Salongen kommer att hållas på engelska och kommer att vara 90 minuter istället för 60.

Although exposure therapy is one of the most effective CBT interventions for the treatment of anxiety disorders, PTSD, and OCD, evidence suggests it is both underused and under-optimised in clinical practice. When it is used, a significant proportion of patients fail to benefit and others fear returns after treatment. Clinicians own anxiety about exposure, limited awareness of the evidence base or of how exposure works may contribute to it being avoided or delivered overly cautiously. In addition, patient factors that represent vulnerabilities to developing anxiety disorders may also limit the benefits gained from exposure therapy. It has been observed that, “fear extinction is a simple phenomenon with a complex machinery”. 

One potential barrier to optimising exposure is the lack of agreement about how it works. Within the field there are two major models proposing to explain how exposure yields clinical improvement, and to guide clinical practice: emotional processing theory (EPT), and the inhibitory retrieval model (IRM). Although often described as competitors, with one supposed to prioritise fear reduction and the other fear toleration, close inspection of the models reveals more commonalities than differences. Moreover, with their common view of exposure as a cognitive-behavioural, memory-centric process that prioritises prediction error learning, both models significantly overlap with behavioural experiments in cognitive therapy. The clinical implications of this are that therapists can augment existing skills in behavioural experiments with additional strategies emerging in the field to optimise exposure across its five elements: activation, formation, consolidation, generalisation, and retrieval.

In this talk, we will: 

- present a transtheoretical approach to understanding exposure, and

- provide clinical guidance on how to build on existing skills in behavioural experiments to optimise exposure across its five elements, supported by clinical illustrations

Om föreläsarna:

Matt Stalker is a BABCP accredited therapist, supervisor and trainer based in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. Since 2014 he has worked clinically at the centre for specialist psychological therapies (CSPT), a tertiary level NHS service for working age adults. He has also been an academic tutor on the postgraduate diploma in CBT at Newcastle University for a decade, specialising in anxiety disorders and clinical supervision.

George Wheatley [bild kommer] is a BABCP accredited therapist and graduate of the postgraduate diploma in CBT at Newcastle University. He provides therapy, supervision and training in a talking therapy service as part of the Devon partnership NHS foundation trust in Exeter, England.

Föreläsningen sker online via Zoom på den här länken: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84663417061?pwd=cExkVkl6d3N4ZzlBTjViZlJTdzJlZz09&fbclid=IwAR1kxTvIexw1YuAhf_0i1vvF9Vj0p8B99yOH2zt8SbYqaZp3opVHjL8mlGU#success