The Heroic Agencies Vision
We envision a future where clients' heroic stories overshadow descriptions of illness and client-directed partnerships revolutionize "mental health" as we know it.
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June 10-12, 2004
Click here to view photos from the conference
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WORKSHOP TOPICS
Barry has a wide range of video examples and can tailor any of these presentations to your particular interests and needs—from short presentations to several day trainings or to specific areas like substance abuse or family work. These workshops go beyond the basics and combine didactic, experiential, and video case material to convey the ideas and skills.
PSYCHOTHERAPY WITH “IMPOSSIBLE” CASES
THE EFFICIENT TREATMENT OF THERAPY VETERANS
We have all encountered clients who remained unmoved by treatment. These “veterans” evoke a mixture of compassion and exasperation that can blend to a belief in “impossibility.” Veterans, in some ways, are casualties of our treatment technologies. When therapy is ineffective, it adds to the veteran's burden by "proving" the problem's characterological origin. Diagnoses are tendered as retaliatory explanations for treatments gone awry--“purple hearts” of failed therapy. Based on a five year experiential study of impossibility, this workshop presents the pathways to impossibility and how to avoid them, and offers a pragmatic application of a single invaluable lesson taught to us by our clients: success can occur with impossibility when therapy honors the client’s theory of change.
THE HEART AND SOUL OF CHANGE
WHAT WORKS IN THERAPY
Within the field itself, and especially between different theoretical schools, quarrels and contentious claims continue unabated. At the root of many controversies is the important question of what works. Is its efficacy based on the singular curative powers of specialized techniques or do other variables account for the change occurring in therapy? As it turns out, the answer is not to be found in the different languages, theories, or procedural differences of the field's warring camps. Instead, it lies in the pantheoretical or common factors--the ingredients of effective therapy, shared by all orientations. Bypassing theoretical cleverness and technical wizardry, this workshop provides a detailed recipe for enhancing what works based upon the empirically validated guidelines of how change actually happens in therapy.
THE FUTURE OF MENTAL HEALTH PRACTICE
More than any time before, payers, consumer groups, and legislators are putting what therapists do under scrutiny. All the while our autonomy as a profession, our very identity, is assimilated in the medical model. The result: Clients are reduced to diagnostic labels with fewer options and therapists become subjects of the empire enforcing practices in which they do not believe. This presentation challenges the medical model and offers an alternative based in outcome that amplifies and incorporate clients’ voices in the services they receive. Recent research shows that using client-based outcome feedback increases effectiveness by an incredible 65%. Translating the political ramifications of this research, Barry Duncan calls for nothing less than a paradigm shift—a shift that not only improves outcome one client at a time but also assigns those we serve key roles in determining the way therapy is both delivered and funded