Workshops & Short courses
on Cognitive Behaviour Therapy

To supplement its Certificated courses, the Centre also presents standalone half-day or one-day workshops and other short courses for helping professionals.

While there are no special advance requirements for workshops, participants will benefit from doing some reading beforehand - for suggestions, please see the reading list in the section for the Primary Certificate Course. On registration, enrollees will be sent a detailed introductory article on CBT.

For workshop fees and registration, go to the Registration page.

The workshops are open to all helping professionals, including psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, nurses, occupational therapists, counsellors and psychotherapists, and people working in the area of human resources.

WORKSHOPS FOR 2007

Generalised Anxiety Disorder
(Wayne Froggatt)

Although very prevalent, Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD) is not popular with mental health practitioners. Because it is usually chronic, and tends to pervade virtually every area of a sufferer's life, GAD is difficult and time-consuming to treat effectively. This workshop will show how CBT can be used to combat GAD using techniques developed from the work of theorists such as Borkovec, Warren & Zgourides, and Copeland, emphasising stimulus control to combat the continual worrying that characterises GAD. Topics will include: understanding the concept of worrying, assessment of GAD and related problems, identification of contributing factors, treatment planning, strategies to reduce worrying, adjunctive strategies such as relaxation training, exposure, cognitive restructuring and problem-solving, and relapse prevention.

While emphasising how to help clients with GAD, the workshop will also be useful for participating practitioners who themselves worry more than they want to. Teaching will involve live demonstrations, therapy videos, case-study work, and practice in pairs and small groups.

Changing Dysfunctional Beliefs
(Wayne Froggatt)

This workshop will focus on advanced disputation (cognitive restructuring), that is, helping clients change the dysfunctional beliefs that create their unwanted emotions and problematical behaviours. Participants will be exposed to a range of cognitive, emotive, imagery and behavioural techniques. Topics will include:

General principles of disputation
Which beliefs to focus on
Disputational styles: Socratic, didactic & metaphorical
Techniques to test the rationality of specific beliefs (e.g. 'Double-standard', 'Catastrophe scale', 'Time-projection,' 'Blow-up', etc.)
Helping clients develop substitute beliefs
Techniques to reinforce changes in thinking (e.g. 'Benefits Calculation', 'Devil's Advocate', 'Coping rehearsal')
Dealing with beliefs that are resistant to change.

Teaching will be conducted via seminar work, demonstrations, videos and small group practice work and participants will receive a comprehensive book of readings.

Using CBT with Children & their Families
(Shane Stevenson)

This workshop will review a number of tools and techniques for adapting and utilising CBT for children; from, in particular, the work of March and Mulle, Kendall, Friedberg and McClure, Stallard; and Sanders, Ralph and Church. It will emphasise a behavioural focus more relevant to children, including reinforcement schedules, behaviour charts, behavioural rehearsal, exposure tasks and response prevention; but will also explore cognitive techniques such as thought restructuring and stopping. Some time will be spent focusing on anxiety issues and, specifically, obsessive compulsive disorder.

The workshop will provide an opportunity for the presenter to share some of his learning and experiences in order to generate discussion and learning for participants, who will have the opportunity to both familiarise themselves with the resources available and practise some of the techniques.

The workshop is aimed mainly at practitioners who are either new or relatively new to working with children using CBT, but who have some therapeutic understanding and training.

CBT for Primary Health Care Practitioners
(Jenny Nichols)

This interactive workshop is aimed specifically at nurses and other health
professionals working within the primary health care environment. Following
a brief introduction to CBT, the focus will turn to how it can be used to
enhance the effectiveness of treatment and care within the primary setting.
Special attention will be given to motivating people to change their
behaviour with regard to health and lifestyle choices and strengthening
commitment to change.

You will learn about and practice a number of CBT skills and techniques such
as the double-standard dispute, cost-benefit analysis, catastrophe scale,
reframing and devil’s advocate. You are invited to bring clinical scenarios
to work on in small groups throughout the day, and can expect to leave the
workshop with an array of practical strategies that will help your clients
achieve worthwhile change in their overall health.

Skill Power not Will Power: Using CBT to help people manage their weight
(Jillian Simpson)

Obesity has become a major problem. Whereas dieting alone fails to achieve long term weight loss, research suggests that when Cognitive Behaviour Therapy is incorporated with other lifestyle approaches, people have more success with managing their weight. They are also more likely to achieve greater psychological well-being through such cognitive strategies as the facilitation of self acceptance.

This workshop will be relevant to health professionals working with people with weight issues. Behavioural and cognitive interventions, along with stress management, mindfulness and social support will be explored as it relates to adults wishing to lose weight or avoid further weight gain.

Mindfulness: A DBT approach
(Rhian Evans & Jillian Simpson)

Mindfulness assists clients to focus their mind on the present in a non-judgemental way, thereby enabling effective management of problematic thoughts, emotions and behaviours. This workshop will provide working knowledge of both the theory and its various forms of application within, primarily, the context of Dialectical Behaviour Therapy. Participants will learn techniques which will help their clients take a more objective view of the world, thus facilitating mental health and happiness. Mindfulness can be applied with clients suffering from anxiety, depression, anger and many other psychological disorders. Participants are advised that attending the next day’s workshop ‘Emotion Regulation: A DBT Approach’ is recommended, but not essential.

Emotion Regulation: A DBT approach
(Rhian Evans)

Dialectical Behaviour Therapy was originally developed to help chronically suicidal clients and is now used for a range of complex, difficult to treat mental disorders. An essential element of DBT, Emotion Regulation helps clients deal with complex emotions. In this workshop, participants will acquire the knowledge to assist clients to identify and explore emotions in a way that helps prevent overwhelming feelings and dysfunctional behaviour. Participants are advised that attending the previous day’s workshop ‘Mindfulness: A DBT Approach’ is recommended, but not essential.

Chronic Illness & Disability
(Toni Hocquard)

The World Health Organisation has identified that health outcomes for those with chronic conditions are poor. The development of secondary conditions, such as problems with pain, anxiety and depression, are common, resulting in excessive suffering for the individual. Research has shown that adjustment and health outcomes are linked. Developing self-management strategies are key in the management of the impact of a chronic illness or disability.

This workshop will explore the benefits of Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy as an effective self-management tool. Participants will use their own experiences of working with clients to gain a better understanding of the impact that emotional disturbance can have on health outcomes. Techniques such as identifying the cause of the emotional disturbance (i.e. irrational thinking) and simple disputation will be practised in an interactive and fun way.

Reducing Suicidality
(Wayne Froggatt)

An increasing suicide rate has created concern in the helping professions and the public at large. Much recent training has been appropriately directed at assessment and safety issues. But what do you do when safety has been taken care of? This workshop will show how clients can be helped to reduce their suicidal ideation using a number of cognitive-behavioural strategies.

There will be a refresher on the basics of assessing suicide risk and planning management; followed by a discussion of the role of depression and its treatment using CBT; with most of the workshop focussing on a variety of cognitive-behavioural techniques that can be used to reduce depressive and suicidal ideation.

Treating Chronic Anger
(Wayne Froggatt)

This workshop will provide training in the use of CBT to help clients with chronic anger. It will be relevant to work with clients where anger is associated with other problems — such as an anxiety, mood or psychotic disorder — as well as to practitioners working with clients where anger is the main presenting problem.

Topics will include functional vs dysfunctional anger, the causes of chronic anger, motivation to change, domestic violence, safety issues and working with adults and adolescents.

Participants will learn a range of treatment strategies, including benefits calculation, catastrophe scale, rational-emotive imagery, problem-solving, thought recording, graduated exposure with response-prevention; and dealing with the core beliefs that underlie dysfunctional anger.

The presentation will utilise the work of key CBT theorists such as Raymond Novaco, Albert Ellis, Ray DiGiuseppe, Christine Padesky and Janet Wolfe.