training

UPDATE ON THE GROUP COMMITTEE'S WORK
A committee on Group Schema Therapy was established by the ISST Board of Directors in 2011. I was appointed as chair and over the year we grew to include: Jeff Young, Ida Shaw, George Lockwood, Poul Perris, Neele Reiss, Gerhard Zarbock, Christine Zens, Michiel van Vreeswijk, Eelco Muste, Kerry Beckley, Heather Fretwell, Friederike Vogel, Marco Nill with Hannie van Genderen and Arnoud Arntz as our advisers. We worked this year on a number of group related issues. We formulated recommendations for the ISST Board of Directors regarding a certification in Group ST. Neele led the work on identifying critical components and core interventions of the GST model for BPD. Michiel led the attempt to identify the models of Group ST being used and their stage of development. Gerhard is leading the work on developing the Group STRS we need for research and to institute certification. Our report will go to the board in January and will be posted on the website. We hope to have a meeting of schema therapists interested in Group ST at the ISST congress to further identify the group work being done and to facilitate research and training collaborations.

UPDATE ON THE GST MODEL
I know that I enjoy reading about what other schema therapists around the world are doing as it helps me feel connected to our community. This blog post is intended to fill people in on the development of GST (the abbreviation we are using for the model of group we developed for BPD) and opportunities for collaboration and training with this model. We hope that it is accepted in that spirit and that others working with Group ST will add their information.

This has been an active year for those of us working with the GST model The year began for Ida and I in January with a 2 day workshop at the Schema Therapy Institute NYC, which included Jeff and Wendy as participants along with many of the senior schema therapists connected with the NY and NJ institutes. We are grateful for Jeff’s support and the opportunity to begin the year at the institute where ST began. Needless to say, it was a very interesting and thought provoking workshop and the beginning of discussion about adapting the GST model for other patient populations and settings. A short paper we wrote with Jeff comparing individual ST and GST was also discussed. Poul Perris and Neele Reiss joined us for the training and discussions.

In February we took GST to Australia. Chris Lee was our host for a 3 day workshop in Sydney and 4 days in Perth. The Perth training included the multi-site GST for BPD trial therapists. This is the five country, 14 site trial led by Arnoud and Joan that was planned at the 2008 ISST Conference in Coimbra. There are two sites in Perth. In Sydney we had the pleasure of having a number of experienced group therapists participating. We will be back in November 2012 for a 2 day Introductory Workshop in Brisbane and a 3 day Workshop II in Sydney.

The next few months we worked furiously to finish the manuscript of Group Schema Therapy for Borderline Personality Disorder: A Step by Step treatment Manual and Patient Workbook so that it would be published in time for the ISST Congress. With the help of George Lockwood, Heather Fretwell and Neele Reiss, who read our many “unrelenting standards” driven rewrites, we made the deadline! The treatment manual by Wiley comes out in April 2012. Michiel van Vreeswijk, Jenny Broersen and Marjon Nadort also completed their edited volume Wiley- Blackwell Handbook of Schema Therapy, which has a number of chapters describing approaches to using ST in groups, including our GST model. There is a case study by Neele Reiss, Gitta Jacob and Joan of a BPD patient treated in the Intensive individual plus GST approach used in the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Medical Center Mainz. The Schema Therapy Handbook will also be out by Spring and is already on Amazon.de for pre-publication ordering.

In June we were back in Maastricht for a 3 day workshop and a special 2 day workshop for Creative therapists. It was the second workshop for the Creative therapists and a very productive opportunity for us to again see how specialists in the various experiential therapies work with modes. We took away new ideas for group work. We also held a day-long supervision for therapists participating in the multi-site study. These supervision days occur throughout the year at different locations as they are part of the training plan of the multi-site BPD trial. We think that supervising therapists in a group when group is the subject makes an important training contribution.

In August we gave a one day workshop Klinik für Psychiatrie und Psychotherapie, Lubeck (and saw where marzipan is made!) A landmark event in GST took place at IVAH in Hamburg where we made a DVD set: Group Schema Therapy: An Innovative Approach to Treating Patients with Personality Disorders in Groups (demonstrated with BPD). Gerhard Zarbock was the producer and driving force behind the project with Vivian Rahn and Christine Zens. We had a professional director in Nana Novosad and her crew, which included a make-up artist who put scars and tattoos on our “BPD patient”actors”. Ida and I would not have been able to make the DVD without IVAH’s help and our schema therapist friends who played patients: Gerhard, Christine and Vivian joined by Eva Fassbinder, Niclas Wedemeyer, Friederike Vogel, Brigitte Haaf and Poul Perris. I am happy to announce that the 7 hour DVD set will be available in January. Inquiries can be made to schemadvd@aol.com. Wendy sent the flyer describing the set to the listserv also. The DVD includes a 90 minute typical BPD group session, clips of the core interventions of GST and an interview with Ida and I by Vivian. We hope that it will be helpful for schema therapists interested in how GST works. It was great fun making it with our friends and we really appreciate all the hard work that went into this project and the funds from IVAH that were crucial to the idea being realized. We gave a 2 day Introductory GST workshop at IVAH and a supervision for the multi-site therapists. We will be back at IVAH for a one day Introduction to GST (March 13) and a 3 Day Workshop II (March 14-16).

We had our first London workshop with Chris Hayes and Arnie Reed in September affiliated with their Schema Therapy Workshops. We will be back there soon for a one day Introduction (March 6) and a 3 day GST II workshop (March 7-9) for those who have attended workshop I. The first London workshop included therapists who travelled from Israel, Italy and Greece.

October saw us in Wil, Switzerland with Neele for a second workshop with Christoph Fuhrhans at Schematherapie Ostschweiz Cliena Littenheid. We consulted to his team as they are adapting GST to use with mixed PD groups and plan a pilot study on their inpatient unit. Since they have a certified DBT unit, their studies will allow us to compare the two group approaches directly – an important step in the ST research. We will be back at Clienia Littenheid September 5-9 2012 for an Advanced Workshop.

Another program adapting the GST approach to mixed PD is that of Eelco Muste at de Viersprong. We spent 4 days in October with Eelco and his therapy team – training and planning the integration of GST with the schema based group model Eelco and associates developed and have been using. We think that the combination of the mode and schema focus is important for broadening GST beyond BPD. We realized that when we tested GST on severe BPD patients we were also treating their numerous Axis I and Axis II symptoms. This suggests to us that GST is a good fit for some other PDs particularly those frequently comorbid with BPD and some axis I disorders like Eating disorders and PTSD, with some adaptation for level of emotional awareness. While in Halsteren we also gave a supervision day for the multi-site BPD trial.

Each visit added something to the original GST model for BPD. In NYC with Jeff we explored adapting GST to treat healthier patients. With Gerhard and Christine we further developed our thinking on trauma work in GST. With Chris and Arnie we had the opportunity again to work with therapists from forensic settings and look at the adaptations of GST that setting requires. With Christoph and Neele we explored GST applications for Cluster C and Eating disorder patients. With Eelco we did the same, and we were reminded of the role of schemas in group work and the need to make it more explicit in GST. With the creative therapists in Maastricht and de Viersprong, Ida was particularly happy to add some new experiential techniques to GST. We discussed the need to have psychotherapists and creative therapists in the same workshop, since they are likely to constitute the group therapist pair in most clinical settings. This pairing could solve the problem that we are hearing about as we travel - of sites not being able to have two psychotherapists in the same group. We were reminded of how ideal it can be to have a psychotherapist by training paired with a creative therapist. That is how Ida and I began 25 years ago – combining our different foundations and interventions to have a complete approach that like individual ST integrates experiential work with cognitive and behavioral change.

Schema Therapists who collaborate with us have also taken GST to additional meetings and countries. Heather Fretwell gave a presentation at the American Psychiatric Association meeting in Hawaii this year and with Neele Reiss gave a GST workshop at EABCT in Reykjavik, Iceland. Neele with Arnoud chaired a symposium on GST at that meeting. Neele has been busy presenting papers and giving workshops on GST with Friederike Vogel in Germany and Switzerland. Together with Marco Nill and Brigitte Haaf, they established IPSTI-Mainz and were certified as an ISST Training center. They are initiating their training program in 2012 and plan to have GST as one of their areas of specialty. Heather and Neele accomplished having a workshop on GST accepted for the American Psychiatric Association annual meeting in Philadelphia, 2012. Heather makes regular presentations in Indiana on GST and the BASE group program she directs at Midtown CMHC, which has an enrollment of 100 patients with BPD. She is adapting GST for patients with severe dissociative disorders with Ida and one of her psychiatric residents in training. A pilot of this program is about to begin and will hopefully be presented at the May congress.

Ida and I are happy to announce that this year we joined George Lockwood to become the Indianapolis Center of the Schema Therapy Institute Midwest (STIM) founded by George with STIM- Kalamazoo. We gave a one day workshop in May for the psychology department of Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis IUPUI) and a summer course for clinical psychology graduate students at the University of Indianapolis. We were invited to do this university training because ST has been acknowledged as having a “moderate evidence base” by the American Psychological Association, Clinical psychology division. We will begin to provide training through the Indianapolis Center in June 14-16, 2012. We are joined also by Heather Fretwell and the Center for BPD Treatment & Research- Indiana University School of Medicine and Midtown Community Mental Health Center as partners in this training plan. Feel free to contact us at STIM-Indpls@sbcglobal.net or check our website for more information.

Our plan is to continue to provide GST training in the US and at key collaborating ST institutes in Europe and Australia, which are also committed to GST training and research. To this end, in collaboration with Neele, Gerhard, Christine, and Poul, we developed an organized curriculum for GST training and supervision. This curriculum is currently being offered in Hamburg at IVAH, London with Schema Therapy Workshops, Switzerland with Schematherapie Ostschweiz at the Cliena Littenheid and in Australia (Sydney & Brisbane) with Chris Lee. Plans are being made for 2012 workshops in Maastricht, Mainz at IPSTI-Mainz and in Stockholm at the Swedish Institute for CBT & Schema Therapy. We hope to be able to offer GST training twice a year at these institutes. The GST curriculum and training schedule are on our website http://www.BPD-home-BASE.org

We love the opportunity to interact with schema therapists all over the world and to continue learning and improving the GST model. The multi-site trial sites in the Netherlands and Germany are well underway and Australia has begun. In the US we are still fighting to secure funds, which feels like an uphill battle with the National Institute of Mental Health. As everywhere, funds for research and treatment are shrinking in the US. On a positive note, Ida has been greatly enjoying supervising the GST work of the multi-site therapists. We also offer skype supervision for therapists outside of the trial. A number of new collaborations for research and treatment manuals came out of our travels. In addition, with the Group ST Committee we have planned some interesting submissions on Group ST for the 2012 ISST Conference. We will submit proposals for symposia the new applications of our GST model and an overview of the various models of Group ST. Ida is organizing a symposium on Creative Therapy and GST. We are happy to have been invited to present a ½ day pre-congress workshop on Limited reparenting in GST on May 17th.

We welcome your comments on what we have written here and invite you to add information on other Group ST activities.

Happy Holidays to all of you and see you hopefully in New York!

Joan Farrell & Ida Shaw

Here you get access to ISST certified training programs ordered by countries. The listing is preliminary, so please check back later to find more registered programs.

Australia
Schema Therapy Training Australia
Chris Hayes and Susan Simpson
Website- www.schematherapytraining.com
Email- info@schematherapytraining.com

France
(at the University of Lyon, Faculty of Medicine. Director: Pr Martine Bouvard)
Teachers: Elmer Goudsmit, MD, PhD (Luxemburg) psygoud@pt.lu , Firouzeh Mehran, PhD (Paris) firouzehmehran@yahoo.com , and Bernard Pascal, MD, PhD (Grenoble) berpas@free.fr
7 sessions during one year, beginning on October 2010.

Greece:
Greek Society of Schema Therapy,
17 Georgiou Sissini str. Athens, Greece.
Psychiatric Department of the Medical University of Athens
Contact info: Dr. Ioannis Malogiannis,phone: 00306945898082
imalog@hol.gr

Germany:
www.verhaltenstherapie.de/de/fachgruppen/fachgruppe-schematherapie/liste... (Enter to open the listing)

Italy:
Società Italiana per la Schema Therapy SIST & Istituto di Scienze Cognitive srl
Dott.Alessandro Carmelita
Telefono: 079/230449
Mobile phone: 3939221465
Email: schematherapyitalia@gmail.com
Isc@istitutodiscienzecognitive.it
Website: www.schematherapyitalia.com
www.istitutodiscienzecognitive.it

Netherlands:
G-kracht, psychomedisch centrum (Michiel van Vreeswijk, Delft)

Van Genderen Opleidingen (Hannie van Genderen, Maastricht)
For more information about courses on individual and group Schema Therapy, please contact h.vangenderen@home.nl

Norway:
St. Olavs Hospital (Gunilla K. Fosse, MD, PhD,Trondheim)
Telephone (work) +4773865400, Email gunilla.fosse@ntnu.no

South Africa:
Schema Therapy Institute of South Africa
David Edwards
Department of Psychology, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, Eastern Cape
David Edwards’ website at the University- http://www.ru.ac.za/psychology/staff/academic/professordaveedwards
For information about training in schema therapy in South Africa, email him at d.edwards@ru.ac.za

Sweden:
Swedish Institute for CBT & Schema Therapy
(Poul Perris, MD; Carl Gyllenhammar, MD)
Contact info: birgitta.aller@cbti.se

Switzerland:
Institute and Training Center for Schema Therapy Psychiatric University Clinics, Basel (UPK)

Institut für Schematherapie Ostschweiz at the Cliena-clinic in Littenheid

Turkey:
PsikoNET Psychotherapy and Training Center, Istanbul - Turkey (Alp Karaosmanoglu)

United Kingdom:
Schema Therapy Training (Vartouhi Ohanian, London 2008-onwards)
Schema Therapy Workshops (Chris Hayes and Arnie Reed, London)

USA:
Schema Therapy Institute of NYC (Jeff Young, et.al.)

The NJ Institute of Schema Therapy/The Cognitive Therapy Center of NJ (Wendy Behary, New Jersey)

Schema Therapy Center of New Orleans (Merrie Pearl, LCSW)

Schema Therapy Institute Midwest
Kalamazoo Center:George Lockwood
http://www.schematherapymidwest.com

Indianapolis Center: Joan Farrell; Ida Shaw
http://www.BPD-home-BASE.org

Look here for a Registry of ISST approved Supervisors.

To become an ISST-certified Schema Therapist on the standard or advanced level you will need to attend an ISST-approved certification training program in order to satisfy the ISST-requirements you find in the PDF below. Look here for Approved Training Programs. If you want to apply based on individual studies you are responsable that your personal curriculum contains all the required content. See more details and explanations in the passage at the end of the page or enter here. Enter here to access the New Application Forms.

Members, who achieve the advanced certification and wish to become trainers/supervisors in ISST-approved training programs must participate in a "Supervisor Training Workshop"" via skype teaching (or in-person where available). You will find the content of the supervisor training in Wendy´s slides and more information in the section "guideline for certification (training program)" in the top navigation or if you enter here. Tape Raters find the STCRS there too.

In an effort to clarify the confusion regarding applying for ISST certification, I have posted the “steps for application” on the ISST Web-Site and below…

If you have completed your requirements for Standard or Advanced level certification you will need to take the following steps:

1. Enter here to access the new application form.
2. Request 2 letters of verification to be sent from (1) your supervisor who worked with you during the required 20 or 40 hours of supervision. And (1) from your tape rater. Both letters need only to be about 2-3 lines stating that the applicant has satisfied all of the requirements of their certification training, supervision, and has received a rating of (?) on each of their final taped sessions.
3. A copy of the final schema therapy competency rating scales should also be included in the packet.
4. Your name and credentials as you would like them to appear on your certificate, for example: John Smith, PhD or
John Smith, PhD – “Master of the Universe”
5. Where should we mail your certificate – please supply a mailing address.
Or if you prefer to have it e-mailed to you and you print it out on the paper of your choice, this is fine too.
6. If you would like to be placed on the “public” registry on the ISST Web-Site:
We will need:
 Name/Credentials
 E-Mail Address
 Telephone Number
 Location: Address or General Vicinity
 Area of Specialization (if applicable)

Remember that the register is open to be viewed by anyone visiting the site who may be looking for a certified schema therapist!

All of the information contained above should be sent to Hannie van Genderen (Training Coordinator – ISST Board) hannie.vangenderen@home.nl

Also –
You must be a member of the ISST to receive your certification.

Warmest Wishes –
Wendy

Wendy T. Behary, Director
The Cognitive Therapy Center Of New Jersey
The NJ Institute For Schema Therapy
ISST Coordinator of Training/Certification/Supervision
28 Millburn Avenue
Springfield, New Jersey 07081, USA
(973) 218-1776 x807
(973) 376-7726 - fax
Specializing in Issues of Narcissism - www.disarmingthenarcissist.com