Course Type
Attachment, Neurodevelopment, & Psychopathology: Clinical Applications
Duration: 35 days
Overview
This advanced course will focus on several serious disorders that have unclear aetiology and relatively ineffective treatment. The goals will be to explore the developmental conditions that precede the disorders, seeking opportunities for prevention (that is, points when a risky developmental pathway could be changed to a more adaptive pathway) and novel approaches to treatment (when the opportunity for prevention was already missed). The disorders to be covered include: psychological trauma, autism, suicide, ADHD, PTSD, sexually inappropriate behaviour, and psychosis (both in general and post-partum). The outcome will be an understanding of the developmental roots of serious dysfunction, ways to prevent such outcomes, and to treat them when they occur.
Course participants will be given the rationale behind several General Functional Formulations of serious disorders and asked to use case-specific information to develop Treatment Plans (from Family Functional Formulations) that incorporate the principles of DMM Integrative Treatment. Periodic pop tests will help participants to build a body of semantic information to take back to their employment. Developing the Family Functional Formulations will give participants practice in applying the principles to real cases. Treatment Enactments will consolidate the skills in procedural and imaged memory.
The course is offered as a 7-week on-line learning opportunity, with two 2-hour meetings on each topic. Readings and assignments will accompany the meetings.
Prerequisite: Attachment, Neurodevelopment & Psychopathology (3 days)
Goals:
- Identify principles underlying Treatment based on Generalized Functional Formulation and compare them with the principles of DMM Integrative Treatment
- Practice principle-based treatment planning for specific families using principles derived from GFFs (rather than following semantic prescriptions using descriptive diagnosis-based protocols).
- Demonstrate the developmental connection among serious psychiatric conditions of unclear causation, limited treatment success, and developmental risk
DMM Mental Health Practitioner Certificate
This course, with follow-up assignments, constitutes about a third of the work of Module 3 of the Certificate Program. Contact fri.segreteria@gmail.com for further information.