Pre-workshop reading

Gilbert, J. (2006) Cultural imperialism revisited: Counselling and Globalisation.

International Journal of Critical Psychology, Special Issue: Critical Psychology in Africa, 17, 10-28.

http://www.janegilbert.co.uk/publications.htm

 

(FS1B) 13:45 – 14:45 Seminar: Claire Smith

Family Network & Community:  loss, exclusion, adjustment and the need for social capital for refugees and people seeking asylum

To download the notes for this guest speaker please click here

For refugees and people seeking asylum there may be many barriers to social inclusion, touching every aspect of their daily life.  Meeting a new and uncertain life with an alien set of cultures must be immensely challenging, but doing it without the protective and restorative function of a social network must truly compound the difficulties.  

Many refugees have lost the supportive framework of people in their lives at the levels of family, network and community (Blackwell 1993) – leaving huge absences in the fabric of their lives and removing the very network which would help them fight against exclusion.  Gaining social inclusion relies on a number of things – including human capital (skills, abilities and confidence), occupational opportunity (McDonald 2001), and social network capital (a network of people to call upon for support) (Williams & Windebank 1999).  Many refugees, as resourceful individuals, bring their own human capital, but their occupational opportunity is severely restricted (Whiteford 2000) and they have limited social network capital available to them (Putnam 2000, Temple & Moran 2005).

This seminar aims to acknowledge the missing function of social capital in the lives of refugees, and encourage therapists to address some of these issues by acknowledging and tapping into the individual's existing human capital.  By being a resource to the individual, a point of contact and a gateway to other agencies the therapist can open up networks giving them the same levels of support that make everyday life more manageable to us all.

 

(FS1C) 15:10 – 16:10 Guest Speaker: Jasvinder Sanghera

The stories of victims and survivors of forced marriage and honour based crime

To download the notes for this guest speaker please click here

The Government's Forced Marriage Unit deals with approx. 250 cases involving British subjects forcibly taken out of the UK every year. A staggering 30% of these are minors, some as young as 12 years old, making this a child protection issue.  Karma Nirvana and many agencies recognise the impact of this and the issues emerging for children and young people in terms of psychological abuse including emotional blackmail, death threats and being disowned by the family.

These child victims suffer silently from isolation, depression, lack of self esteem, guilt and self criticism. They are really afraid of speaking to anyone outside the family for fear of abuse, loss of freedom, a forced marriage or even death.

These experiences of South Asian women, children and men are rooted in practices of honour. These are described as 'a complex set of rules that an Asian woman has to follow in order to protect the family 'name' and maintain family position'.

 

 

Happiness is?  The goal of therapy

(FS2A) 10:45 – 12:45 Workshop: Jody Mardula & Eluned Gold

Fully Booked

A mindful approach to happiness

To download the notes for this workshop please click here

Mindfulness, which developed from Eastern meditation practices, is about being fully awake in our lives, and paying attention with intention and without judgement.  This accesses our own powerful inner resources for insight, transformation and healing. Mindfulness-based practices are increasingly used in a wide range of clinical and therapeutic settings.

Where do we find happiness, and what is the nature of happiness?

In this workshop we will consider, through practice and discussion, how Mindfulness relates to happiness. A core focus will be the paradox that whilst we may be motivated to engage in a Mindfulness course because of a desire to become happy, what we strive for becomes all the more elusive.  As we focus on the pleasant what do we do with the unpleasant, the unwanted aspects of our experience?

'In meditation practice we intentionally put aside the tendency to elevate some aspects of our experience and to reject others.  Instead we just let our experience be what it is and practice observing it from moment to moment.  Letting go is a way of letting things be, of accepting things as they are'  (Jon Kabat-Zinn,  Full Catastrophe Living).

 

(FS2B) 13:45 – 14:45 Guest Speaker: Nick Totton

Therapy has no goal: a radical model of practice

To download the notes for this guest speaker please click here

The introduction of any goal – including 'happiness' – into the therapeutic situation tends to destroy its core value as a space without goals, a space for being rather than doing. As Bion says, therapy should be conducted without memory or desire. This radical contact between human beings creates the possibility of dissolving the illusory, impossible tasks around which so much of our life is organised, and thus loosening anxiety. However, this is not a goal!  As soon as any goal is brought into play (as will inevitably happen over and over again), the anxiety of 'should' and 'ought' is reimposed on our minds and bodies. Therefore we proceed by constant paradox, as each attempt to let go of goals becomes a new goal in its turn. In many ways, therapy is an enlightenment practice, similar to Zen Buddhism, Sufism and Taoism; and like other enlightenment practices, it is vulnerable to charismatic power plays and dogmatic rigidification. The price of liberty is constant vigilance; but vigilance itself is a form of tension, as unhelpful as any other.

Therapy can help us wake up, or soothe us to sleep; the choice is present in every moment of every session.

 

15:10 – 16:10 Guest Speaker: Richard Stevens & Nevia Mullan

How to make people happy:  applying the psychology of well-being

Happiness has been a topic eagerly taken up by psychologists in recent years.  A prominent example of this is 'positive psychology' (Seligman et al), which aims to increase human well-being through the scientific study of positive emotions, traits and social institutions.  We will briefly review positive psychology and critique some of its assumptions.  We will also ground the study of happiness in the earlier work of humanistic psychologists, and look more broadly at the contribution other perspectives can make to our understanding of the topic.  In doing this, we will explore what happiness is and what the research indicates makes us happy.  The major part of the talk will focus on an innovative project that we embarked on for a BBC-TV series called Making Slough Happy.  For 12 weeks, together with our team, we worked with 50 volunteers, using various techniques to improve their levels of happiness and life satisfaction.  We will describe what we did and some of the methods we devised, and report on how successful our efforts proved to be.  Nevia Mullan, the psychotherapist on our team, will discuss how the psychology of happiness relates to counselling and psychotherapy and how they can enrich each other.   

 

 

Working with trauma

(FS3A) 10:20 – 11:20 Seminar: Julia Hutchinson and Juan Carlos Lema

Fully Booked

Narratives of heroism and resistance: uncovering resilience, competence and growth

To download the notes for this guest speaker please click here

This presentation will be based within a narrative framework and focus on how we can collaborate with clients to move from trauma-saturated stories that limit possibility and meaning for the future, to stories that are possibility-rich, meaningful and ordinarily and extra-ordinarily heroic. We will identify some principles, assumptions and ideas that guide our interventions, for example: labelling people as abused or suffering from PTSD, can sometimes have adverse influences; people find small ways to resist even the most violent of situations; sometimes the best trauma-therapy focuses on fun, laughter, and everything but the trauma; having our ear attuned to noticing strength and small acts of coping and progressing helps to build success; and small steps towards change are more likely to produce movement. We will illustrate this with stories of children and adults who have experienced sexual assault, domestic violence, war and torture, and who we have been lucky enough to meet in therapy.

Finally, we will look at some of the lessons research about post-traumatic growth, resilience and other areas of positive psychology has for us in guiding therapeutic intervention with people who have experienced traumatic events in their lives. This will include different pathways to resilience and some tentative understanding of vehicles of change for clients who feel they have experienced positive psychological changes after trauma.

 

(FS3B) 11:45 – 12:45 Guest Speaker:  Sue Prosser

Global emergency humanitarian mental health and psychosocial response

When a humanitarian emergency happens who is in charge and how does anyone organise a response, when faced with possibly hundreds of thousands of people in life-threatening situations? The tangible aspects of emergency response: shelter, food distribution, medical care, and water supplies, are down to a logistical science, but the human factors of often brutal loss, death, long-term displacement, sexual violence, and separation are not so tangible and certainly not so scientific. How do you deal with the individual pain when you are faced with the anonymous enormity of distress?

The last decade of emergency mental health and psychosocial response has resulted in an accumulated and collaborative understanding, leading towards best practice in emergencies from first impact and initial response, to recovery and rehabilitation.

This session will lay out the process of emergency mental health and psychosocial response from the perspective of the overall global coordination of responding agencies, the UN and other organisations. How they are all integral in making it possible to effectively reach and support individuals in their recovery and rehabilitation.

 

(FS3C) 13:45 – 15:45 Workshop: Michael Korzinski & Carrie Tuke

Fully Booked

Trauma, the body and recovering:  working with survivors of gross human rights' violation

Dr. Michael Korzinski has worked with survivors of extreme life events such as torture, war, sex trafficking and slavery for the past 20 years.  Such experiences have the inherent potential to profoundly alter a person's way of experiencing and relating to themselves and others. His research and therapeutic practice has sought to address the traumatic impact that images and experiences of catastrophic violence and loss have upon survivors and assist them in their recovery. Fundamental to this practice is an understanding of the myriad ways in which traumatic experiences find expression in the lives of individual survivors and the importance of developing a flexible approach that enables a clinician to start from where the person is. Having worked with hundreds of survivors from a wide range of cultural backgrounds, Dr Korzinski has come to appreciate the importance of finding ways of addressing the somatic expression of trauma. This workshop will provide a theoretical and experiential exploration of somato-psychotherapy, its application and relevance. It will be co-facilitated by Carrie Tuke, a colleague who has worked closely with Dr Korzinski at the Helen Bamber Foundation.

Carrie Tuke: Biography will appear when available

 

 

Diversity Training

(FS4A) 10:20 – 11:20 Guest Speaker: Dr Harbrinder Dhillon-Stevens

Enhancing diversity training in the UK

Dr Harbrinder Dhillon-Stevens will present some of her theoretical and practice-based views and invite participants to engage and dialogue with these issues.  The session will explore the concept of diversity training within the UK and address what western therapies can learn from the way other non-western countries and cultures live and cope with life. How can we translate this learning to enhancing and informing the way we approach diversity training in the UK?

By the end of the seminar participants will have:

 

(FS4B) 11:45 – 12:45 Master-class:  David Tredrea

Getting the message across, especially with kids and in a foreign country

This diversity master-class looks at some of the special difficulties of helping people from other cultures understand something of the issues and interim solutions relating to their trauma and associated needs. How can we set about helping overwhelming numbers of kids, mothers and transient populations when we cannot even understand the language or culture and are only visiting at best for a few days?

What is effective, what is damaging, and what is just merely a waste of time and energy?

Please ... if you attend this session: be open minded, bring some sweets, think in advance of a scenario where your own 'tipping-point' of incompetence could be reached, sit next to someone different and have a good joke to tell in case we run out of things to talk about!

 

(FS4C) 13:45 – 15:45 Workshop: Ounkar Kaur

Changing times and evolving cultures?

This workshop may be particularly interesting for people who are teaching in counselling and psychotherapy, and for agencies setting up services which consider the cultural, linguistic and religious needs of clients from the South Asian community.  The workshop will explore the following:

• counselling and psychotherapy within a historical context. The major counselling and psychotherapy models used are imported products with a history embedded in, and are a response to, Western and European culture.

• my experience of setting and developing a counselling service for women from the South Asian community.
• addressing 'minority loneliness' in a profession traditionally dominated by white middle-class society.
• tutoring for a private counselling and psychotherapy training provider.

Freud adhered to racist thinking and Jung integrated racist ideas more fully into psychological theories. Freud held the view that it was natural that the 'leadership of the human species' should be taken up by 'white nations' and that 'primitives' have a lower form of culture. 

Rogers asserted that 'one of the cardinal principles in client-centred therapy is that the individual must be helped to work out their own value system Rogers failed to  consider the Asian client's 'cultural' value system which is based on collectivism.

From my experience of working with clients from collectivist cultures, this can create tension and confusion when the two systems are introduced to each other. Can the therapeutic goals of Western counselling be unfamiliar and inappropriate concepts to these clients?  Contemporary counselling theories are endemic and yet do little to address the subject of working with 'cultural difference'.

Politics and Consultancy

(FS5A) 10:20 – 11:20 Guest Speaker: Hilde Rapp

What can psychotherapists and peacebuilders learn from each other?

To download the notes for this guest speaker please click here

Counsellors, psychological therapists, conflict workers and peacebuilders alike work in a collaborative partnership with those that seek their help to explore four developmental tasks:

1      Becoming self aware and self reflective regarding our identity and values and our personal qualities and struggles, so that our own needs and desires do not get in the way of enabling the other person to develop their full potential for leading a meaningful and dignified life. 

2      Developing the humility, non-possessive warmth, the will and the skill to intentionally use the human relationship to listen deeply to what the other person needs and wants, and to search for peaceful means of achieving a fuller life.

3      Understanding the vagaries of human emotions and human functioning throughout the life span, so that we can rise to life's challenges adaptively and with resilience and creativity instead of resorting to violence.

4      Appreciating that all human life is embedded in social and natural relationships, and to create the conditions for active and inclusive participation in decision making about our shared future and the sustainability of life on our planet.

The talk explores how to develop these four skills in ourselves and others in the context of examples from practical peacebuilding on the ground.

 

(FS5B) 11:45 – 12:45 Seminar:  Mark Brayne

Media coverage of violence and tragedy - journalism as the problem or part of the solution

To download the notes for this guest speaker please click here

If a bomb were to go off outside the BACP conference centre in Birmingham, in which direction would most sensible people run? Most probably, in the other direction. Which professions would run towards the bomb? Police of course, rescue workers, first aiders and journalists. As much as 50% of the news agenda involves trauma, sometimes even more.

Journalists do not have much training in how to deal professionally with extreme human distress, and with the psychology that governs how people respond to trauma, in the immediate or longer term. They need to know the ground rules so that, at a time of profound new challenges to humankind, in our relationships with each other and our planet, they might become part of the solution rather than compounding the problem.

Mark Brayne is a former Reuters and BBC foreign correspondent who now works as a psychotherapist and trainer dealing specifically with journalists and their experience of trauma – both individually in the consulting room, and organisationally with employers such as the BBC, Reuters, German television, Al Jazeera and many others. Mark runs the European arm of the Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma (www.dartcentre.org), and in this interactive seminar, he will facilitate an in-depth discussion on how the culture of news reporting in the UK and worldwide needs to change and is perhaps already changing – for the wellbeing of the journalists and society.

 

(FS5C) 13:45 – 14:45 Seminar: Hilde Rapp

How to address the three roots of violence that feed conflict: direct, cultural and structural violence

To download the notes for this guest speaker please click here

Conflict and competition are as fundamental to life as is balance and cooperation. Violence is not fundamental, it is a choice.

Consultancy work, whether personal or political, usually explores how to transform the use of violence in the pursuit of personal and political goals into the use of respectful forms of negotiation.

This requires a good understanding of the roots of direct, cultural and structural violence on the one hand, and the use of a repertoire of non violent forms of communication and action on the other.

This seminar will explore these issues in the context of participants' personal and professional experience and expertise.

 

(FS5D) 15:10 – 16:10 Seminar:  Ian Gilmore

Therapeutic Consultancy

Therapeutic Consultancy is the umbrella term that denotes an increasing level of activity these days, particularly, though not exclusively, under the auspices of the managed care sector; but how should this work be approached?

To download the notes for this seminar please click here

This 60 minute seminar will be used initially to set the scene by introducing Therapeutic Consultancy in its various forms, as follows:

• International Consultancy Assignments

• Critical Incident Response

• Forensic Assignments

The remainder of the time may be used to discuss any issues emanating either from this exposition or from participants' questions and/or responses.

By way of illustration only, issues that may arise could include: the expanding place of Therapeutic Consultancy in the therapist's portfolio of activities; how to navigate as safe a path as possible overseas in difficult or even hostile circumstances; or ethical issues attaching to Therapeutic Consultancy.

As no prior familiarity with this line of work will be assumed, this seminar will be suitable either for people who would like to enter this line of work, or for those who may already have some knowledge and would appreciate a forum in which they may further consider Therapeutic Consultancy.

 

 

 

Saturday Strands:

 

Crossing Boundaries

 

(SS1A) 10:45 – 12:45 Workshop: Meera Kapadia

Has european psychological theory (Eurocentric) crossed its boundaries? 'The Hair Dryer theory''

Internal vs. external boundaries: my experience of providing therapy in earthquake stricken rural India

Experiential exercises to highlight developmental lifespan differences in 'I' self culture boundaries  and 'we' self culture boundaries

Clinical implications for UK: recognising different psychological languages of distress (Assessment) and culturally inclusive treatment models

The problem of 'exporting' Eurocentric societal theories to clients from collective societies. Would you take a hairdryer abroad without checking the voltage first?  (Theoretical input)

Eurocentric theories, from Freud onwards, based their theories on culturally-embedded assumptions from the middle-class European society of the day. These theories are therefore socially constructed, yet are treated as though they are universal truths. This assumes that there is no boundary between Europe and the rest of the world. Yet we know that a geographical boundary does exist, and so the question has to be redefined – can Eurocentric theories be unquestioningly 'exported' to the majority of the world's population where the fabric of society is inherently different?

You wouldn't want to take a hairdryer abroad without checking whether it's the right voltage for that country first! We need to be mindful of the dangers of exporting theories from an individualistic society to clients from collective societies where the aim is often increasing interconnectedness. Implicitly there is a process of homogenising people into the same cultural brand of humanity ie one based on the 'I' self, and people who don't fit this model, might be pathologised, which is a colonial mentality.

So how can we adapt Eurocentric theories to listen to collective cultures psychological language of distress, whereby cultural difference neither falls on deaf ears, nor is disproportionately pathologised? 

 

(SS1B) 13:45 – 14:45 Seminar: Andrew Grimmer

Weaving the strands of experience: a European counsellor's perspective on working with Maori clients

To download the notes for this speaker please click here

This seminar is an introduction to issues relevant to working with Maori clients. The presenter is a British-born counsellor who moved to New Zealand in 2002, and the seminar is a reflection of his experience of adapting his practice to a New Zealand context.  In particular it will explore the opportunities and challenges presented by working with Maori clients.  Topics will include: the principles of protection, participation and partnership and their relationship to cultural safety and bicultural competence; an introduction to Maori models of health and counselling such as whare tapa wha (four sides of a house) and Paiheretia (relational therapy with Maori clients); Te Pounamu (a Maori-centred psychological assessment protocol); and personal reflections on the challenges and opportunities presented by learning to work as a counsellor in New Zealand. Participants will have the opportunity to reflect on the potential relevance to their own practice of Maori approaches to counselling.  Discussion is encouraged on similarities and differences between multicultural approaches to counselling and New Zealand's bicultural model.  The seminar could be of interest both to counsellors considering working in New Zealand, and also any counsellor interested in learning more about diverse perspectives on cultural competence.

 

(SS1C) 15:10 – 16:10 Master-class: Arthur Fuhrer

Online counselling in a global context

Over the past few years, online counselling has established a place in the worldwide counselling and psychotherapy community.  With the availability of professional counselling services 24 hours a day, as well as the ability to communicate with counsellors across the globe in real time, clients can receive the services they need in a radically new way.

One of the main benefits of online counselling is its immediacy. Whereas in traditional therapy, clients wait for weekly meetings to report their progress; with online counselling, a person can process thoughts and feelings as they happen, and more easily integrate the benefits of treatment into their daily life.

The instant relief that online therapy can provide has many far reaching applications – from remotely assisting in disaster relief, to making high-quality counsellors available to rural populations – online therapy has become a valuable tool to provide access to those who need help most, but for whom counselling has been otherwise unavailable.

This master-class session will cover online counselling from a global perspective. We'll look at specific counsellor case studies and ascertain the benefits and drawbacks of this new paradigm. Most of all, this presentation will focus on how online counselling is pushing the traditional therapeutic environment forward, and changing the face of the mental health care industry forever.

Due to unforseen circumstances this masterclass has been withdrawn from the conference program. In place of this session we are now re-running the seminar by colin feltham (SS2A) in the 'Happiness is...? The Goal of therapy' strand. Please see below for the full details of this session.

Happiness is?....The goal of therapy

(SS2A) 10:20 – 11:20 Seminar: Colin Feltham

Fully Booked (This session is running again from 15:10 - 16:10 and currently spaces are available for this timeslot)

Critiquing happiness: is accentuating the positive and ignoring the negative really going to work?

The pursuit of happiness in the form of positive psychology and related therapies is fashionable and superficially plausible. Almost everyone will sign up to wanting to be happy or being happy. But a closer examination of what this means doesn't support its claims.  

I will specifically suggest that the concept of happiness is:

• ill-defined and anachronistic
• driving an individualistic philosophy of hedonism that undermines collective needs
• naive in the face of our many strata of suffering of decreasing importance in relation to consciousness-raising about the human condition, and the survival attitudes and skills necessary in the probable coming era of global warming, resource scarcity, conflict and austerity 
• a poor relation to the concept of enlightenment.   

Key points will be made and dialogue encouraged within the time constraints.

 

(SS2B) 11:45 – 12:45 Guest Speaker: Nick Baylis

What can we learn from wonderful lives?

'Stress is not the problem, and happiness is not the solution.'

'Beautiful partnerships are what allow profound progress in our relationship with life.'

These are testing times!

We 21^st century homo sapiens are suffering from a host of problems, including all the usual suspects, which I call 'the circle of symptoms'. 

My research methods try to better understand 'our relationship with life' 

At the heart of my work, I use the leading studies of lifetimes as they evolve, as well as autobiographies, and long interviews/life-shadowing with impressive individuals of all ages, examples can be seen at www.YoungLivesUK.com.  I also use the analysis of 'cultural indicators of well-being' ie the popular fashion for everything from film to cars, and from books to clothes.

The good news is.... we can all improve dramatically.  We all have the ability to make profound and lasting progress in the quality of our life-journey.

But first, let's debunk some myths and challenge the 'received wisdom'.

For example, the reductionist focus on single concepts such as 'emotional intelligence' or 'optimism' or 'happiness' or 'stress-management courses'. Nothing in life works in isolation; profound and lasting progress is always a team effort of a number of key factors. Well-being comes from synergy, not one-off or single panaceas.

What can we do? Nick presents 12 highly related strategies for profound improvements in our personal and professional lives.

 

(SS2C) 13:45 – 14:45 Guest Speaker: Daniel Nettle

Emotional well-being: in the genes, in the wiring, in the social environment, or in the way you think?

This talk reviews recent research on the causes of emotional well-being and distress. There is good evidence that genetic and neurobiological factors are important in people's well-being or vulnerability to emotional disorder. This might lead one to suppose that environmental factors would be unimportant, and that non-biological therapies would be ineffective. However, this would be a mistake. Genetic factors interact with environmental ones, and cognitive and psychotherapeutic interventions can be very effective at helping people to manage the effects of their particular temperamental makeup. Thus, the discovery that biological factors are operative in emotional distress only makes the social environment and cognitive understanding of one's situation more important, not less important.

 

 (SS2D) 15:10 – 16:10  Seminar: Nick Baylis

Fully Booked

'The paramount role of our sub-conscious mind'... in achieving profoundly rewarding progress in life.

To download the notes for this speaker please click here

Nick will consider how our subconscious can, if unharnessed, hold us back via emotional trauma, psychosomatic illness, and 'self-sabotage'; whereas, if worked with sympathetically through Ericksonian Hypnosis and other subliminal techniques, our subconscious can help us forge wonderful progress.  

a)  Good evidence for the role and power of our subconscious/subliminal mind in our everyday lives'. to alter our automatic physical behaviours, as well as our social behaviours.

b)   Good evidence for psychology's ability to benevolently improve the rapport between our subconscious and conscious mind so that mind and body communication, and harmony between mind and social behaviour, can all thrive.

c)   How fundamental techniques (eg of Ericksonian Hypnosis) can safely be taught so that our clients can calm and encourage their own subconscious motivations in the school classroom, in the home while parents communicate with their children and in the workplace.

Working with trauma

(SS3A) 10:20 – 11:20 Guest Speaker:  Sue Prosser

Acute emergency mental health and psychosocial responses

This session will take the audience through an emergency mental health and psychosocial response programme in a camp setting of ~130,000 refugees and with new arrivals increasing the size of the camp by ~5,000 per day. Through the real-time events, it will raise the ethical and moral dilemmas of humanitarian aid work in mental health and psychosocial activities. It will discuss how these challenges can best be met, if at all, in conditions and circumstances where 'normal best practice' may simply not be possible. It also raises the issues of local cultural belief, etc that challenge traditional western therapeutic approaches.

The session will explore the psychological reactions of aid workers and the affected population to an emergency situation. Where aid workers are driven by 'doing' and the affected population are driven to survive, and how consequently our efforts may make us feel better but have little actual impact on the beneficiaries themselves.

Finally, how these experiences have added to the wealth of knowledge working towards more effective and efficient emergency mental health and psychosocial responses for the beneficiaries.

 

(SS3B) 11:45 – 12:45 Guest Speaker:  David Tredrea

What really makes a good front-line trauma counsellor?

Different scenarios require different talents and personalities. How well can you play the game? Life in the front-line is always very tough yet it requires immense sensitivity. How are your own needs balanced and nurtured? Clinically, there can be tremendous freedom about what to do but simultaneously an overwhelming sense of personal inadequacy and loneliness. How can we decide quickly what victims really need when often they do not know themselves? They will sometimes be unsure physically and mentally where they are and may be using unique verbal and body languages for the first time.

In this lecture, we will look at a number of real-world scenarios and try to match essential characteristics so you can see where and how you might best fit in and contribute.....WARNING: This session carries a health warning and you may be rather upset if you have a very nervous disposition.

 

(SS3C) 13:45 – 14:45 Seminar:  Alison Russell and Mike O'Connor

Healing or harming? – Working with a community in the aftermath of a major disaster involving young children.

To download the notes for this seminar please click here

The presenters were members of a multi-agency team set up in the aftermath of the shootings in Dunblane primary school in March 1996.  In this seminar they will reflect on their experience of working with children and families in Dunblane following this tragic event and on the relevance of these experiences in their day-to-day work.

The overall focus of the seminar will be to discuss the challenges faced and the lessons learned from working in a community unused to the presence of 'professional helpers'. One of these challenges was to persuade parents and professionals that the children most directly affected could benefit from skilled therapeutic interventions. 

Both presenters will present case material illustrating the use of EMDR with children who survived the shootings.

 

(SS3D) 15:10 – 16:10 Guest Speaker:  Noreen Tehrani

Why don't they understand that we are here to help?

To download the notes for this guest speaker please click here

During the past 20 years we have become more aware of crises and disasters as they occur throughout the world.  Media coverage brings into our living rooms images of desperate and distraught people.  It is not surprising therefore that those of us whose job it is to provide support and counselling feel impelled to offer some of our skills to provide something to alleviate the suffering.

• Is it enough to be well-meaning? 

• Are human emotions really universal?

• Picking up the pieces after the trauma tourists

• Is there another way?

In this presentation I will be looking at some of the issues involved in offering support to victims of catastrophes, disasters and trauma from other cultures.  My views are informed by supporting victims, counsellors and other disaster workers involved in incidents occurring in the Antarctic, Iran, Turkey and Alaska.  Working on disaster planning and support programmes for major incidents such as 9/11 and the Tsunami and supporting traumatised individuals, including trafficked women in the UK.

Diversity Training

(SS4A) 10:45 – 12:45 Workshop: Claire Smith

Therapy through interpreters

To download the notes for this speaker please click here

One of the principle features of therapy is the alliance that exists between client and therapist, which can be unique, special and curative in its own right. Most therapeutic approaches are heavily reliant on aspects of interpersonal communication, and therefore introducing another individual into the relationship dynamic to interpret for clients can alter it significantly, raising issues and anxieties for client, therapist and interpreter.

Effective therapy through interpreters places particular demands on all three participants as it can involve a lengthy consultation covering abstract and sometimes unfamiliar concepts which tests comprehension, linguistic skills, emotional literacy and, perhaps most critically, trust.

Many concerns have been raised over recent years about the suitability of mental health services for people from different ethic backgrounds, highlighting lack of cultural sensitivity and poor access, yet little acknowledgment has been made regarding language barriers as a key aspect of access. Opportunities for therapy opportunities are limited for those who do not speak the language of the therapy providers, resulting in lower referral rates. There remains a reluctance amongst some therapists to engage interpreters, even wondering if it is possible to effectively provide psychological therapies in this way.

This workshop aims to address these concerns by exploring the relationship dynamic and demands from the perspective of clinician, interpreter and client.  It will take a practical and positive approach to enabling effective therapy through interpreters, to ensure access to high-quality mental health provision for all.

References:

Bhui & Oladjide (1999) Mental health provision for a multi-cultural society Saunders:London

CVS Consultants & Migrant & Refugee Communities Forum (1999) A shattered world: the mental health needs of refugees and newly arrived communities CVS Consultants:London

Fox A (2001) An Interpreter's Perspective Context (the magazine for family therapy and systemic practice), (54): 19-20.

Tribe, R. & Raval, H. (2002) Working with Interpreters in Mental Health London: Brunner-Routledge

 

(SS4B) 13:45 – 14:45 Guest Speaker: Kate Anthony

Training international therapists online to become online therapists

OnlineCounsellors.co.uk offers a short online training course that trains mental health practitioners to transfer their traditional talking, counselling skills to using text to form and maintain a therapeutic relationship over the Internet.  The course consists of six modules encompassing the basic theoretical, practical and ethical elements of online work, and is held completely online.

The trainees who undertake the course include mental health practitioners from the UK, USA, New Zealand, France, Australia, Turkey and Ireland.  The members use forum software to network and discuss issues that arise on the course such as: definitions of counselling and psychotherapy in their respective countries; differences in licensing laws and regulation; the differences in cross-cultural online counselling and psychotherapy from their geographical perspectives; and what a counselling qualification means to their clients and peers if it was gained in a country outside of the UK.

This presentation will include discussion of these issues, and draw conclusions about being a trainee on an online course with such culturally diverse peers and also the issues that arise being the trainer designing, improving, and facilitating a training programme with such culturally varying participants.

 

(SS4C) 15:10 – 16:10 Seminar: Dominic Davies

Finding global relevance locally - on learning from sexual and gender minorities

They are all around us, people of minority gender or sexual orientation, and though they've been ostracised or marginalised for centuries by majority cultures, have much of value to teach others. In tribal peoples, as well as in some parts of the developing world, this has always been formally recognised and used. In the so called developed world, despite being massively disproportionally represented in healing, teaching, spiritual and cultural work, their contribution has gone unacknowledged.

This seminar intends to present and discuss what the majority (heterosexual) culture might learn from gender and sexual minorities, and how this might be incorporated into training therapists to work with these diverse populations. Therapists of all sexual and gender identities are welcome to participate in this seminar.

Politics and Consultancy

(SS5A) 10:20 – 11:20 Guest Speaker: Andrew Samuels

Psyche and power: the role of therapy thinking in the alleviation of political conflict

The people and institutions responsible for alleviating political conflict are struggling. The world is spiralling downward into an ever-more violent condition and the human psyche suffers. Given the failure of those with power to manage geo-violence, it may no longer be such a difficult sell to suggest that ideas and practices deriving from the therapy field could be useful. Gradually, therapists are beginning to make their contribution. But we do have to sort out a lot of problems first.  The kind of psychology many of us use isn't easy to understand. We need to get better at translating it into plain language without turning ourselves into something like journalists. We also have a reputation as a disputatious and crazy professional group.  A further problem is our Eurocentric way of thinking. In my talk, I'll work through some of these difficulties because my enthusiasm for the cause is tempered by a lot of scepticism and doubt. Then I'll move on to outline a series of ideas that I have been working on and testing out in political contexts for many years. These include (i) how to address the mutual incomprehension that is the hallmark of intense political conflict; (ii) making use of what therapists know about violence, aggression and self-assertion to understand political conflict better; (iii) seeing if we can do away with the moralistic, blame-blame culture that pervades national and international politics.

 

(SS5B) 11:45 – 12:45 Seminar: Ian Gilmore

Therapeutic Consultancy

To download the notes for this guest speaker please click here

Therapeutic Consultancy is the umbrella term that denotes an increasing level of activity these days, particularly, though not exclusively, under the auspices of the managed care sector; but how should this work be approached?

This 60 minute seminar will be used initially to set the scene by introducing Therapeutic Consultancy in its various forms, as follows:

• International Consultancy Assignments

• Critical Incident Response

• Forensic Assignments

The remainder of the time may be used to discuss any issues emanating either from this exposition or from participants' questions and/or responses.

By way of illustration only, issues that may arise could include: the expanding place of Therapeutic Consultancy in the therapist's portfolio of activities; how to navigate as safe a path as possible overseas in difficult or even hostile circumstances; or ethical issues attaching to Therapeutic Consultancy.

As no prior familiarity with this line of work will be assumed, this seminar will be suitable either for people who would like to enter this line of work, or for those who may already have some knowledge and would appreciate a forum in which they may further consider Therapeutic Consultancy.

 

(SS5C) 13:45 – 15:45 Workshop:  Nick Totton

What about the politics? The shadow of helping

The application of therapy to political issues like conflict and societal trauma can be highly fruitful; however, the further we move from our own cultural base, the more problematic the issues become.

While respecting the excellent work done by certain practitioners, this presentation will play devil's advocate, pointing to the dangerous possibilities of taking psychotherapy into post-colonial situations and imposing a model from one culture onto another culture's experience.  PTSD is one example of such a model, which has often been used to override local ways of understanding the effects of violence. It will argue that there is a risk of therapy becoming an arm of globalisation, presenting itself as an expert system which overrides local models. Therapy inevitably and necessarily represents Western culture to the rest of the world. The question is, what facet of Western culture does it identify with?  If therapy is to be truly useful to non-Western societies, it needs to bring a genuine humility, and a desire to learn rather than to teach.

I will also draw a reverse analogy and raise questions about the neo-colonial aspects of ordinary psychotherapy in Western society.