What’s #recovery really about in #mentalhealth? For many it means so much more than a return to how we were. Join my one hour seminar to learn more.
https://tinyurl.com/recoversemi
Webinar: Mental health recovery
Category Archives: seminars
Self harm interactive webinar
Self-harm can be confusing and bewildering for both staff and service-users. Ideas about ‘manipulation’ or a ‘cry for help’ do little or nothing to help prevent future self-harm. This interactive webinar explores some alternative notions and examines ways that support workers can make a difference in a genuinely difficult situation.
There is a great deal that support workers and others can do to help people who harm themselves. The trick is to be able to see past the behaviour and to understand the person who cuts themselves, takes overdoses or otherwise injures themselves.
In the past this sort of behaviour has been written off as attention-seeking or as an attempt to manipulate workers and yet most self-harm happens in secret and never comes to the attention of the staff. It’s really not about us. Something else is going on and the tired old notion that it is merely ‘behavioural’ is both meaningless and irrelevant in a modern context of deliberate self-harm.
This interactive webinar covers:
Definitions of self-harm
A cry for help?
Is it all just attention-seeking?
Self-harm and suicide – are they linked?
Pain, the brain and self-soothing behaviours
The emotional purpose of self-harm
Helping people to ‘get past’ self-harm
Managing the risks
Dos and Don’ts
Click here to reserve your place on this interactive webinar
Please note – this is an educational seminar. It is not a group therapy session and we cannot make time for individual or group counselling or other intervention here,
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Book short webinars and TamTalking sessions here
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
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Webinar/tutorial: Hanged if you do – Hanged if you don’t
A 90 minute online webinar, Wednesday 24th February 7pm – 8:30pm
One of the biggest headaches for health and social care workers is how to make sense of their duty of care. On the one hand we’re told that we must take steps to ensure safety and on the other hand we need to respect people’s rights to make their own decisions, even if they’re risky. This can be a delicate balance to strike.
How not to be hanged
It’s true that the law surrounding duty of care can be complicated but care workers aren’t expected to have the same knowledge as barristers. We’re expected to understand the basic principles of care law, to know what to do if we’re unsure and we have to act reasonably. We don’t even need to be right every time. We only need to be reasonable.
This 90 minute webinar/tutorial is designed for workers who are far too busy delivering care to spend their time reading through long reports of legal precedent. It covers the basic points we all need to be safe ‘at the coal face’ of care delivery in a practical, work-based way that is both engaging and understandable.
Delivered in plain English, the basic message of ‘Hanged if you do – Hanged if you don’t’ is
‘Don’t panic’.
By taking the mystery and complicated jargon out of the equation, Stuart Sorensen guides workers step by step from basic principles to a solid understanding of duty of care. Real life stories and clear examples are used throughout to make the webinar both absorbing and easy to apply in practice.
Click here to join us on Wednesday 24th February 2021 7pm – 8:30pm GMT
The webinar covers:
Professionalism
The duty of care myth
Balancing rights, risks and responsibilities
Common law and necessity
Being reasonable
Safeguarding
Mental capacity and the right to decide
Acting in best interests
How not to be Hanged
Click here to join us on Wednesday 24th February 2021 7pm – 8:30pm GMT
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Webinar: Psychosis and psychotic conditions
Thursday 18/2/2021 7pm GMT
Invitations by Email once £10 payment received.
Mention the word psychosis to most people and they immediately think of headline grabbing tragedies and untreatable, unmanageable people they’d rather not have anything to do with. This is inevitable given the way that the subject is covered in the press but it’s not really very accurate.
People diagnosed with psychosis, like people diagnosed with other mental health problems are more likely to harm themselves than others.
This hour long, online tutorial lifts the lid on the myths about psychosis and psychotic conditions like schizophrenia. It introduces participants to the practical, common sense things that they can do to support their relatives, their service-users and themselves. By breaking symptoms and problems down into manageable ‘chunks’ and by relating them to participants’ own experiences we build a clear understanding of what psychosis and schizophrenia really means.
The tutorial is open to anyone with an interest in the topic be they relatives, carers or, most importantly people with psychosis themselves.
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Hard-wired 14: Why Freud was almost right
Although not a fan of Darwin’s theory of evolution by means of natural selection (he was more influenced by the earlier, Lamarckian evolutionary theory), Sigmund Freud was very nearly right with his hypotheses around the unconscious mind. It’s hard to describe Freud’s ideas as theories because, unfalsifiable as they were, they cannot be tested and so can never become more than speculative hypotheses.
This is a shame. Even if incorrect, a testable hypothesis has the advantage of teaching us something by virtue of its ‘wrongness’. Unfalsifiable hypotheses like Freud’s can’t even make it to those, dizzyingly modest’ heights. Freud wasn’t just wrong – he wasn’t EVEN wrong.
And yet he was so close to being right.
It’s easy for me to snigger behind the great man’s back, especially so long after the poor pioneer’s death. But the fact is that, mistaken and unscientific though he was, without Freud we’d be nowhere near as advanced as we are today.
So despite all his problems, I say…
“Three cheers for Freud – the man who was almost right about our deepest psychological drives a century before anyone else had any clue at all.”
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Selection pressures 2
Our series on evolutionary psychology continues with the basic ‘nuts and bolts’ of natural selection and its impact upon speciation, survival and behaviour (flight, hiding, sexual attraction etc). This necessarily brief overview sets the scene for the rather more complex work on evolved psychology to come. These selection pressures have been the drivers that led our species to become fully human and to develop the enigmatic set of behaviours and attitudes we call ‘human nature’.
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Stoic joy
Stoicism isn’t only an antidote to anger and emotional distress. It’s a recipe for genuine joy – the kind of joy and wonder that comes from endless discovery and the satisfaction that ensues ‘just because’.
Stoics don’t need a reason to be joyful. It’s enough that we’re alive and able to be joyful.
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What is mental capacity?
Mental capacity is the ability to make your own decisions. It’s assessed using a straightforward two-part test which is much easier to deal with than most people think:
Part 1: The diagnostic threshold consists of 2 questions.
Part 2: The functional test consists of 4 questions.
That’s it – the assessor needs to know the answer to 6 straightforward questions and they can tell whether or not the other person has the mental capacity to make ‘this particular decision at this particular time’.
If you want to know what these questions are (and how straightforward it all is) you’ll need to watch the video. And don’t forget to subscribe and share while you’re at it 😉
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Challenging behaviour: Philosophy and ethics
Challenging behaviour strategies aren’t necessarily complicated but they are powerful. It’s important then that we use them ethically. This video outlines some of the more basic points about ethics and philosophies of working with people who challenge us.
Mind The Care Training 