£40

ORGANISATION RATE

£30

INDEPENDENT PRACTITIONER RATE

£20

FULL-TIME STUDENT/ CARER RATE

£10

SERVICE USER/ BENEFITS RATE

To book places please follow the link below.

Over the past three years there has been significant development of the Open Dialogue approach from Western Lapland in the NHS and in public mental health services internationally (see below for more information about the approach). Open Dialogue UK has been working for the past four years to further this development, and 10 trusts are now represented on one of our two training programmes (largely teams from Early Intervention in Psychosis and Crisis/Home Treatment services). For more details on our training programmes planned for 2017 please see here.

On 6 March 2017, a variety of NHS professionals, along with Nick Putman, founder of Open Dialogue UK, will be introducing the work that they are doing to develop the Open Dialogue approach. All of these practitioners are participating in one of our training programmes. The following professions will be represented at this event: psychiatry, psychology, psychotherapy, nursing and peer support – see below for biographies of participants.

The seminar will serve as an introduction to the Open Dialogue approach, the work that is being done in the NHS, and the trainings that are underpinning these developments (see programme below for further details). We are running this seminar at a low cost in the hope that everyone who wishes to attend will be able to.

WHAT IS THE OPEN DIALOGUE APPROACH?

The Open Dialogue approach is both a philosophical/theoretical approach to people experiencing a mental health crisis and their families/networks, and a system of care, developed in Western Lapland in Finland over the last 25-30 years. In the 1980s psychiatric services in Western Lapland were in a poor state, in fact they had one of the worst incidences of the diagnosis of schizophrenia in Europe. Now they have the best documented outcomes in the Western World. For example, around 75% of those experiencing psychosis have returned to work or study within 2 years and only around 20% are still taking antipsychotic medication at 2 year follow-up.

Remarkably, Open Dialogue is not an alternative to standard psychiatric services, it is the psychiatric service in Western Lapland. This has afforded a unique opportunity to develop a comprehensive approach with well-integrated inpatient and outpatient services. Working with families and social networks, as much as possible in their own homes, Open Dialogue teams work to help those involved in a crisis situation to be together and to engage in dialogue. It has been their experience that if the family/team can bear the extreme emotion in a crisis situation, and tolerate the uncertainty, in time shared meaning usually emerges and healing/recovery is possible. Open Dialogue has drawn on a number of theoretical models, including systemic family therapy, dialogical theory and social constructionism.

For more information about the Open Dialogue approach, please see our Questions and Answers page.