Assessment, Risk Assessment, and Intervention, in Crisis Situations

Assessment, Risk Assessment, & Intervention, in Crisis Situations is an accredited course from the Association for Psychological Therapies.
About this Event
Executive Summary:

This course is designed for people who have predominantly short term contact with clients, either by phone or face to face. Typically those clients will be in or approaching a psychotic episode, suffering with a personality disorder, or so distressed that they may harm themselves or attempt suicide. The key aspects of these disorders are therefore covered, and, in particular, major effective strategies for effective brief intervention. Additionally the principles behind these interventions are covered, to facilitate long term beneficial impact, along with risk assessment in such high stress situations.

Course Objectives/Agenda Items:How to engage effectively with the person who is in crisis. The key concepts covered in this section (a) mood-matching (how to match your mood to someone who may be highly agitated without becoming agitated yourself), (b) validation and genuinely understanding what is going on.

Use of open and closed questions; in crisis situations both of these have important uses over and above gaining information.
How to identify the trigger for the crisis and maybe modifying the person's response to it.
How to help the person determine whether they are making a good response to their crisis and what better response might be possible.
The nature and importance of the (crucial) encouragement and support. The key features of specific illnesses notably (a) psychosis and (b) personality disorder. How to talk to people who are in a highly delusional state (including talking within the person's belief system) and how to respond to overt threats of suicide and non-suicidal self-injury.
The key nature of Hope and how to give and maintain it.
Medium-term interventions with people in crisis including: (a) helping people learn from their experiences, (b) helping people relax and 'self-soothe' and (c) problem-solving.
The appropriate 'manner' for professionals working in crisis: the friendly professional versus the professional friend.
Finishing. How to finish contact in a constructive and courteous way.

What you receive as a result of attending the training:

You will be registered as having attended the course, thereby gaining APT's Level 1 accreditation, and receive a certificate to this effect. The accreditation gives you access to online resources associated with the course and access to the online exam if you wish to uprate your APT accreditation to Level 2.

Your registration lasts indefinitely, and your accreditation lasts for 3 years and is renewable by sitting an online refresher which also upgrades your accreditation to APT Level 2 if you are successful in the associated online exam.

Your accreditation is given value by the fact of over 100,000 people having attended APT training. See APT accreditation for full details.