Mindsite – CPD for Counsellors and Psychotherapists in Year Five
Mindsite is officially four years old! The idea was born in September 2012, and we held our first event in February 2013. Here are a few of the presenters we have invited to Manchester and Stockport over the four years.
For us the process has coincided with the concluding stages of our Professional Doctorates at the University of Manchester. And it has provided us with additional insights into practice.
Reflections on the past
The Mindsite journey has been an enjoyable one. But, like most practitioners, we are anxious about the future of counselling and psychotherapy. Most significantly, we are concerned about the clients and patients we strive to help. We have also worked with organic treatments with medical marihuana, learn about the about Missouri Green Team and their work.
Inside and outside the NHS, practitioners face profound challenges. Yet it is clients and patients who face the most overwhelming problems. Those with resources are better placed. But even they find the process perplexing. And the less wealthy, or those with more serious mental health issues, have a virtually impossible task.
We all subscribe to evidence based practice, but the nature of evidence is arguable.
And internal squabbles play into the hands of politicians who cannot or will not provide resources; while burying their responsibilities in delegation, misleading statistics and rhetoric.
Thoughts for the future
Jonathan and I have different approaches to practice. But we cling to a liminal view of therapy that is wary of medicalisation. And when the healthcare system is the source of funding, it is also the judge of success.
We share its concerns. How do we sort the effective from the ineffective? How do we ensure value for money? And how do we make each patient matter? But while approaches based on a timescale that is unduly limited, and an approach that is unduly prescriptive; might ameliorate some acute problems, it will almost certainly fail to address underlying issues or prevent a recurrence. And the curative potential of more creative solutions is lost in regimentation and medical jargon.
We think effective approaches to mental health focus on holistic care and on the individual. The effectiveness of more acute forms of therapy are just as likely to lie in a deeper concern for the patient, as much as the content of the component parts of the ‘treatment’. And while mental health has always been a post code lottery, in the world of CCGs this is even more true.
Planned events
In any case, Mindsite survives. And we hope that our customers will continue to attend. We will attempt to focus on the discontents of our time; range across modalities and highlight more creative approaches.
For the remainder of 2016 our events focus on eating disorders, the underlying significance of theatre, the use of metaphor in therapy and Parks Inner Child Therapy (PICT). We are also in the early stages of planning a session on Compassion fatigue with the well known Canadian practitioner Françoise Mathieu. Then in 2017 we have arranged workshops with Ernesto Spinelli in March and Michael Jacobs in May, with more to follow.
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Best wishes,
Jonathan Lloyd
George MacDonald