Annual Family Interventions for Psychosis & Bipolar Conference

This year we are joined by Isabelle Ekdawi, an experienced systemic psychotherapist and consultant psychologist who is experienced in working with psychosis.

She will be facilitating conversations with experts by experience, service users and families and exploring the question of what matters and what works.

For the first part of the day we would like to encourage managers and practitioners to listen and connect with their stories. Following this we will consider how to support practice both strategically and for practitioners in sessions.

Isabelle is a Systemic Psychotherapist and Clinical Psychologist. She worked in the NHS for over 30 years and positions included joint Head of Psychology for Older People’s services in Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust; Head of Complex Needs Psychology, Lambeth and Trust Advisor for Family Therapy, in South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLaM).

In addition to providing individual, family and couple therapy in these setting, she has also provided systemic network meetings; individual and group supervision; consultation; and training. She trained in Systemic Family Therapy at KCC, and has been a co-trainer with Glenda Fredman on the Camden and Islington AFT accredited Systemic training course, and organized the systemic sub-unit for the doctoral clinical psychology training course at University College London, where she is currently an external examiner.

During her time in SLaM, she was involved in systemic training of junior doctors, and provided sessions to the Systemic Family Therapy course and the doctoral Clinical Psychology training course at the IoPPN.

She is co-author of Whose Reality Is It Anyway: Putting Social Constructionist Philosophy Into Everyday Clinical Practice; and is co-author of two chapters in Being with Older People: A Systemic Approach, Edited by Glenda Fredman, Eleanor Anderson and Joshua Stott.

Her recent publications include co-authorship of: Interprofessional Simulation Training to Promote Working with Families and Networks in Mental Health Services in Academic Psychiatry (2017) and Holding onto the ‘mystery’ within online family and systemic therapy in Journal of family therapy, 2021

Having retired from the NHS, Isabelle now works independently as a Systemic Therapist, Consultant and Supervisor.