How much are courses?
Can just one of me attend?
When is the next open course?
Is the course accredited?
Who teaches the courses?
Where did you get my email address from?
How can I access your courses where I am?
DBT course please
Do you do supervision?
Evidence for DICES®
Evidence for RAID®
What is the difference between the 1, 2 and 3 day CBT courses?


How much are courses?  (Back)

We bring our 3-day courses to you and up to 16 people may attend it for an all-inclusive fee of £4,110 plus VAT (which you reclaim if you are registered for VAT – most people are).

2-day courses are charged at £2,875 and 1-day and refresher courses are charged at £1,495 plus VAT. A 12-day Extended CBT course, for up to 12 people, is charged at £16,495 plus VAT.

All you have to do is phone us on 0116 2555 963 and we will take you through all the steps necessary to bring you an excellent training event. Just satisfy yourself that you can find a good teaching room and any refreshments (coffee and tea, lunches if you want to provide them) and of course the participants. We do the rest.


We strive to provide excellent value. The set fee includes:

•  Pre-course information for distribution to attenders.
•  Your chosen course.
•  All tutor travel and accommodation expenses.
•  The services of a tutor who is experienced and knowledgeable in the area and has a gift     for putting things across.
•  Course workbooks – one for each delegate.
•  Course-evaluation, with the feedback returned to you.
•  Permanent registration of delegates’ attendance, on the APT database.
•  A certificate detailing who attended the training, for your records.
•  Certificates for each delegate, so they can record their c.p.d.


Can just one of me attend?  (Back)

Yes. Phone 0116 2555 963 (0044 116 2555 963 from outside UK) and tell us what course you would like to go on. She will put your name on a list of people who want to attend that course and let you know when there are enough to make it viable to run. Alternatively click here to view the next available courses.


When is the next 'open' course?  (Back)

Click here to view the next available 'open' courses.


Is the course accredited?  (Back)

The sense in which the course is accredited is in that it is an APT course ... we provide over 10,000 participant-days training annually mainly in the NHS and our training has acquired the status accordingly.


Who teaches the courses? (Back)

Tutors are nearly all clinical psychologists, mostly of consultant grade. Tutors are selected according to stringent reference-checking. In other words we have a list of criteria which we ask referees to rate the applicant on.

If accepted, the tutor has to maintain an average of 6 on each of two 7-point scales; one on presentation-quality, the other on the relevance of the material to the delegates. (Equally, every course has to maintain those averages, regardless of tutor.) So, whilst occasional courses may slip below this average, most do not.

We don’t normally guarantee in advance who will tutor a specific course for two reasons: logistically it would be difficult and in any event it is the courses rather than the tutor that we ‘market’. The tutors’ job is to present pre-written and validated courses at their best.

For more tutor information click here.


Where did you get my email address from?  (Back)

We don’t do spam, so you will have given it to us at some stage. This will normally have been one of the following:

1. When attending a course, on the registration form
2. As a course sponsor, as a contact method
3. On the telephone, during our ‘database cleaning’

Should you wish to be removed from any mailings or would just like more information then please contact us.


How can I access your courses where I am?  (Back)

We can provide a course almost anywhere in the world, for groups of 6 to 16, for the fixed fees quoted on this site. Courses are run 'on site' and the tutor will come to you. Also see "Can just one of me attend?"


DBT course please  (Back)

We have replaced the DBT, Dialectical Behaviour Therapy course in favour of the latest generation of Working with Personality Disorder, namely The ADDRESS Course. There are several reasons for this, the two main ones being:

To do DBT justice requires the course to be significantly complicated, and feedback we have been receiving from elsewhere is that this complexity can be unhelpful.

DBT has a relatively narrow focus (Borderline Personality Disorder), whereas the evidence from Egan’s work is that personality disorders correlate highly with one another, so it is helpful to have a broader focus than this.

So the ADDRESS course that covers the key methods for working effectively with Personality Disorder as a whole. It highlights concepts that are included in Dialectical Behaviour Therapy, notably:

An analysis of how problem behaviour and emotion comes about. The events, emotions and thoughts that trigger those problems and that follow the behaviour.

The generation of insight in the patient and therefore the validation of emotions and behaviour both from the patient and the therapist.

The patient recognising the ‘downside’ of the strategies they currently use in the above situations.

An evaluation of alternative strategies the patient might use in the ‘problem situations’.

Encouragement to try those alternative strategies (‘experiments’) evaluate and develop them (with the therapist).

An optimistic ‘can do’ attitude that conveys that most problems can have a solution, and which is, hopefully, taken on by the patient to an extent.

Mindfulness, where you develop an uncritical awareness of what is in your mind and around you, learn how to put it into words, and how to generate a ‘wise-mind’ response.


Do you do supervision? (Back)

Those who have attended the course can come on supervision days subsequently. The way it works is that the supervisor comes to you and runs 3 supervision groups of 90 minutes each, during the day. Each group has about 5 people on it, each person only attends one of the 90 minute groups.

Supervision days aren't nearly as much in demand as training days, which seems to me a pity because they are just about the best way of generalising training to real life, but those who buy them tend to buy them in multiples of 3, with each day separated by about a month. The cost is £1445 plus VAT per day (which is reclaimable so long as you are registered for VAT).


Evidence for DICES®  (Back)

DICES® checklists are exactly that. In other words they are there to tell – or remind – clinicians of the factors they should be considering. For example, ‘hopelessness’ is established as an irrefutable correlate of suicide risk and that is referenced on the course. ‘Exploitation’ on the other hand is a much more nebulous construct and has led to considerable debate about situations which can either be viewed as ‘exploitation’ or as a mutual ‘win-win’ situation!

We then leave it at that. In other words we don’t suggest that there is a straightforward correlation between the number of boxes ticked and the degree of a specified risk. It seems to us that when you look at past situations that have turned out badly it is not so much the misreading of statistical correlations that’s been at fault but a much more basic neglect of factors that should not have been overlooked.

DICES® is reckoned to be ‘self-evident’ – the idea that it is wise for clinicians to have (a) a checklist of items they should consider when deciding whether a risk is ‘significant’ or not and (b) a checklist of items they should cover when composing a risk management plan. The evidence for individual items on the checklists (e.g. Hopelessness as a predictor of suicide) is referenced on the course.


Evidence for RAID®  (Back)

'RAIDing' isn't 'a unitary approach', in other words it is a collection of well established approaches (such as behavioural ones) put together into a format which is intended to maximise the chances of delegates remembering and applying a good proportion of them and moreover being able to maintain a positive frame of reference to very difficult behaviour.

In particular it leans on three areas of work: (1) The Behavioural literature, (2) solution-focused thinking and (3) the importance of the relationship between helper and helped.

In terms of evidence that this is a useful thing to do, there are a couple of elements you may or may not consider relevant to your considerations. Last year, for the 12th year running, The RAID course was APT's top-selling course of the 38 in the catalogue. This is mostly the result of 'repeat customers'; in other words those people who have received the RAID® course apparently judge it to be doing what they hoped it would.


What is the difference between the 1, 2 and 3 day CBT courses?  (Back)

The 3 courses are structured so that delegates never miss out on any ‘depth’ of input, but by attending the second and third days they have an increased coverage.

The 1-day course covers the following:

What is Cognitive Therapy? An overview of what classify as cognitive techniques, and why. The defining characteristics of Cognitive Therapy.

The first session or two, including assessment. How to structure the first couple of sessions in CBT, including the nature of a good therapeutic relationship in this context and what you need to cover in the assessment.

Diary Keeping. This is one of the ‘work horses’ of CBT which simultaneously gives people a different perception of their lives and invites them to do more adaptive behaviours and less maladaptive ones.

Case-conceptualisation. Pulling together key elements from the assessment to describe ‘what is going on’ in a particular case

Practical session. Practice in assessment and case-conceptualisation

The 2-day course adds a second day which majors particularly on the behavioural elements of CBT as follows. The first day is exactly as above but in addition:

The plan for a typical session in CBT. Covers the six main elements of a typical CBT session, why they are important and why this maintains ‘quality control’

Doing something different. This covers how to help people solve their problems by changing what they do. This includes reference to a downloadable diary keeping form that delegates can access subsequently

There is then a video on how to deliver the theoretical input we have covered to patients

The afternoon consists of practical exercises where the tutor takes the role of a patient and delegates have the opportunity to practice the morning input on him or her. They then progress to a short practice session with each other

The 3-day course naturally covers the 2 days exactly as above but adds the following. Just as Day 3 focused mainly on behavioural aspects, Day 3 focuses mainly on the cognitive ones.

Changing maladaptive thinking by the use of cognitive restructuring. This also enables delegates to download the cognitive restructuring form for future use, after the event

Socratic dialogue. The use of Socratic dialogue and synthesizing questions to change people’s thinking

Evidence-based practice. In this context we are talking about measuring the evidence of progress from the patient. The use of questionnaires and how to access the free downloads from APT

Practical session. The tutor role plays session three of the patient of the patient on Days 1 and 2 and the delegates have the opportunity to practice their skills

A final exercise where delegates put together all they have learned and utilize it in a case study

A final quiz where delegates form three teams and respond to a quiz which summarizes the course material in an enjoyable way