Resources
Some resources will require a password as these are from private events which required registration and payment, or are being used in ongoing research trials.
Treatment manual: A trauma-based cognitive therapy protocol for young children – CBT-3M
This treatment manual for Cognitive Behavioural Therapy -3M (Meanings, Memories and Management) is designed for children aged 3-8 years who have experienced a single traumatic event and have developed PTSD that has persisted for 3 months or longer. Any on-going threat to the child needs to be resolved before therapy commences. This treatment is not suitable for the treatment of children who have experienced multiple, complex traumas, including chronic sexual or physical abuse.
This manual is based on the treatment developed by Smith, Yule, Perrin, & Clark (2006) to treat PTSD in children aged 8-18 years, and has incorporated aspects of the treatment devised by Scheeringa, Weems, Cohen, Amaya-Jackson, and Guthrie (2002) to treat PTSD in children aged 3-6 years. These two manuals have been integrated and adapted for the 3-8 year old age group. Parts of this manual have been taken directly from Patrick Smith’s manual and some materials have been taken directly from the ASPECTS trial http://c2ad.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/projects/aspects.html).
Therapists delivering this manual will need to have prior training in cognitive therapy.
Conference on Transdiagnostic approaches to Mental health challenges.
MRC: Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit.
September 2018
The full programme from the 2018 Conference on Transdiagnostic Approaches to Mental Health Challenges can be found here.
We have made all of the speakers’ presentation slides from the conference available which can be found here (requires password).
Mark Brown and André Tomlin from The Mental Elf Service conducted interviews with speakers and attendees from the conference. You can listen to the podcasts here.
Treatment manual: Emotion- and Memory-Processing Group Intervention for PTSD with complex features
Dr Georgina Clifford (MRC-CBU, The Havens, and London Trauma Specialists)
Friday July 7th 2016.
Following on from this workshop, Dr Clifford has kindly provided the manual from the group programme: Complex PTSD Emotion and Memory Group. This resource will require a password, which will be issued on request. For more information contact: drgeorginaclifford@gmail.com
Treatment manual: Autobiographical Memory Flexibility (MemFlex) training
MemFlex is a primarily self-guided programme which consists of one 45-minute face-to-face introductory session followed by eight workbook-based sessions which are completed at home over a 6-8 week period. The programme aims to improve recall of positive specific information and reduce negative overgeneralisation that is typical of depression.
The workbook structures repeated practice in recall of memories to positive and emotionally benign words, pictures, and scenarios. Once balanced retrieval has been reinitiated, through improving access to specific memories of positive and neutral emotional valence (to balance out the tendency to retrieve negative generalisations), participants elaborate the detail and emotion of recalled memories before flexibility is trained by guiding the participant in moving between specific and general memories. Total therapist time-commitment for service delivery is 60 minutes over 1 session and 1 phone call two weeks after beginning the intervention to check progress and troubleshoot any difficulties with completion.
Early evaluation of MemFlex has demonstrated promising treatment effects for depression.
For more information contact: Caitlin.Hitchcock@mrc.cbu.ac.uk
A protected version of the Memflex workbook can be available to view: MemFlex Workbook
Treatment manual: The Method-of-Loci to enhance recollection of positive and self-affirming memories
The Method‐of‐Loci (MoL) is an ancient mnemonic device that relies on familiar spatial relationships between locations. To use the technique, you start by choosing a familiar location or route that you are easily able to navigate yourself around in your mind (e.g. your journey to work/college, your home, your jogging route), and identify a number of focal
points (loci) along the route (e.g. the front door, hallway, kitchen – if the route was a house). Each locus along the route is then combined with some to‐be‐remembered information by generating a vivid and bizarre image to link the two. The more surprising and strange the imagery, the better the material is generally remembered. To recall the target information from memory, you simply mentally navigate along the route and bring to mind the images generated in order to access the information required.
Given the well‐documented memory biases experienced by depressed individuals, we have put together this short guide which outlines a step‐by‐step approach that you can use to teach your clients how to use the MoL. We intend for the MoL to be used as a simply strategy that can be taught within more comprehensive cognitive‐behavioural treatment packages.
We recommend using the MoL with the purpose of aiding access to positive and self‐affirming memories for patients who have a strong negative‐memory bias and have great difficulty in bringing to mind such material. The MoL as an emotion regulation strategy is best used with individuals coming out of a depressive episode for use in the day‐to‐day. Ideally, the
MoL should be taught at least a few weeks before therapy terminates to allow for the technique to be consolidated and rehearsed while therapy is on‐going, and reviewed in the final session as a relapse prevention strategy.
You can access our step‐by‐step guide of how to explain and teach the MoL by clicking here: Dalgleish Method of loci CPS
Previous literature on the topic:
Treatment Manual: Memory Specificity Training (MEST)
This study tested a new programme called Memory Specificity Training (MEST) which tried to improve the ability to remember specific details, so that depression can improve. The study compared MEST to a Supportive Counselling group. We compared MEST to a Counselling group so we could see how MEST holds up against the sort of treatments that the NHS is currently offering.
Overall, participants experienced an improvement in depressive symptoms. As we would expect, Counselling does help improve depression but we also found MEST did too. However the two approaches improved depression about the same amount. So MEST did just as well as Counselling, but was not better than Counselling at improving symptoms.In terms of the number of people who lost their diagnosis of depression, we found that roughly 10% more people in the MEST group compared to the Psychoeducation group no longer met diagnostic criteria for depression.
To read more, please click here: MEST paper
Click here for the MEST treatment manual.
Click here for the MEST Workbook.