Perinatal Mental Health Training Courses

DBT Essentials (Dialectical Behavior Therapy).

A 3-day course.

Instruction in the key components of DBT for those who want to add them to their repertoire without necessarily becoming 'a DBT therapist', and for those thinking of taking the first step in becoming a specialized DBT therapist.

DBT brings together a series of skills and techniques which are powerful and well chosen ones, for working with personality disorder as well as in other areas. Many people want to familiarize themselves with these skills without necessarily becoming a DBT therapist exclusively, and this 3-day course is for you if you are one of those people as well as if you are thinking of taking the first step in becoming a DBT therapist. As well as covering the 'overall concept of DBT', it covers its 'essential elements', namely the concepts of: Validation; Metaphor; Relentless Problem Solving; and Contingency Management, and the skills of: Mindfulness; Distress Tolerance; Interpersonal Effectiveness; and Emotional Regulation.

CBT Essentials (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy).

A 3-day course. (Online version also available.)

A favorite introduction to this powerful, evidence-based technique.

Now in its latest form this course has introduced Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to thousands of people ever since 1983. It addresses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in a way that you can use after the course. It covers: the history and meaning of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, conceptualising cases in CBT terms, the format of a standard CBT session, and the most important CBT techniques. All in a way that applies it constantly to practical examples.

The RAID^® Course: The positive approach to working with disturbed and challenging behavior.

A 3-day course.

A relentlessly positive approach to working with disturbed and challenging behavior.

The 3-day RAID^® course is a leading positive psychology approach for tackling disturbed and challenging behavior at source: over 20,000 professionals have attended it. It is a comprehensive approach which teaches staff a philosophy and practice not only to deal with disturbed and challenging behavior when it occurs, but also to prevent it by tackling it at source. Staff feel pleased to share a unified system and to know what they are doing and why they are doing it, while clients delight in a relentlessly positive and empowering approach. The essence of the RAID^® approach is to play down disturbed and challenging behavior as far as safety allows, and to nurture and develop positive behavior so that it systematically overwhelms and displaces the disturbed and challenging behavior.

SFT Essentials (Solution-Focused Therapy).

Also known as SFBT (Solution-Focused Brief Therapy).

A 3-day course.

An approach to problems that is fundamentally positive and comes as a breath of fresh air to professionals and clients alike.

Another of APT's top courses, this aims to introduce you to the principles of SFT / SFBT in a way that gives you a firm grasp of them and enables you to use them in a safe and helpful way. You should become at home with the approach which is often seen as a 'breath of fresh air' both to client and professional, looking for and finding effective solutions for problems, rather than being sucked further and further into the problem itself.

Working with Psychosis, Course 1: CBT for Psychosis - Key Knowledge and Skills for Everyday Interactions.

A 3-day course.

This course examines and teaches the skills that are fundamental to working with anybody who is prone to episodes of psychosis. Skills such as how to engage, how to talk within the person's belief system, how to use Socratic dialog and the 'floating of ideas', what is and what is not 'collusion', and more. It looks at using these skills in formal one-to-one sessions and also in informal situations.

CFT Essentials (Compassion Focused Therapy).

A 3-day course.

An exposition on Compassion Focused Therapy, in a way that enables and encourages delegates to use it in their practice.

Although compassion focused therapy is delivered compassionately, its main focus is to encourage patients to be compassionate towards themselves. This is achieved by (a) specific techniques and approaches we cover on the course and (b) by educating patients about what happens in the brain so they realize that their emotions, behaviors, thoughts and fantasies are not their 'fault', and yet they can take certain actions to make things better for themselves (which we also cover). This is a course for people who do not necessarily want to be exclusively “a compassion focused therapist” but certainly DO want to know all about compassion focused therapy in order to build CFT ideas and techniques into their clinical repertoire. It therefore covers both the theory and the skills of CFT in a way they can be applied immediately.

IPT Essentials (Interpersonal PsychoTherapy).

A 3-day course.

An exposition on Interpersonal PsychoTherapy, in a way that enables and encourages delegates to use it in their practice.

Interpersonal psychotherapy is a brief psychological therapy for depression, which has now been applied to other areas of mental health. Its goals are simple and practical, namely to reduce symptomatology and to improve social functioning. Interpersonal psychotherapy is recommended in NICE guidelines, notably for the treatment of depression. This is only as it should be because IPT hit the headlines as long ago as 1989 in Elkin et al's massive NIMH study which demonstrated the IPT was the only psychological therapy to effect severe depression (in spite of the inclusion of CBT in the study). On spite of this, and in spite of its strong evidence base, IPT is not as widely practiced as perhaps it should be.

This course therefore focuses primarily on teaching delegates how to deliver IPT or, more precisely, how to incorporate the ideas and methods of IPT into their practice, to the degree they wish to. It also covers a little on the background and the evidence base, but its prime focus is to familiarize mental health practitioners with the ideas and methods of IPT.

The DICES^® System for Risk Assessment & Management.

Available in 3-day and 2-day versions.

A cogent system that actually facilitates clinical work, this is one of our most renowned courses. Thousands of professionals have already attended it.

With the starting point that excellent risk management involves excellent clinical practice, The DICES^® System for Risk Assessment and Management shows what is necessary to properly assess and manage risk easily, reliably and to the benefit of all, and this accounts for its staggering popularity.

Part one covers the nature and theory of risk assessment and management: why we do it and what we aim to achieve by it. Part two covers risk assessment specifically: if you don't notice the risk there is no chance you will manage it correctly. Part three covers risk management: there is no virtue in spotting a risk if you are not able to manage it. The end result is that not only do you know about risk assessment and management, you also have the ability and the equipment to do so reliably and well.

Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT).

A 3-day course.

This course concentrates much more on Mindfulness than it does on CBT. So it explains why Mindfulness meditation is likely to help recurrently depressed people, looks briefly at the published evidence that confirms that it can, and the NICE guidelines that commend it, but spends most of the time in experiential exercises and in discussing those exercises. There is a small amount of lecture input, but listening to lectures on Mindfulness is not a sensible pastime so the course focuses on understanding Mindfulness, acquiring the ability to practise Mindfulness meditation, and the ability to convey it to others.