Recorded: Kinking Up Game Based Instruction

**This course will provide the participant with 2 General Learning Type BACB® CEUs**

Description of Learning Type CE Event: Do your adult clients identify as gamers, and/or as kinksters? Maybe they are just curious about kink, or maybe they need a safe way to learn about their communities? Or…maybe they engage in kink-aligned behaviors and need to learn about kink and kink communities in general? Well, no matter which of these -- or if you’re simply a kinky gamer yourself -- this presentation has you covered! There are many behavioral health and social benefits to gaming, and guess what? There are similar benefits to kink. Clinicians adopting kink-positive attitudes and corresponding clinical behaviors report some great outcomes for their clients, including reduction of SIB, suicidal behaviors, and inappropriate attention-seeking behaviors. Similarly, kink community members report their communities help them as much or more than their traditional therapists. Thus, this presentation is geared at helping clinicians learn to affirm kinks through gaming and to help clients generalize this into behaviors aligned at developing community connections.

About the Instructor: Nicholas Maio-Aether owns Empowered: A Center for Sexuality in St Louis, where he and his occasional teams of partnered Universities' students work to assist humans with and without disabilities achieve sexual access, sexual freedom, gender affirmation, and self-control of compulsive behaviors. Nicholas works throughout the US training BCBAs/Behavior Analysts so persons in Individualized Supportive Living (ISL) programs gain access to applicable and generalizable comprehensive sex ed and sexual opportunities. Nicholas provides Sexual Behavior Analysis, and has assisted polycules, kinksters, gay couples, trans and nonbinary humans, among others, on their journeys. Trained by GLSEN in 2003, Nicholas started Gay-Straight Alliances across Alaska while in high school, and provided them sex ed materials and trainings. Nicholas spent five years managing Hustler Hollywood in St Louis before moving into Behavior Analysis, and joined AASECT, where he currently sits on two committees. He then completed a Sex Therapy practicum under Linda Weiner, LMSW, CSTS, in 2019 before getting a second Masters in Marriage & Family Therapy, and meeting those hour requirements under Angela Skurtu, LMFT, CST, along with his LGBTQIA+ Family Systems Specialist certificate in 2021.`

Target Audience: Anyone looking to work with clients who identify as part of kink populations, or engage in behaviors that may be kink-aligned, and wishing to have a fun modality by which to provide evidence-based affirming care. RBTs ®, BCaBA ®, BCBA ®

Learning Objectives for Participants: As a result of this course participants will be able to …

• Identify three mental health benefits of kink using the mental health benefits of RPGs.
• Gain exposure to non-behavior-analytic literature, viewed through a behavior-analytic lens, to account for the dearth of such research on kinks in our field.
• Dissect and discuss the behavioral principles and technological applications that are used in examples from actual behavioral rehearsals conducted at Empowered.
• Identify three ways in which kinks and kink cultures can be explored in-game without violating clinical ethical codes or state laws, while allowing clients the freedom to be themselves in a safe space.

To earn credit, you will be required to watch all video portions and pass a quiz about it with a score of 100% or higher. You can retake the quiz as many times as needed, but you may not receive exactly the same questions each time.