Category Archives: personality disorder

Online video training

Courses, mental health, personality disorder, psychosis, self harm, social care, techniques, training, , , , , , , ,

“Very thorough and high quality…” Abi, Student nurse

Lifetime access for only £30.00

Do you work in mental health services?

Are you a support worker, student nurse or just an interested person who’d like to know how to make more sense of mental health and disorder?

Do you find it hard to see how all the different disorders and peoples’ approaches to them fit together?

Do you have difficulty getting other professionals to see things as you do?

Would you like to be more effective in working with the people you care for?

Then this online video course is for you.

Picture on the box workbook: title page

People learn best when they have questions and they remember best when they have a ‘schema’, a ‘picture on the box’ to help make sense of what they’re taught. That’s what this training is all about. Over two and a half hours of video instruction alongside a range of information and exercises in the accompanying workbook help you to make sense of the seemingly overwhelming field of mental health and disorder.

And all for much less than the cost of a good night out.

Picture on the box workbook: Sample page (psychosis 1)

You can have all this for less than you’d pay for a take-away meal for two. But unlike a take-away, the benefits of this training will last your entire career.

Click the link below to get full access to the course videos and workbook.

https://www.tamtalking.co.uk/p/onlive-video-training-the-picture-on-the-box/

The picture on the box

Courses, mental health, personality disorder, psychosis, self harm, techniques, training, , , , , , ,

Making sense of mental health

Mental health work needn’t drive you up the wall!

Mental health work can seem so complicated… and not just for beginners. Many seasoned practitioners go on for years without a clear idea of how the different diagnoses, conditions and coping strategies fit together. It’s like trying to make sense of a 1,000 piece jigsaw without any real idea of what the overall picture is supposed to look like.

The confusion that arises can lead to workplace stress, unclear aims and difficulties in following care plans with different workers pulling in different directions whilst the service-user or client gets stuck in the middle of a whirlpool of confusion.

It’s always better when you can see the whole picture

This course is intended to provide the ‘picture on the box’. It shows clearly and simply exactly how the different types of diagnosis and conditions fit together and even maintain and exacerbate each other. Delivered either online or face to face (with appropriate distancing, of course) it’s available to staff teams anywhere in the world, just so long as they speak English and have a working internet connection.

The course involves…

Session 1

Anxiety (the gateway to mental disorder)

Freeze, flight and fight

Session 2

Depression (when you’re tired of trying)The opposite of the FIVE ‘F’S             

Psychosis (The Devil makes work for idle hands)

Session 3

Personality disorder (9 statements of vulnerability)

The symptom groups – are the same as the 3 clusters… are the same as the vulnerabilities    

3 models – All roads lead to the same destination   

Session 4

Dependence and self-reliance        

Therapeutic optimism Expressed emotion

Get in touch to book this training for your own staff. Go on, you know you want to!

Personality disorder and compassion

challenging behaviour, Courses, mental health, personality disorder, social care, training, , , , , , ,

Sometimes a single day’s training makes all the difference. You can access such a training day here.

Personality disorder training meme MTCTWatch a video on Personality Disorder below

Complete the contact form below to arrange training for your staff.

Mental health training – a short sample

challenging behaviour, Courses, law, mental health, personality disorder, psychosis, risk, self harm, social care, techniques, training, , , , , ,

This abridged, edited audio (& video slideshow) is taken from the introductory session of a 2012 mental health training day in Glasgow. Although not all of the session is included it gives a flavour of the day, the topics to be considered, the training aims and the insights to be expected throughout the day.

You can find a longer version (26 minutes) by clicking below…

Training courses

Complete the contact form below to arrange training for your staff.

When is a terrorist not a terrorist?

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Government initiatives seem to be running the risk of equating mental disorder with terrorism, thus increasing the stigma faced by people with mental health problems. So far as I can tell the new project’s findings make no attempt to identify either causation or diagnosis.

It seems to me that it’s just as likely that prejudice and hatred cause mental disorders as the other way around. I also worry that “mentally ill” will continue to be used as the explanation only for white-skinned terrorists while the familiar epithet of ‘evil’ will remain the description of choice for non-whites.

There may well be value in this research but only if the eventual published findings are a great deal more nuanced and detailed than this week’s stigmatising pronouncement has been.

Feedback

mental health, personality disorder, psychosis, social care,

Over the last few weeks I’ve been experimenting with video presentations. I know I’ve a lot to learn (although I think I’m improving) but I really need honest feedback.

Please have a look and let me know how I can improve my efforts.

Click here to view my videos.

Many thanks.

Stuart

Cut Prince Harry some slack – the guy did good!

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Prince Harry has spoken out about his mental health problems following the overwhelming grief he felt as a child trying to cope with the death of his mother, Princess Diana. Like so many other traumatised children the young prince locked his feelings away, hiding from the maelstrom of emotion that threatened to engulf him. By demonstrating the humanity that we all share Prince Harry has illustrated an important point about mental health. Mental disorder is no respecter of persons. Any of us, rich or poor, privileged or otherwise can experience emotional problems and any of us can need help to overcome mental health problems.

So many people seem to have missed the point of Harry’s speech. They can’t see past his privileged status and some even suggest that his wealth and position should somehow protect him from the realities of life and the human condition. They seem to equate psychological vulnerability with wealth. So my question to them is this…

Where do we draw the line? How much money is enough to secure emotional and mental health? How poor does one have to be to experience depression or obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)? What about schizopherenia? Does that only strike poor people too?

You don’t need to be a monarchist to appreciate the truth of Harry’s message. I’m not but I’m still grateful that such an influential young man found the courage to speak out about his early trauma.

Should psychiatrists diagnose personality disorder?

challenging behaviour, mental health, personality disorder, social care, training, tutorial, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Personality disorder is a controversial diagnosis. There are no blood tests or physical criteria confirming personality disorder. In fact there’s no real evidence to suggest that personality disorder is a medical condition at all. So why do psychiatrists diagnose personality disorder? More importantly… should they?

Here we consider the roots of personality disorder diagnoses from the Moral defective of a century ago to the 3 personality disorder clusters of today. We look at the way personality disorder is diagnosed through behaviours, emotions and enduring patterns of response to society and we consider the advantages of understanding a person’s personality traits. Knowledge is power.

The more we know the more likely we are to be able to help. But we must be careful. Too often the diagnosis of personality disorder is used as an excuse to write a person off as incurable, hopeless or even undeserving. That’s the legacy we’ve been left by our Edwardian and Victorian predecessors.

If we are to do right by the personality disordered patients of today and in the future we need to embrace the understanding this diagnosis can bring but reject the pejorative notions of undeservingness, incurability and hopelesness that all too often come along with it.

To arrange training for your staff please complete the contact form below…

Mental disorders made simple for students and others

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I often get to take student mental health nurses around in my day to day practice. It’s part of their training to spend time ‘in the field’ so to speak and learn their craft. We don’t just drag them around and let them watch what we do though. We try to help them understand what seems at first to be a very complicated world of diagnoses and disorders, mindsets and medications.

This short video is intended to reassure new students and others that mental disorders don’t need to be complicated. It’s true that we can (and often do) make the world of mental health as complex and convoluted as we like. But there are still some basic principles that can help guide us all through the maze.

This is how I explain the basics of diagnosis and disorder to those students unfortunate enough to cross my path. We should always begin with simple principles and then build upon those foundations. That way, when things start to get complicated there’s something straightforward to rely upon as we go.

To arrange training for your staff please complete the contact form below…

Social and mental health care training

challenging behaviour, Courses, human rights, Mental Capacity Act, mental health, personality disorder, psychosis, risk, self harm, seminars, social care, techniques, training, Uncategorized

I’ve been getting a lot of new inquiries lately, which is wonderful. It seems that training budgets are becoming available to the small specialist trainers again without organisations having to rely upon the off-the-shelf generalists on their ‘pre-approved supplier lists’. There are many courses that only a specialist clinician can provide. Click below to download the Mind The Care brochure…

170429 Mind The Care brochure.

That’s great news for the little man like me. It means I can get to more organisations and train more staff from the perspective of the expert practitioner. Learning from someone who actually does the job is always better than listening to a training executive with a script.

So I thought I’d put a little post up for those organisations who haven’t experienced my training yet (and it is an experience), outlining my most popular courses and seminar topics and inviting them to get make contact. Just click here and I’ll be in touch to design the exact training or speaking programme you need to help you look after and get the best out of your care team.

Click here 170429 Mind The Care brochure to download Mind the care’s most recent brochure.

courses-meme