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“It’s not your affair!” A CPD for qualified practitioners revising the Couple Therapy for Depression model with particular focus on couple conflict and sexual intimacy following an affair

Kate Thompson, Sammantha Knight

4 Mar 2024

Introduction

What is Couple Therapy for Depression?

Based on NICE guidelines, Couple Therapy for Depression is a 16-20 session integrative-behavioural treatment for depression for couples where one or both partners are experiencing relationship distress and depression. It has been developed by identifying best practice in a range of behavioural, systemic, psychodynamic, cognitive and emotionally focussed couple therapies evidenced in RCT effectiveness trials. Couple Therapy for Depression focuses on the relational aspects of depression and on factors that reduce stress and increase support within the couple, using the relationship as a resource for recovery and relapse prevention. 


This CPD will refresh the highly effective techniques for working with depression and couples, embedded in an evidence-based and integrated theoretical framework which has produced impressive recovery rates from mild to moderate depression for patients in NHS services nationwide.


About the Training Provider

The course is delivered by Tavistock Relationships, a teaching institution that specialises in couple therapy and has international renown for research and ground breaking advances in the world of couple therapy across a broad spectrum of services, both private and public.


The course is led by Kate Thompson and Velia Carruthers, who will deliver this refresher day for qualified CTfD practitioners working within IAPT, focussing on the relational components of depression and clinical techniques. The model looks for causal or maintaining factors in a couple’s relationship that is triggering depression and then utilises the relationship as one of the primary resources for recovery and relapse prevention.


The event will be equivalent to 5.1/2hrs of CPD.

Content

This clinically focused workshop will provide a refresher for experienced and recently trained CTfD therapists and will focus on how to implement the key objectives of the CTfD model.  During this day we will give particular attention to key issues that are often difficult for therapists to feel confident in, such as formulation, the therapeutic stance, working with sexual issues and couples in conflict in the room.

Learning Objectives

1. Participants will revise key components of the CTfD model
2. Participants will be able practice delivering formulations with couples, including around affairs
3. Participants will be able to work more confidently with sexual issues with couples
4. Participants will be able to employ techniques for working with couples in conflict in the room, utilising MBT techniques
5. Participants will be able to reflect on their stance and therapeutic frame when working with couples
6. Participants will see evidence of the model’s efficacy from recently analysed data
7. Participants will watch a film of a couple who have recently undergone CTfD treatment about their experience

Training Modalities

Didactic content, clinical analysis, Q&A, videos and role-play.

Key References

Couple Therapy for Depression, A clinician guide to integrative practice written by David Hewison, Christopher Clulow and Harriet Drake, Oxford University Press.

About the presenter

Kate Thompson is a couple psychoanalytic psychotherapist and senior staff member at Tavistock Relationships with over 20 years’ experience of therapy with couples and individuals. Currently heading up Couple Therapy for Depression Training of NHS practitioners, Kate is also clinical lead for TRs’ Parenting services. Kate has developed the model, Behavioural Couple Therapy for Alcohol Misuse, and delivered the government funded pilot training to practitioners. She has also worked in TR’s mentalization-based therapy service for separated parents in conflict; specialist adoption service; supervised TR’s violence project in Harrow and Parents as Partners, a group intervention for couples. Registered with BPC and BACP, Kate writes for a variety of publications; co-edited ‘Engaging Couples: New Directions in Therapeutic Work with Families’, (Routledge, 2018), and a Special Edition of Couple and Family Psychoanalysis on Divorce and Separation, (Phoenix, 2021). She is currently editing a book on parenting and couple dynamics. Her private practice is in South West London.

Sammantha Knight is a psychotherapist who works with individuals and couples in her private practice in London. She also provides training to Local Authorities on Reducing Parental Conflict and tutors’ students on the Talking Therapies High-Intensity Pilot for Couple Therapy for Depression at Tavistock Relationships. In addition to her clinical work with parents using Mentalization Based Techniques for Couple Therapy (MBT-PP/YPP) at Tavistock Relationships, Sammantha is responsible for training and supervising counsellors on the Couple Therapy for Depression course. Sammantha is registered with BACP and is a member of the Tavistock Relationships' Alumni body.

Who should attend

This one-day refresher workshop is suitable for those who have completed a five-day CTfD practitioner training and are completing or have completed accreditation casework.

Low Intensity clinical contact hours survey - BABCP Low Intensity Special Interest Group

Please click below if you are interested in contributing to the survey.

 

The BACP Low Intensity SIG are interested in the impact of clinical contact hours on Low Intensity/Wellbeing Practitioner wellbeing. This questionnaire contains six multi-choice questions and a free text box for you to share your experiences. The answers to these questions will help the BABCP SIG plan how to meet CPD topics and other developments within the SIG.  The SIG hope to produce a write up of the answers to this questionnaire to be shared with SIG members and to be used in training.

View Survey

This FREE conference is for Psychological Wellbeing Practitioners working in Talking Therapies for Anxiety and Depression services and is brought to you by Bespoke Mental Health in collaboration with the NHS England Talking Therapies National PWP Leads Network

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