Spiritual First Aid Care principles, including practical presence and appropriate coping support, to strengthen connection, meaning, resilience, and hope.
4. Recognize when additional support is needed and use Spiritual First Aid referral and resource principles to help connect a person with appropriate mental health, medical, crisis, community, or faith based support.
Our Speaker: JAMIE ATEN, PhD, is Co-Founder of Spiritual First Aid. He is also the Founder and Co-Director of Humanitarian Disaster Institute, Blanchard Chair of Humanitarian and Disaster Leadership, and Co-Coordinator of the Trauma Certificate Program at Wheaton College. Personally, he is both a Hurricane Katrina and late-stage early onset cancer survivor. Professionally, as a disaster psychologist he has responded to and researched disasters and mass traumas around the globe. He has published 9 authored and edited books and over 150 scholarly publications including in some of the top peer-reviewed journals in the field of psychology. His research has been supported by over $12 million dollars in awarded grants. He is frequently cited, interviewed, and published in outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, CNN, Fox News, BBC News, Psychology Today, Religion News Service, Moody Radio, and Christianity Today. In 2016 he was awarded the FEMA Community Preparedness Champion Award at the White House. He also received the Early Career Award and Applied Psychology of Religion and Spirituality Award from the American Psychological Association’s Society for the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. He is co-host of the award-winning The Better Samaritan podcast. You can follow Jamie on LinkedIn.
This nursing continuing professional development activity was approved by Montana Nurses Association, an accredited approver with distinction by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation. To receive contact hours for this event, attendees must attend the entire event and submit a completed evaluation form.
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