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The Essentials Series

The Essentials Series - concentrated coverage of key techniques.

Training in the latest evidence-based techniques that enables and encourages delegates to use them in their practice. All of the courses are accredited by the Association for Psychological Therapies and are available for individuals or whole teams to attend. 

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Courses

The Association for Psychological Therapies (APT) offers the following courses in the Essentials Series.

DBT Essentials

DBT Essentials.

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'.

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.

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CBT Essentials

CBT Essentials.

A 3-day course.

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.

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ACT Essentials

ACT Essentials (Acceptance & Commitment Therapy).

A 3-day course.

'Once in a while there is a unique contribution to psychotherapy.'

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) moves away from focusing too closely on ‘symptom reduction’ towards teaching how to live in a stable and rewarding way. So it teaches how to get in touch with your values, how to act in accordance with them, how to be aware of ‘the you that is always there’, how to see your passing thoughts and feelings for just that, how to accept thoughts and feelings you don’t like without over-struggling with them, and so how to live mainly in the present.

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Motivational Interviewing and The Stages of Change

Motivational Interviewing and The Stages of Change.

A 3-day course.

The powerful system for having people acknowledge and do something about their problems.

One of APT's 'big courses' this course aims to introduce you to Miller and Rollnick's Motivational Interviewing and Prochaska and DiClemente's Stages of Change in a systematic way that you can easily apply. One of our most popular courses, it shows how to motivate the unmotivated, give everyone a chance to reflect on their situation and how they want to progress, and help them to achieve and maintain exactly that.

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SFT Essentials

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.

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CFT Essentials

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, behaviours, 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.

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IPT Essentials

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.

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Mindfulness Based CBT course

Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT).

A 3-day course.

Mindfulness, and, more recently, mindfulness-based CBT, have had a major - and welcome - impact on the therapeutic world.

This course concentrates much more on Mindfulness than it does on CBT. So it explains why Mindfulness meditation is likely 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.

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The APT Diploma for working with Adult Mental Health

The APT Diploma in Psychological Therapies.

90 hours.

The APT Diploma in Psychological Therapies provides 90 hours of training, leading to Level 4 APT accreditation. We bring the training to you for a fixed fee, to ensure you get a supportive group addressing the same material.

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