Name: Formulating Psychosis in the Context of Trauma with Professor Craig Steel, Oxford University
Start: 2024-11-01T09:30:00-04:00
End: 2024-11-01T17:00:00-04:00
Location: Cathedral of Learning, the University of Pittsburgh

Formulating Psychosis in the Context of Trauma with Professor Craig Steel, Oxford University

Workshop Description
This workshop will be based on a cognitive behavioral approach to understanding psychosis. The first session will focus on a developmental formulation and how early stressful life events contribute to the development and maintenance of psychotic symptoms. The second session will build on this approach to consider the overlap between the symptoms of PTSD and psychosis, and the extent to which varied psychotic presentations can be understood as complex reactions to trauma. The afternoon sessions will highlight the different possible treatment approaches for working with trauma in psychosis. These will include adapted interventions such as ‘reliving’ and ‘imagery rescripting’ as well as a ‘voice dialogue’ approach to working with voices. The aim of the workshop is to ‘demystify’ these approaches to treatment and to signpost to further available training.
Presenter Bio
Craig completed a PhD at King’s College London (1998) and qualified as a clinical psychologist (2000) at Royal Holloway, University of London. His clinical and research work has focused on the development and evaluation of psychological treatments for psychosis. He has a particular interest in developing models than enable us to ‘make sense’ of psychotic symptoms within the context of the reaction to traumatic life events. Current research includes developing a ‘voice dialogue’ approach to working with distressing voice hearing experiences, working with a London refugee service to help evaluate trauma interventions and working with colleagues across Europe and the UK to evaluate an imagery-based intervention aimed at helping people diagnosed with bipolar disorder better regulate their mood.
He is a member of the Scientific Committee of the British Association of Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy and Associate Editor to the Journal Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy. He is a Chartered Clinical Psychologist, a member of the Division of Clinical Psychology and a member of the Health and Care Professionals Council. He is also an accredited Cognitive Behavioural Therapist.