Adult Mental Health Training Courses

Motivational Interviewing, and how to use it effectively.

A 3-day course.

Also known as the ‘Essentials course’ this course is available 'Open' (where you come to us) or Onsite (we come to you and deliver it to a group of up to 15 delegates).

Based on Miller and Rollnick's latest book, this course describes an organised way of helping people to recognise their problems and to do something about them. Principally it addresses behaviour about which the client has mixed feelings: drinking and substance misuse for example, but a surprising array of common mental and physical health problems as well. Issues from taking psychoactive medication through to eating more healthily can all be addressed using motivational interviewing.

DBT Essentials (Dialectical Behaviour Therapy).

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', and for those thinking of taking the first step in becoming a specialised 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 familiarise 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.

Running DBT Skills-Development Groups.

A 3-day course.

Running skills development groups is an important part of becoming proficient in DBT, and this course provides the coaching and practice to develop such skills.

This course lasts 3 days and is all about learning how to run groups for your clients to help them become skilled in key areas of relevance for them. The rationale is that patients need not only to be motivated, gain insights and knowledge etc, but usually also need to acquire skills in; Mindfulness, Interpersonal Effectiveness, Emotion Regulation, and Distress tolerance.

CBT Essentials (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy).

A 3-day course. (Online version also available.)

The UK's favourite introduction to this powerful, evidence-based technique.

Now in its latest form this course has introduced Cognitive Behavioural Therapy to thousands of people in the UK ever since 1983. It addresses Cognitive Behavioural Therapy in a way that you can use after the course. It covers: the history and meaning of Cognitive Behavioural 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.

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.

Teaching Mindfulness in Clinical Practice.

A 2-day course.

Mindfulness is a psychological intervention that we dream of: it works both for clients/patients and us, and its effectiveness is demonstrated not just by clinical studies but by the unusual number of people testifying to its benefit. Moreover it is a quick, simple concept with obvious validity and relevance. It fits with the thinking of those who maintain that "To live effectively and well cannot be a complicated thing, so any intervention to help people do so should not itself be complicated”.

Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT).

A 3-day course. (2-day version also available.)

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

The DICES^® System for Risk Assessment & Management.

Available in 3-day and 2-day versions.

A cogent system that actually facilitates clinical work, this is one of our most renowned courses. Thousands of UK professionals have already attended it.

With the starting point that excellent risk management involves excellent clinical practice, 'The DICES^® System for Risk Assessment and Management' shows what is necessary to properly assess and manage risk easily, reliably and to the benefit of all, and this accounts for its staggering popularity.

Part one covers the nature and theory of risk assessment and management: why we do it and what we aim to achieve by it. Part two covers risk assessment specifically: if you don't notice the risk there is no chance you will manage it correctly. Part three covers risk management: there is no virtue in spotting a risk if you are not able to manage it. The end result is that not only do you know about risk assessment and management, you also have the ability and the equipment to do so reliably and well.

Suicide-Risk Assessment & Management.

A 2-day course.

Thousands of people take their own lives every year, and we don't respond to it especially well: around 90% of people who end their own lives have seen their doctors in the previous year. We need to be able to spot those who are at risk, to manage the risk, and intervene to help people build a worthwhile life long-term.

This 2-day course focuses on the first two of those three factors, and is based on APT's acclaimed DICES programme for risk assessment and management. It focuses purely on the risk of suicide, and does so in a client-focused way, designed to help the client from the very first moment of contact. It covers:

1. Risk Assessment
2. Risk Management
3. How to verify and demonstrate you have assessed and managed risk

The course aims also to help us become relaxed and optimistic about seeing suicidal people, because we will know what to do: we will notice them, we will be able to manage their suicidality, we will be able to plan effective treatment.

CBT Plus, for Suicide Prevention.

A 3-day course.

There is more to working with suicidality than risk assessment and management, and having mastered those, we need then to be able to help people to build lives that are much more rewarding. It is unrealistic to think we can create lives that are completely free of suffering, but perfectly realistic to help create lives that are worth suffering for. And this 3-day course strives to achieve just that.

Some professionals become anxious about seeing patients who are suicidal, so what this course aims to do is to help us become relaxed and optimistic about seeing suicidal people, because we will know how to give them hope, and how to deliver as well as possible on that hope.

CBT Plus, for Anger and Violence.

A 3-day course.

This is the new version of APT's Anger Management course, focusing on working with individuals (and groups) who are habitually angry and sometimes violent. It examines the potential problems of working with aggression, but principally focuses on strategies for helping people with such problems overcome their anger and violence.

The ADDRESS^® Course for working with Personality Disorder.

A 3-day course.

A powerful integrated package for working effectively with personality disorder.

This course combines relevant aspects of Cognitive Therapy, Dialectical Behaviour Therapy and Motivational Interviewing to form a powerful and systematic intervention for personality disorder. It highlights the problem behaviours associated with personality disorder, how to conceptualise those behaviours in specific cases, how to facilitate insight and motivation in the patient, and how to generate change strategies. Importantly it also gives participants a chance to practise applying them to prepared scenarios.

Providing Good Clinical Supervision.

A 2-day course.

The course that shows clinicians how to use pre-existing skills to provide effective clinical supervision.

Clinical supervision is a key concept that many people are unclear about. Unclear whether 'supervision' means that you should be ensuring that the supervisee is 'doing it right' or whether you should be providing a sounding board for the supervisee to develop their thinking, or what. This course clarifies it by showing clinicians how to use their existing skills to provide clear effective supervision that is appreciated by both the supervisee and the organisation.

The Masterclass series of courses.

Mostly of 3-days duration.

The Masterclass series of courses is for professionals who have already attended the Essentials course (or equivalent) in the corresponding subject, and have at least 6 months (sometimes much more) practice in implementing the approach. There are Masterclasses available in the following:

- Acceptance & Commitment Therapy

- Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

- Compassion-Focused Therapy

- Dialectical Behaviour Therapy

- Motivational Interviewing

- The RAID^® Approach

- Schema-Focused Cognitive Therapy

- Solution-Focused Therapy