Audio Recordings of Breathing and Mindfulness Instructions
Arousal management and mindfulness are central to my approach. There are plenty of resources around for both of these.
The examples that follow are the ones that I use.
Relaxation Breathing
Basic Grounding Mindfulness
Grounding Mindfulness with Thoughts
Comprehend, Cope and Connect relies on identifying areas to work on change through formulation, followed by a menu of psychological groups to assist people to make the necessary changes. See a book chapter on coping mechanisms, Clarke, I. (2009) “Coping with Crisis and Overwhelming Affect: Employing Coping Mechanisms in the Acute Inpatient Context”. In A.M. Columbus Ed. Coping Mechanisms: Strategies and Outcomes. Advances in Psychology Research Vol.63. Huntington NY State:Nova Science Publishers Inc.
We have developed manuals for these groups so that other staff can be trained in their delivery.
Mindfulness
Slide version only
Arousal Management is key to the approach.
Emotion Management is also central.
The Emotional Coping Skills Group manual is based on Linehan’s Dialectical Behavior Therapy manual (Linehan, M. (1993) Skills Training Manual for Treating Borderline Personality Disorder, New York: The Guildford Press, and so not reproduced here. It has been adapted for CCC.
The ‘What is Real and What is not’ group — a psychosis programme, including mindfulness, with particular emphasis on normalising anomalous experience and so counteracting the stigma of diagnosis which can impede engagement and progress for people with these difficulties.
Research
Mary Owen recently conducted an RCT using this programme in Liverpool and published the results in the following paper: Owen, M., Sellwood, W., Kan, S., Murray, J., & Sarsam, M.(2015). Group CBT for psychosis: A longitudinal, controlled trial with inpatients. Behaviour Research and Therapy 65, 76-85. In the course of this she produced an improved manual which she has given me permission to publish on this website as follows:
Mary Owen and collaborator’s version of the What is Real Manual
The Compassionate Friend group. A compassionate-mind based self esteem programme that utilizes the natural support systems between service users on a ward to counteract the self criticism that can undermine peoples’ recovery.
Bite-sized Training. The whole team needs to understand these skills so that they can coach people they are working with between groups — or introduce the skills if there are no groups available.