Category Archives: Courses

Face to face, online & video training: The picture on the box.

Courses, mental health, social care, training, tutorial

Do you work in mental health services?

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 course is for you.

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. Book Stuart for face to face training or access over two and a half hours of video instruction alongside a range of information and exercises in the accompanying workbook. This training will help you to make sense of the seemingly overwhelming field of mental health and disorder.

Click the links below for a taste of what the course entails

The video version of the course is intended for individuals to use, it’s not licensed for groups. Contact us for details using the form below. Make sure you leave your Email address and contact details when you buy and you’ll receive an Email containing the link and password to access the entire course online.

Note: Emails are sent manually and so it may take up to 24 hours (usually much quicker) to receive your link and password.

Enjoy,

Stuart Sorensen 

(Nurse, Trainer and Coach)

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/

Book short webinars and TamTalking sessions here

Courses, mental health, seminars, social care, training, tutorial, , , , , , ,

If you’re looking to book training for your staff you’ll need to complete the online contact form below.

However, if you’re interested in joining a short, ‘public access’ webinar as an individual or small group of friends, students etc or to set up a TamTalk please visit the TamTalking.co.uk store here

.Whatever you’re looking for, if it’s mental health or social care related get in touch, even if it’s not listed. You’d be surprised at the bespoke products I can put together.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Stuart Sorensen

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!

Like face to face training – but online

Courses, training, , , , , ,

It was refreshing to see this level of quality training

It took a bit of planning but I recently bit the bullet and transferred one of my popular training days online. Not the online training you masy be used to with a wealth of power point slides and me out of sight reciting the words on the screen as though the participants can’t actually read. Oh no. That would have been too easy – and far too boring.

Instead I took all the elements I used to include in the classroom or lecture hall and adapted them to an online format over Skype. We had quizzes, group exercises, group discussions, question and answer sessions, case studies and yes, even a little basic lecturing as well.

It went down so well I’m currently negotiating doing a similar thing overnight – not because the participants are vampires but because they’re in Australia. That’s right – lockdown has allowed me to take my training halfway around the world, and all from the comfort of my little home video studio.

Here’s what the lady who booked my first ever online training session had to say about it…

Despite providing training in an online format rather than face to face due to covid restrictions, Stuart was able to present and get across a personalised approach to training in an informative, approachable and thorough manner. There was plenty of time for breaks, questions and bespoke discussions about particular clients. Stuarts presentation manner was engaging, honest and thought provoking. We would highly recommend him for future training of all areas of mental health. It was refreshing to see this level of quality training within the private sector covering the areas which we required.

Holly Leach

Operations Director Invictus Complex care

Perhaps you’d like to pick up on training your staff where we all seem to have left off so long ago. Have a look at my training course list here and let me know if anything takes your fancy.

After the mental capacity assessment

Courses, law, Mental Capacity Act, mental health, safeguarding, social care, training, tutorial, , , , , ,

Assessing mental capacity is one thing but what happens next? What must we do once we know that a person lacks the mental capacity to make this particular decision at this particular time?

 

 

The ‘family tree’ of mental health exercise

Courses, mental health, psychosis, social care, techniques, training, , , ,

This is a simple exercise intended to be completed either individually or preferably by a group (up to around 16 people) in discussion. The idea is to help care workers to overcome the perception that mental health is difficult to understand by asking them to arrange these 21 cards as they think they should go. Click the link below to download the PDF…

Mental disorders family tree exercise

Give them the blanked out key to work from as though it’s a jigsaw with the key taking the place of the picture on the box. 

mh family tree diagnosis symptoms exercise training

Most groups are able to do this correctly without any help at all – just by process of elimination, the application of the things they already know and the clues they can glean from the key (length of blacked out words, number of items in each column etc). I’ve done this little exercise with countless groups and only rarely do they need any assistance. Those few groups that have needed help didn’t need much. 

The advantage of this exercise is that it works as a warm up, it gets participants talking early on and it boosts their confidence. It also provides the participants with a rough and ready mental schema to hang the rest of the day’s training on to. 

Follow it up with a discussion about the fact that, whilst mental health work might seem very complicated, at its most basic level it’s really just about these categories and symptom groups. There is, of course much more to learn but this little overview really is a damn good start!

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

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.

Psychosis 2: Delusions, illusions and hallucinations

Courses, mental health, psychosis, social care, techniques, training, tutorial, , , , , , , ,

Don't let yourself off the hook thumbnailPart 2 of the psychosis mini-series looks at delusions (AKA ‘Fixed, false beliefs – not amenable to reason’). Delusions are more than just vague ideas – they’re the things people hold to be most certain. Here we look at some of the ways that delusions form, the relationship between delusions, illusions and hallucinations and we begin to think about some of the ways that we can help delusional people.

I have long maintained that this connection is vital to our understanding of psychosis and yet not a word about it was uttered during my nurse training.The student nurses of 1992-95 never heard a peep about these vital links. The student nurses of 2017… well… We consider the role of memory and familiarity in perception and how the self-fulfilling prophecy of expectation can create mistakes, not only in our five senses but in the beliefs we form that so often rely upon that sense data to begin with.

If you’d like to arrange training for your staff please fill in the form here…