What Would Really Work to “Shatter Stigma” for Those Diagnosed with “Mental Illness”?
May 18, 2015CBT: Part of the Solution, Part of the Problem, an Illusion, or All of the Above?
June 24, 2015If you are a mental health worker and if your experience is similar to that of many, you may have noticed most or all of the following problems with education and mental health system practices related to psychotic experiences:
- Despite many words being spoken about “recovery,” there is a lack of information about how people can help themselves to get better, or how psychological approaches might assist with this
- The focus is almost entirely on providing medication and distraction techniques, even when those pretty clearly aren’t working
- Mental health workers are afraid to talk to people about the details of their “psychotic” experiences, perhaps because of not knowing how or fear of making them worse
- People continue to be told that psychotic disorders like schizophrenia are brain illnesses mostly unrelated to life experiences, even as more research highlights the way these disorders are much more likely to occur in people who have experienced child abuse, bullying, and other traumas
If you have been encountering the problems listed above, you may feel that providing treatment under existing models can be somewhat dreary and hopelessness-inducing, and that “recovery” often becomes a word people use but don’t quite believe in. You may feel that your clients deserve better treatment that would address their traumas and complex life experience and that would teach them skills that would give them a chance to make a full recovery, but you don’t have a clear direction to go in providing such treatment.
Now imagine that things have changed, so that:
- You now have confidence that you will be able to collaborate with the person in a process of investigating experiences that initially seem bewildering and highly distressing, and you know there is a good chance you can help the person eventually make sense of them and develop effective coping strategies.
- If the person needs or wants an alternative to relying on medications to manage psychotic experiences, you now have reason to believe, based on your own experience and that of research into the effectiveness of your therapeutic approach, that success is very possible though still not certain.
- When people report traumatic experience in their past, you help them find possible connections between the trauma and the psychosis, and you provide therapy that helps them have a good chance of healing from both.
- You go off to work now with a new vitality and excitement, because you now find working with people with psychotic experiences to be fascinating, and hopeful. The people you work with don’t always make good recoveries, but they often do, and when this happens they typically identify skills they developed during their interaction with you as being an important part of that recovery.
CBT for psychosis is an evidence based approach that can help you achieve all of the above!
In this introductory seminar on CBT for psychosis, you can learn to:
- Collaborate with people in exploring difficult experiences, helping people develop their own perspective and their own solutions rather than telling people what to think
- Reduce fear of psychotic experiences, and build hope for coping and for recovery. using the CBT approach called “normalizing”
- Help people develop a coherent story or individualized formulation of what led to psychotic difficulties, which then guides efforts toward recovery
- Become familiar with a broad range of psychological strategies which have been found helpful for experiences such as paranoia, hearing voices or other “hallucinatory” experiences, delusional or disorganized thinking, and “negative symptoms.”
The seminar incorporates video demonstrations of the methods being presented.
Regarding CE credits: Continuing education credit is provided by Commonwealth Educational Seminars (CES) for the following professions in the US. Attendees completing this program are awarded 5 hours of continuing education credit of the following types:
Social Workers: CES, provider #1117, is approved as a Provider for Social Work Continuing Education by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) www.aswb.org, through the Approved Continuing Education (ACE) program. CES maintains responsibility for the program. ASWB approval period: October 6, 2012- October 5, 2015. Social Workers should contact their regularity board to determine course approval. Social Workers participating in this course will receive 5 clinical continuing education clock hours.
Psychologists: Commonwealth Educational Seminars (CES) is approved by the American Psychological Association (APA) to offer continuing education credit programs. CES maintains responsibility for this program. Psychologists earn 5 continuing education hours by completing this program.
Nurses: As an APA approved provider CES programs are accepted by the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC). Every state Board of Nursing accepts ANCC approved programs except California and Iowa. CES is also an approved Continuing Education provider by the California Board of Registered Nursing, (Provider Number CEP15567) which is also accepted by the Iowa Board of Nursing. Nurses completing this program receive 5 CE hours of credit.
Cost: The regular cost for this seminar is $89, however, prior to July 15, 2015, it’s being offered for the discounted price of only $49!
You can also click the “Register Now” button if you want a bit more information and/or if you want to preview, for free, the section of the course on “normalizing,” a CBT method which aims to reduce pathologizing and “fear of madness.”
Also, if you are interested in this course and you are a non-professional, for example a person with lived experience of psychosis or a family member, you are welcome to register for free, using this link. Note that this free offer is only until July 15, 2015, after that the scholarship rate will be $10.
