Mental health

Severe and enduring mental health problems can often leave people confronting stigma, prejudice, discrimination and social exclusion on a daily basis. Clinical Psychology Associates believes, however, that everyone whose functioning is affected by psychological problems can potentially find a role that is valued by themselves and wider society, irrespective of the severity of their difficulties. The services we offer are therefore designed to empower such individuals to take control of their lives and, crucially, to activate their own process of recovery.

Training in psychosocial interventions

One of the most effective ways of facilitating recovery is through equipping staff teams with the skills to work collaboratively and therapeutically with service users in attaining meaningful goals. This is the rationale for our five-day introductory training programme in psychosocial interventions (PSI). Underpinned by cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT), this programme enables care staff to look beyond the overt problems experienced by service users in order to address the underlying biological, social and psychological factors in a systematic and theoretically coherent way.

As well as increasing the knowledge and understanding of care staff and encouraging self-reflection, this PSI training enhances their interpersonal, engagement and communication skills. Moreover, it provides a comprehensive ‘toolkit’ of evidence-based intervention techniques – anger management, coping strategy enhancement (symptom reduction), social skills training, self-esteem enhancement, working with families, and relapse prevention – that maximises the potential for recovery by enabling staff to identify and target the specific needs of each individual service user in a genuinely flexible way.

The programme has been commissioned extensively by numerous organisations because it has been shown to impact very significantly on the quality of life of service users and also to improve the retention of staff by reducing ‘burnout’.

Training in cognitive-behavioural interventions

Cognitive-behavioural therapy has been recommended as a treatment option for individuals with severe and enduring mental health problems by, amongst others, the Department of Health, NICE, NIMHE, the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health and SANE.

Since we specialise in delivering training in CBT techniques, we can tailor programmes to the specific training needs of any organisation’s staff teams. This enables teams to work effectively and proactively in addressing the difficulties and barriers to recovery that are commonly encountered by service users, including:

Challenging behaviour
Low self-esteem
Anxiety
Depression
Self-harm
Anger control problems
Adjustment to bereavement and loss
Dual diagnosis

Supervision and consultancy

All the training we offer can be supplemented by supervision for staff teams or, where necessary, direct therapeutic input with individual service users. We also offer consultancy that helps organisations to develop their clinical governance with a view to optimising the quality of care that is delivered and ultimately establishing ‘gold standard’ services.