Archive for category: News and Events

Over the past year, the ICP has taken an active part in the continuing dialogue with other counselling and psychotherapy organisations which began in 1995. The Forum participants have gathered information and put together a matrix of information on accreditation standards and requirements. In so doing, areas of commonality and difference began to emerge.

In September 2006, following much research and debate, the Forum put forward the following proposal: –

That the Registration Board should have the embracing title of “Psychological Therapies”‚ and that two titles, that of “Psychotherapist” and “Counsellor”‚ would be protected under this Psychological Therapies registration Board.

All organisations represented were asked to vote on this proposal and 20 of the 22 organisations agreed. In November 2006, a letter was written to the Minister of State at the Department of Health and Children, Mr. Tim O’ Malley, outlining our proposal.

The Forum then began the task of separating out the baseline qualifications currently accepted by Counsellors and Psychotherapists, together with required hours of theory, supervised practice, personal therapy etc. At our March meeting, it was agreed that the two groupings would now meet separately to look at the information gathered and to try to agree a baseline that all psychotherapy organisations can agree to, with counselling groups doing the same.

At this point, there will need to be a lot of negotiation and diplomacy, but ICP is firmly committed to maintaining the standards set by the European Association of Psychotherapy, in order that our registration criteria will be accepted in Europe and practitioners who have achieved the European Certificate in other countries would be able to practice here.

The Forum aims to try to complete this task and bring further proposals to the Minister by the beginning of Summer 2007.

COGNITIVE BEHAVIOURAL PSYCHOTHERAPY

The philosophy underpinning this approach is that a person learns to act and think in certain ways as a result of their lifetime experiences and how they perceive those experiences. This learning is a life-long process.

Usually what we learn is adaptive and functional – we learn to become active participants in our lives, our society and our culture. However, occasionally we learn ways of thinking, feeling or behaving which hinder us in our development and prevent us from achieving our potential.

Sometimes a single event such as being bitten by a dog, or a car crash, will have major repercussions or, more often, experiences which stretch over a longer period of time, e.g. being bullied or being unemployed, can affect us emotionally in the long term. Such negative experiences and our responses to them can lead us to develop low self-esteem, unhappiness, bitterness, anxiety, passivity, aggression, perfectionism and so on. These, in turn, colour the way we perceive new experiences and at worst, if unchecked, can lead to such disorders as anxiety, clinical depression, eating disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder and panic disorder.

Clients seek help for a variety of reasons. Clients experiencing stress and anxiety with marked avoidance behaviour (i.e. behaviour that postpones an anxiety evoking event and can lead to handicaps in every day life), can change their way of behaving by becoming more outgoing and combat their fears with the help of individualised tailored cognitive behaviour therapy programme.

They may have to confront repeatedly what they fear, e.g. contamination fear where the sufferer avoids certain perceived contaminated objects, progressing from the least feared object to the most feared. Motivation to complete homework assignments is a key to success and recording their progress between sessions, facilitates the carry-over into their daily lives of the skills and insights achieved by the client during therapy.

This intervention and the willingness to explore new coping strategies are the ingredients for success.

Cognitive behaviour therapists also work with clients who have an intellectual disability. Each individual has the same rights and needs as everyone else in society. In the process they are helped to play a full part in society by extra teaching for the individual through a process of behaviour analysis. Sometimes problems can be compounded by physical disabilities, behavioural problems or communication deficits.

Within particular contexts treatment methods are used consistently, by all of those involved with the client, including the carer of the client. Carers may also have their own needs on a practical and emotional level that need addressing. This approach examines people’s behaviours in their living environment. It identifies the function of challenging behaviours, identifies how it benefits the individual, the source of the behaviour and what maintains it.

Cognitive behaviour therapists postulate that people can achieve change by working directly on their own patterns of thinking and behaviour. Due to negative lifetime experiences many individuals have learned distorted patterns of thought (patterns which hinder rather than help), so in therapy they need to learn more helpful and functional thought patterns.

How we think impacts on every aspect of our lives, from hopefulness regarding the future, to personal relationships, to how we see ourselves today. The emphasis in therapy is to loosen the hold a particular negative belief has on the client and engaging them in a re-evaluation of their perceptions and assumptions.

The progress of the therapy is interactive. The client and therapist work together developing hypotheses about the accuracy and or coping value of a variety of thoughts and behaviour. They often work together developing a healthier style of thinking, building coping skills, and reversing unproductive patterns of behaviour. Cognitive behaviour therapists are typically more active than those who practice other forms of therapy. They help structure sessions; give feedback, and coach clients on how to use CBT methods.

People who experience interpersonal difficulties can benefit from group work and some CBT therapist run:

• Anger management groups
• Assertiveness groups
• OCD groups
• Stress management
• Social skills training

Assessment is individualised for each client. It involves detailed questioning and the use of psychological questionnaires to enable the client and therapist define accurately the problem and set the goals of treatment. It focuses on the here and now, and is practical and pragmatic. The aim of therapy is to provide the client with the knowledge and techniques, which he/she can use now and in the future, and in effect, making the therapist redundant. Each client is given a detailed account of treatment options and their consent is sought before embarking on therapy. Registered practitioners adhere to a code of ethics and are committed to research and the development of theory within this sphere.

Overall, practitioners use the developing pool of knowledge in this field to resolve problems of living for any person, irrespective of intelligence or insight.

Constructivist Psychotherapy 

When people seek psychotherapy, they have a story to tell. It may be a troubled, hurt or angry story of a relationship, or of a life in distress. For many, it is an account of difficult life events, which work against the person’s sense of well-being, self-confidence and effectiveness.

There are many ways of responding to a client’s story, and different schools of therapy emphasise and engage differently with the presenting issues. A therapist working from a Constructivist standpoint will be informed by the philosophies and practices of Personal Construct Psychology, and other frames of thought which focus on daily living.

Perhaps the clearest hallmark of Constructivist and related schools of therapy, is the adapting of an invitational mode of enquiry, which assists clients in making sense of their experience. It is also a respectful theory, offering validation of the client’s own experiences. The therapist aims to understand the anticipations, both conscious and unconscious, which clients are using in their lives and which may be problematic for them. The therapist then works with the client(s) in a joint experiment, to develop alternative, less problematic anticipations and ways of acting.

George Kelly, founder of Personal Construct Psychology, articulated in 1965, a fundamental belief of therapists who work from a Constructivist perspective, “no one needs to be a victim of their biography”. Constructivist therapists work in a variety of settings with individuals, couples, families, organisations and wider groups.

In conjunction with the European Association of Psychotherapy, it has been decided that CPD can be taken in the following forms:

• Advanced or additional professional psychotherapy courses.
• Engagement in personal therapy, reflective practices etc.
• Professional supervision for psychotherapy practice/clinical/group work and peer supervision.
• Psychotherapy conference/symposium attendance.
• Professional activities in psychotherapy. (Being elected to a Board or a Committee and attending meetings).
• Participation in extra psychotherapy training as a supervisor/researcher/teacher.
• Self-experience/therapy in one of the modalities recognized by EAP

These are the domains in which CPD could be accrued. It is further recommended that minimum 250 hours shall consist of no more than 75 hours from any one category.

The introduction of Continuous Professional Development is particularly important in the current environment where there is an increasing scrutiny of the professional competence of all health care professionals including psychotherapists, with more transparent complaints procedures and more vigorous monitoring of fitness to practice issues within each profession.

European Certificate of Psychotherapy

Please see CPD Section of relevant Section Organisation. The ICP has been involved in the development of the European Certificate of Psychotherapy (ECP) in conjunction with the European Association for Psychotherapy (EAP). The European Certificate stipulates that the total duration of the training for psychotherapists is 3,200 hours spread over a minimum of seven years. This seven year period comprises an initial under-graduate component, or equivalent, followed by a specific psychotherapy training. Nearly 300 of the ICP members to date have been awarded the European Certificate. Many more applications are in process.

The European Association for Psychotherapy promotes the recognition of common standards of training for psychotherapists throughout Europe, and will ensure their mobility across member states. While the European Association for Psychotherapy does not have power to legally implement the certificate before it is adopted by member states, they have recommended it to the national co-ordinators of member states and welcome it as an initiative in establishing joint platforms which will facilitate the employment of migrants within the European Union.

About ECP (European Certificate of Psychotherapy)

There are two possible ways to apply for an ECP, one way is the Direct Award (DA) through one of the European Accredited Psychotherapy Training Institutes (EAPTIs), and the other way is to apply is through grandparenting procedure that involves recommendation from EAP National Awarding Organization (NAO) and European Wide Awarding Organization (EWAO).

About ECP (European Certificate of Psychotherapy)

How to Apply for An ECP

The ECP – Important Information for ECP (European Certificate of Psychotherapy) Application

Documents | ECP Application Forms by Grandparenting

CV Structure for ECP Application by Grandparenting

Notification by the NAO of Recommendations for the Award of the ECP by Grandparenting

Practitioner Registration Form for ECP

Systemic Family Therapy (FTAI) incorporates individual, couple and family therapy.

What is special about Family Therapy?
Family Therapy is the most popularly recognised descriptive title for a body of practice and theory which continues to evolve and to grow at an extraordinary rate. Originally, the approach was distinguished by the practice of including entire families in the therapy process rather than an individual client. This practice continues, but is not a necessary aspect of the approach.
The principle which informed Family Therapy from the time of its inception in the 1950s has been to transcend simple cause and effect explanations which located deficits within the individual, and to include those aspects of the client’s context in the therapy process which will enable them to manage, resolve or better understand their difficulty.
It is this ecological view which attends to the interconnectedness of people, of beliefs and of all things, which characterises Family Therapy rather than the number of people sitting in the therapy room.

How do Family Therapists view problems and reality?
Many Family Therapists seek to engage the clients in a collaborative exploration of their presenting dilemma, focusing on the beliefs, and the interactions which maintain the difficulty or which prevent its resolution. By better understanding the interconnectedness of the biological, the social and the psychological dimensions of the problem, choices are introduced, conflicts are transcended and new patterns of understanding are generated.

A significant part of each one’s experience is the beliefs, the language, the stories and values which constitute our life experience. We are not only born into a material and physical reality, but also into a multilayered complex weave of beliefs and behaviours, which for most of us are, initially at least, of a family nature. This strongly influences our developing ‘reality’. We are born into the world totally dependent on one or more caring adults, and if the constitutional and contextual aspects of our lives are supportive enough, we learn to operate more independently and to exercise choice in our lives more effectively. This requires an appreciation of the interdependence of our lives, of the world in which we live, and the limits and possibilities which it contains.
We constantly explore the limits and possibilities of relying on previous learning and exploring new ways and new beliefs. We may be strongly influenced to find ways of being which contrast with some of our significant life experiences, or we may repeat our experiences, often with the assumption that this is how the world is, and how everyone should be.

When two or more people live in close proximity, we can expect that differences, and inevitably conflicts, will ensue. This is part of the rich weave of our lives which continue to challenge us and to teach us.

Sometimes, our adult lives may be thrown into inner turmoil, we may experience self-doubts, destructive feelings or immobilising depression or anxiety. These disturbing experiences may be triggered by what would be relatively small or manageable difficulties for others, and even for ourselves in somewhat different circumstances. Such problems are frequently related to early life and usually early family aspects of our lives. Our difficulty trusting others, exercising choice or living with an adequate level of autonomy may be related to not having had sufficiently secure, loving or affirming experiences in our early family relationships.
More recent traumas, abuse, oppression or unresolved conflict may also contribute to distressing inner feelings, which can be successfully resolved in Family Therapy.

What do Family Therapists do?
Family Therapists universally employ the most inclusive frame to help clients make sense of their doubts or confusions. Some Family Therapists put most emphasis on exploring the beliefs, some the language and stories and some the repeating behaviour patterns. They may also elect to examine the attempted solutions or to focus attention on experiences which work well for the client, their successful solutions.

How many attend Family Therapy together?
The extent to which Family Therapists will emphasise including others in the process also varies. With relationship problems, we usually prefer to include the main participants. It is not uncommon for parents to successfully attend a series of consultations regarding one of their children, without the child being present.
Extended family members may be invited or partners or others who are significantly involved in the client’s life and difficulty. It is also common for individuals to attend alone, when the focus will include the significant relationships of their lives as the context of their emotional and psychological realities. Agreeing who will attend is usually an integral part of the exploratory process.

Some Family Therapists may also apply their systemic perspective to organisations such as schools, voluntary agencies, businesses and especially to family businesses. Consultation can help organisations to resolve intra organisations relationship problems and to address and to improve procedures and practices which influence their relationship with their consumers.
The systemic consultant’s focus will, again, include the context of the problem and can result in appreciating and fine tuning the ways in which the organisation responds to internal change and the range of changing external needs. The organisation, as the individual, can benefit by developing capacities of self-direction and responsivity.

Contact address:
Family Therapy Association of Ireland (FTAI)
73 Quinn’s Road
Shankill
Dublin 18
Tel: 01 272 2105 / 087 405 8492

Email: ftaioffice@nullgmail.com

web: www.familytherapyireland.com