Trauma-Focused CBT, for all ages.
'Trauma-Focused CBT, for all ages' is a 3-day course from the Association for Psychological Therapies (APT), a leading provider of accredited training for professionals working in mental health and related areas. The training is also approved by the American Psychological Association (APA).
Completion of the course results in 18 CE credits* and it is the only TF-CBT training that is APT-accredited and also gives you access to APT’s relevant downloadable resources for use post-course. The course is available for teams and individuals and can be attended face-to-face or online.
Executive Summary:
PTSD is an unusual and often devastating clinical phenomenon, with distressing symptoms and the ability to apparently change the personality of the person displaying it. Clinicians can be at a loss for how to respond to it, and may feel frustrated that their established clinical skills, which work well in other conditions, seem to be redundant with PTSD. This course is for clinicians who need to know about PTSD, how to help patients initially lessen the symptoms of it, then process the trauma, and ultimately head towards growing and developing post-trauma.
Who should attend this course?
This is an ‘introductory’ course to TF-CBT and people who attend normally fall into one of two categories:
1. Professionals who see patients in 1:1 treatment settings, have a significant degree of clinical skill, and wish to add techniques relevant to PTSD to their repertoire.
2. 'Whole teams' (either in inpatient or community settings) seeking to develop a common approach to PTSD.
The professional affiliations of people attending the training include: mental health/psychiatric nurses, social workers, occupational therapists, clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, probation officers and others.
The course covers a great deal:
Establishing Foundation Knowledge.
- What constitutes a trauma, and What are the effects of trauma? (DSM criteria, and examples.)
- Is it fair to say that anything that results in the effects of trauma can rightly be considered a trauma?
- Assessment and formulation.
- Giving the client a chance to tell their story and assessing symptoms.
- What do we do if they don’t want to ‘tell their story’; not everyone wants to talk about experiences that have traumatized them.
- ‘Formulation’: What their purpose of coming to see you is (the problem-to-be-solved, or the goal), what predisposing and perpetuating factors there are, what positives they have, the plan.
Lessening the Effects of trauma.
- Safety and stabilisation, and making sure the person is out of the traumatic situation.
- Psychoeducation on Trauma.
- Examining the toolbox of coping strategies the person already has, and using those where possible.
- Mindfulness and Acceptance.
- Distress tolerance.
- Emotion regulation.
- Problem solving.
- Creating a safe place as a bolt-hole to retreat to if necessary, and creating confidence in their ability to use it well.
- Ensuring they can ‘put their foot on the brake’ when necessary.
Processing the traumatic event.
- Appraising what meaning the trauma holds for the person, and what it says about them, others, or the world around them; Figuring out what a more helpful appraisal would look like. Reinforcing the new cognitive appraisal of the situation - perhaps as 'post-traumatic growth'.
- Creating a trauma narrative bit by bit, thereby enabling the client to connect with the trauma - either through it's memory, emotions or somatically - without being overwhelmed.
- ‘Cleaning up after’ the patient, maybe offering more generous attributions and perceptions than they do.
- Using Logical Evidence Based Reasoning, and when not to use it.
- Encouraging compassion throughout, especially where the traumatic event was partly the patient’s fault. (Some tragic and traumatic events – for example some road traffic incidents – may be partly or largely attributable to the patient themselves. They are of course still entitled to help, but sometimes don’t feel they are.)
- Re-living and Exposure therapy.
Post-traumatic growth. In addition to growth achieved by the two previous sections:
- Helping people to assimilate what they have learned into their understanding of themselves, the world and others.
- ‘Forging Meaning and Building Identity’ (Andrew Solomon.)
- Learning to use the past as a “rear view mirror” and so predominantly looking ahead.
- Re-examining the environment from the new post-trauma perspective, and majoring on situations and people that produce the best for the patient.
- Contemplating positive events and ‘Anti-Traumas’ (William Davies): events so positive they leave a lasting positive schema in the brain.
Learning Outcomes:
At the end of this course, the learner will be able to:
- Define what constitutes a trauma, including key elements described in the DSM-V, and list possible effects of trauma.
- Explain how to structure the assessment, particularly with reference to how to avoid retraumatizing the person and identify the important components of a client’s situation that will enable them to construct a case formulation.
- Identify why validation, psychoeducation and compassion are so important for people presenting with trauma symptoms and specify techniques for achieving this with clients.
- Discuss the identification and development of a ‘toolbox’ of strategies to help clients with trauma manage challenging emotions, including various techniques to apply mindfulness, distraction, seeking social support, emotion regulation skills, distress tolerance skills, and problem solving.
- Specify 3 techniques for how to support clients to ‘put their foot on the brake’ and move to a safe place.
- Identify factors that can be associated with a more complex trauma presentation and how this might impact treatment.
- Discuss how to explore the client’s cognitive appraisal of the trauma (for themselves, others and the world/future) and state how to identify and develop a more helpful meaning.
- Explain how to create a trauma narrative, allowing a client to connect with and process the trauma gradually and without overwhelm, offering more generous attributions as needed.
- Describe the use of Socratic dialog when applied to trauma.
- Describe a metaphor to demonstrate the concept of post traumatic growth.
What you receive as a result of attending the 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, whilst your accreditation lasts for 3 years from the date of completion and is renewable.
Your accreditation is given value by the fact of over 150,000 people having attended APT training. See APT accreditation for full details.
CE Credits from the APA:
*The Association for Psychological Therapies (APT) is approved by the American Psychological Association (APA) to sponsor continuing education for Psychologists. The Association for Psychological Therapies (APT) maintains responsibility for this program and its content.
Upon completion of this course you can apply for CE certification for an additional cost of $20 USD (for training purchased after 08/16/2023).
Requirements for completion: To be awarded CE credits for this course 100% attendance is required for live training. For the 'online anytime' (self-paced) version, you are required to complete the course in full and complete a multiple choice exam whereby a pass marks of 80% is required (failure on the third attempt would result in having to go back through the content again).
Note: there may be other professional licensing boards that accept CE credits earned from APA-approved sponsors. Because CE regulations vary by state and profession, we recommend that participants check with their state licensing board to inquire whether credits will be accepted for renewal of licensure. We do not have any authority over whether credits earned will be accepted, as this authority rests with the state licensing boards.
Instructor credentials and endorsements:
Note, all APT tutors are consultant clinical psychologists (or similar) and have not received any commercial support for this program or its contents and will not receive any commercial support prior to or during this program. Similarly, no benefit of endorsements have been received.
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Trauma-Focused CBT, for all ages ❯
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Feedback Ratings.
We continuously monitor the quality of our training by obtaining feedback on the two key scales of relevance and presentation from every course delegate. Below are the average ratings for the last five runnings of this course, which are updated periodically.
Face-to-Face
Presentation: 95%
Relevance: 98%
Online Live*
Presentation: 92%
Relevance: 91%
*This online live ratings are taken from the last seven runnings of the course in this format.
Reviews.
APT prides itself on the feedback we receive about our courses. Below are just some of the great comments the 'Trauma-Focused CBT, for all ages' course has received.
"I have to say that I have found the course more than 'very useful', I would rate the course as excellent, and I have no hesitation in recommending the course to healthcare professionals. In fact I have been lucky enough to have attended several APT courses all of which were delivered to a very high standard! Thank you.”
"Very useful, enjoyable and will give me more confidence in my role. Everything about the course was useful and relevant ... very professional.”
