CBT for Psychosis - Key Knowledge and Skills for Everyday Interactions

Executive Summary:

The course is for everyone who works with people with psychosis. Its purpose is to teach the best ways of handling routine, fundamental interactions with patients e.g. how to respond to patients expressing their delusions, discussing medication, responding to acute distress, etc. Above all, it works to help you feel relaxed and confident about working with psychosis so you can do the best for the person concerned.

The course aims to give participants a better understanding of the nature of delusions and hallucinations, why these symptoms occur as they do and the psychological factors that maintain them. Of central importance is the empathic understanding of what it might be like for people who experience these symptoms.

Specifically, you will be introduced to key concepts and skills for working with people who have experiences of psychosis.

To find out more or to contact APT, see www.apt.ac/working-with-psychosis-module-1.html

Who should attend this course?

All professionals who routinely see people with psychotic experiences.

To find out more or to contact APT, see www.apt.ac/working-with-psychosis-module-1.html

Course Aims:

• What it's like to have psychotic experiences.
• Why people who have episodes of psychosis tend to have unrewarding lives, and why this is clinically relevant.
• Discussing delusions and hallucinations within the patient's belief system,
• - suspending disbelief,
• - affirming the patient,
• - floating alternative ideas,
• - using your curiosity to generate questions.

• Setting the goals for therapy, including deciding whether full or partial modification of delusions will be more beneficial in each case, how to decide, and why it is so important to get it right as often as possible.
• Using Guided Discovery and Socratic dialogue to enable patients to think through their own beliefs and reach conclusions that convince them.
• Developing - and expressing - empathy: an essential skill that is difficult if you have never had significant psychotic experiences.
• Destigmatising the diagnosis, so that the patient - and their loved ones - can work constructively on the symptoms that bother them.
• When best to work with people who have very severe episodes of psychosis; the importance of 'peaks and troughs'.
• Enhancing patients' coping skills. Including: The use of earplugs and iPhones/iPods; Practical strategies that do and that do not require insight; Enhancing the use of strategies already employed; Enhancing the environment; Promoting insight; Lessening the impact/distress of the delusional ideas; Practical ways of reducing voices.
• How to discuss medication with the person so that they can make a fully informed decision about whether to take it, and if so, how they can take it reliably and as effectively as possible.

To find out more or to contact APT, see www.apt.ac/working-with-psychosis-module-1.html

What this course will do for you:

• You will understand what it feels like to experience psychotic symptoms.
• You will know how to help patients to challenge their own delusions.
• You will know how to increase the quality of life of people who have psychotic experiences, and know why this is so important to do.
• You will know why some treatment interventions for psychosis seem to make matters worse, and know how to stick to interventions that are genuinely helpful, both short and long term.
• You will know how to make people feel better about themselves, and know why this has important therapeutic spinoffs.
• You will know when are the best times to work with patients, and when you can do very little. And, when there is little you can do, just what it is you must do.
• Overall, you will be knowledgeable and skilled in all the crucial everyday interactions that are key in truly helping people with psychosis. You will be more confident, competent and informed about working with people who have psychotic experiences, able to avoid the most notable pitfalls and to generate genuine improvement.

To find out more or to contact APT, see www.apt.ac/working-with-psychosis-module-1.html

What you receive as a result of attending APT's DBT training:

You will be registered as having attended the course, thereby gaining APT's Level 1 accreditation, and receive a certificate to this effect. The accreditation gives you access to online resources associated with the course and access to the online exam if you wish to uprate your APT accreditation to Level 2.

Your registration lasts indefinitely, and your accreditation lasts for 3 years and is renewable by sitting an online refresher which also upgrades your accreditation to APT Level 2 if you are successful in the associated online exam.

Your accreditation is given value by the fact of over 125,000 people having attended APT training. See APT accreditation for full details.

To find out more or to contact APT, see www.apt.ac/working-with-psychosis-module-1.html