‘don’t listen to the story treat the symptom’ that is the advise to be given to IAPT’s PWP’s attending a 3 hour workshop on November 28th 2019 on groupwork. It reflects similar advise given to IAPT clients attending a 6 week course on ‘Understanding PTSD’ in which clients are instructed not to talk about their trauma rather to reflect on what they have found helpful so far. This gagging of IAPT clients is consistant with the Organisation’s 30 minute telephone assessment. But it is inconsistant with the need to help client’s overcome cognitive avoidance e.g in PTSD avoiding talking about their trauma.
In Simply Effective Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, Routledge (2009)
I suggested that clients need treatment simultanously for all the disorders from which they are suffering. This is to look at the totality of the clients story, not to elevate one part of it (e.g the disorder that is most impairing) and just treat that. Interestingly Barlow et al 2017 see link below compared focussing just on the main disorder from which a person was suffering (from amongst panic disorder, GAD, social anxiety disorder and GAD, even though most people had more than one disorder) with a protocol that could be adapted for any of these disorders ( termed a Unified Protocol) and retention of clients was better with the latter. This suggests that addressing the whole story is best as well as being more respectful.
Care has to be taken however with Barlow’s transdiagnostic approach, in that the term denotes just those suffering from an anxiety disorder excluding PTSD. Over half of clients had a degree. All treatments were developed by Barlow and his colleagues, there has been no independent replication. Treatment was individual, no evidence that it works in groups. The treating clinicians were highly qualified/trained and did both treatments, as the UP was the new kid in the block and their ‘kid brother’ that may explain the slightly better results with UP.
Barlow et al (2017) https://www.dropbox.com/s/22qz932flxroas3/The%20Unified%20Protocol%20for%20Transdiagnostic%20Treatment%20of%20Emotional%20Disorders%20Compared%20With%20Diagnosis-Specific%20Protocols%20for%20Anxiety%20Disorders.html?dl=0
Dr Mike Scott