The Medicalisation of Distress
Diagnosis, Formulation, and Relational Psychotherapy
NOW CLOSED
Saturday 4 March 2023
A live webinar with keynote speaker Dr Nancy McWilliams, with James Barnes, James Davies, and Lucy Johnstone
CE Credits: 4 hours
- Includes a subtitled recording of the event and a transcript, with access for a year (14 days post the event)
- Bookings close at 4:00am EST Wednesday 1 March
In the US and UK — and increasingly the rest of the world — our language, thinking, and responses to emotional and psychological distress have become almost completely framed in medical terms in the last few decades. Along with this shift, psychiatric drugs and limited formulaic psychotherapy have become the default modes of care.
READ MORE...Born out of the rejection of psychoanalysis and social psychiatric models in the 1980s, the shift was explicitly intended as a biomedical ‘revolution’. With the “decade of the brain,” a new era of enlightened mental health medicine was supposed to ensue. Yet, after decades of research and countless billions of dollars spent, not only has very little of scientific value resulted in terms of treatments, we are increasingly hearing about mental health “crises” and even “pandemics.” At the same time, more and more research has been supporting the centrality of the social and interpersonal factors that have traditionally been neglected by the medical model and medicalised therapies. Could the medical framing have been contributing to the problem? Has the power behind the medical model occluded the issues at hand and contributed to ongoing social injustice? Our presenters will try to address these and other questions in the hopes of starting this important conversation afresh.
FULL PROGRAMME
08.30 EST
Introductions
08.40
Dr Nancy McWilliams
Diagnosis for Therapy’s Sake: Inferential and dimensional assessment of psychological suffering
Dr. McWilliams will review her involvement over many years in trying to articulate and preserve clinically relevant ways of understanding people and their psychological problems. She argues that in recent decades, diagnostic taxonomies have reflected the interests of insurance companies, pharmaceutical corporations, governmental cost-cutters, and some academic researchers more fully than the needs of patients and clinicians. Despite empirical evidence that what matters most for therapy outcome are personality and relationship factors, contemporary diagnostic conventions have lent themselves to treatment that is increasingly objectifying and impersonal. She offers the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual (PDM-2) as an example of a clinically oriented classification system that is dimensional, inferential, and contextual.
09.30
Q&A
09.45
Break
10.00
Dr James Davies
Mental Health, Capitalism, and the Sedated of a Nation
Why has the medical model continued to expand and dominate mental health provision and public discourse while presiding over poor outcomes since its ascendancy in the 1980/90s? Why does this model continue to spread and institutionally thrive? Whose interests does it really serve: people in need or the deeper interests of our political economy? This seminar will propose some potential answers.
10.45
Q&A
11.00
Lucy Johnstone
The Power Threat Meaning Framework: a conceptual alternative to diagnosis
The Power Threat Meaning Framework is a co-produced document published by the British Psychological Society in 2018. It offers an alternative to models based on psychiatric diagnosis by demonstrating the links between wider social factors such as poverty, discrimination and inequality, along with traumas such as abuse and violence, and the resulting emotional distress. The Framework can be used as a way of helping people to create more hopeful narratives about their lives and their difficulties, instead of seeing themselves as blameworthy, weak, deficient or ‘mentally ill’. Our speaker will briefly outline its core principles.
11.45
Q&A
12.00
Break
12.15
James Barnes
The relational model in psychotherapy and the challenge to the medical model.
James Barnes will talk about the relational model in psychotherapy and the problems this poses for the medical model. He will suggest that the inherent individualism of the medical model not only makes it incompatible with relational thinking, but that the evident need for relational thinking means that the medical model has run its course. In response to the 1980s and the biomedical shift in psychiatry, psychoanalysis and psychotherapy turned relational. It is this model that should have won the day, he will argue, and it is this model that needs to be at the forefront of change going forward.
12.45
Q&A
12.55
Break
13.00
Panel Session and Q&A
13.30
End
FEES (USD)
Bookings close at 4:00am EST Wednesday 1 March
Live Webinar:
$110 (Member $55)
(Click here to become a member)
Includes a recording of the event.
CE
This event is accredited by:
- NBCC
- NYSED (Psychology)
- NYSED (Psychoanalysis)
- NYSED (Social Workers)
Certificates of attendance for 4 hours will be provided.
To receive the full CE credits, you are required to attend 100% of the live event. No partial credit will be given.
This event is NOT accredited by the following organisations:
- ASWB
Please note that if you are unable to attend all of the live event, you will need to undertake our event specific test in order to receive the CE certification. This will be made available soon after the live event has taken place.
Please contact events@conferonline.org for any further questions.
Confer has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 7136. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. Confer is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.
Confer is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Psychology as an approved provider of continuing education for Licensed Psychologists #PSY-0169
Confer Limited is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychoanalysts #P-0059.
Confer Limited is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers #SW-0729.
VENUE
This is a live online webinar using Zoom software. Zoom is free to download and use.
For more information about Zoom click here.
To download Zoom free of charge click here.
For special accommodations for individuals with disabilities see our FAQs.
SCHEDULE
Saturday
08.30 EST Introductions
08.40 Dr Nancy McWilliams
09.30 Q&A
09.45 Break
10.00 Dr James Davies
10.45 Q&A
11.00 Lucy Johnstone
11.45 Q&A
12.00 Break
12.15 James Barnes
12.45 Q&A
12.55 Break
13.00 Panel Session and Q&A
13.30 End
CONTENT LEVEL
- Intermediate
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
- Summarize the role of frameworks in ‘mental health’ care and treatment.
- Analyze the fundamental ideas behind the PDM2, the PTMF and the ‘Relational model’ and how they address some of the key issues with the medical model.
- Compare and contrast psychiatric descriptive diagnosis with more inferential and dimensional approaches to diagnostic assessment.
- Describe the clinical problems leading to the development of the Alternate DSM-5 Model for Personality Disorders.
- Consider personality in terms of themes rather than traits and apply that understanding to their patients.
TARGET
AUDIENCE
- Psychologists
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychotherapists
- Addiction Professionals
- Marriage and Family Therapists
- Psychiatrists
- Other related mental health professions.
BOOKING CONDITIONS
Regrettably, refunds cannot be given in any circumstances except as follows:
- You cancel in writing to info@conferonline.org 60 days before the first date of the event you have booked, in which case you will be entitled to a 100% refund.
- You cancel in writing to info@conferonline.org 30 days before the first date of the event you have booked, in which case you will be entitled to a 50% refund.
This does not apply to parts of an event such as a seminar within a series but only to a whole event or complete series. You may give your place to another person if you let us know that person's name at least 24 hours before the event begins.
We reserve the right to change a speaker at one of our conferences without offering a refund. However, if a solo presenter cancels we will offer a full refund OR transfer of your fee to another Confer event. If the entire event is canceled we will offer you a full refund.
We reserve the right to change our prices at any time. Regrettably, discounts offered after you made your booking cannot be claimed or applied retrospectively.