The application of Schema Therapy to forensic contexts has been a relatively recent innovation that has shown particular promise in treating clients hitherto regarded as ‘untreatable’. Forensic environments differ significantly from clinical ones, making the therapy process complicated and challenging. The practitioner not only has to navigate a generally unmotivated and volatile client group but balances the needs of an institution for ‘offence-specific’ treatment and risk reduction for the treatment of genuine mental health problems. Additionally, practitioners often have to contend with a toxic workplace culture, where their judgements and perceptions can be questioned or minimised, putting many practitioners at risk of being isolated and vulnerable to manipulation or exploitation by the prevalent antisocial and psychopathic personalities in these contexts.
As they say “better the devil you know” – this webinar seeks to arm you with knowledge and skills to make sense of these challenging circumstances.
Sub-Topics:
- The critical differences between the clinical and forensic contexts
- How to deal with these challenges as a practitioner.
- Three common personality presentations (Paranoid, Antisocial and Psychopathic) in terms of the ‘typical mode model’, and their general relationship to offending behaviours.
- Specific strategies for engaging unmotivated forensic clients
- The critical concepts of ‘risk assessment’ and ‘offence-paralleling behaviour’ will be explained and applied to a case study.
