About Michael Black

Michael recently joined the collective at Centre Adapt Centre. He has worked with most of these professionals through the years. He graduated from the University of New Brunswick in Saint John with an honour’s degree in psychology and a master’s degree in psychology. As a result of his research in polygraph lie detection (with several publications), he was recruited by the Correctional Service of Canada in the late 1990’s to become part of the psychological (forensic) assessment team at Springhill Institution. He would eventually rotate through clinical roles in assessment and intervention, while participating in ongoing training, over the following 20 years before deployment to Dorchester Penitentiary. Once at Dorchester Penitentiary, Michael maintained a treatment caseload and regularly worked through crisis cases. More recently, he was deployed to the regional health care headquarters in Moncton in a role dedicated to violence risk, sexual offence risk, mental health assessment, and clinical consultation in relation to clinical diagnoses (differential/dual diagnoses/comorbidities).

Cognitive Processing Therapy

Since the late 2000’s, Michael has clinically supervised eight University of Moncton and University of New Brunswick masters and doctoral students (MAPs, PsyD & PhD), as well as candidate register/psychology residents working towards licensing in Nova Scotia (NSBEP) and New Brunswick (CPNB). He was originally licensed as a psychologist in Nova Scotia, then obtained his New Brunswick licence in 2014 with an eye toward starting a small private practice in his home community of Dieppe, NB. While still working for the correctional service, he had operated his private practice for over ten years.

Michael has received (ongoing/updated) training in the formal “gold standard” in risk assessment tools in relation to violence risk and sex offender risk, as well as psychopathy and personality disorders. After working in the correctional system for a number of years, he recognized the correctional population was over-represented by mental health difficulty, including trauma and trauma-related disorders (including intergenerational trauma with Indigenous inmates), as well as attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This led to intensive training in the assessment and treatment of these disorders/conditions.

Outside of clinical assessment, Michael has been trained in largely cognitive behavioural therapy-based therapies, including Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Cognitive Behavioural/Cognitive Processing Therapy (CBT/CPT), Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT), and Motivational Interviewing.

While his clinical experience and training has been relatively broad, Michael’s interest and training has focused on mood disorders, anxiety, ADHD, and trauma. He is a Member of International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISST-D).