New understanding in the conceptualisation and treatment of psychosis
Event details
This one-day course will equip clinicians and trainees with the latest advances in the understanding and treatment of psychotic disorders from an interdisciplinary and patient-focused perspective. Internationally renowned speakers will share their knowledge and research in self-disorders, voice-hearing, and the logic and meaningfulness in delusion formation in the context of psychosis. The aim is for participants to be familiar with some of the cutting-edge clinical research both in healthcare services and academia, and be able to incorporate this knowledge into their own practice and training.
About the speakers
Dr Tor Gunnar Værnes, Oslo University Hospital, Norway
Treatment of self-disorders in psychotic disorders and clinical high-risk for psychosis
Outline: In his talk, Tor G. Værnes will address how phenomenology may inform psychotherapy for self-disorders. First, he will focus on some central concepts in phenomenological philosophy, and how they are of relevance for phenomenologically oriented dialogue, psychotherapy and other kinds of treatment. Second, he will describe a new psychotherapeutic model for treatment of self-disorders, the SELF-7, first developed by Paul Møller, a Norwegian psychiatrist and researcher. Third, results from a qualitative pilot study will be presented, addressing how patients with psychotic disorders or clinical high-risk for psychosis experienced treatment with the SELF-7 model. Finally, he will describe some research plans for investigating the effect of SELF-7 on the severity of self-disorders, and other clinical and functional outcomes.
Bio: Tor Gunnar is a psychologist and researcher at Oslo University Hospital, Early Intervention in Psychosis Advisory Unit for South-East Norway. His clinical experience has particularly been with young adults with psychotic disorders. He is engaged in professional development and knowledge dissemination regarding topics such as psychosis development, self-disorders, psychosis risk states and early intervention. His PhD-study was a prospective study on clinical high-risk for psychosis (CHR-P) states and self-disorders. One of the findings in this study was that CHR-P individuals with high levels of self-disorders at the initial assessment were at higher risk of clinical and functional non-remission at the one-year follow-up. Tor Gunnar is currently project manager for a qualitative pilot study on how a new psychotherapeutic treatment model of self-disorders is experienced in individuals with psychotic disorders and psychosis risk states. This pilot study is the first step in laying the ground for a RCT-study currently being planned on the effect of this treatment model on the severity of self-disorders, as well as other clinical and functional outcomes.
Dr Lise Baklund, Vestre Viken Hospital Trust, Norway
Self-disorders in clinical high-risk for psychosis and psychotic disorders
Outline: In her talk, Lise Baklund will describe how phenomenologically oriented researchers conceptualize self-disorders, and how these self-disorders present and may be experienced in individuals with clinical high-risk for psychosis or psychotic disorders. In order to understand these phenomena, she will also describe and reflect on how the self, self-awareness and normal self-development are understood and conceptualized from a phenomenological perspective. She will further address how these self-disorders may affect psychological and social functioning, and in particular how these disorders may play a role in psychosis development. Research and theory which points to the relevance and clinical importance of self-disorders will be addressed, and Lise will also describe some assessment tools for self-disorders, in particular the Examination of Anomalous Self-Experience (EASE) checklist.
Bio: Lise Baklund, researcher, R&D department, Clinic for Mental Health and Substance Abuse, Vestre Viken. Lise Baklund is a philosopher and family therapist. She has several years of clinical experience from suicide prevention, youth with psychosis and family work in BUP. Her PhD study investigated the stability of self-disorders in youth under 18 years of age, who were at risk of developing serious mental illness. In the project, language analyses were made of the youth's descriptions of self-disorders and an app was developed where the participants registered self-disorders in their everyday lives.
Dr Rob Allison, Department of Health Sciences, University of York, UK
A Tripartite Relationship Theory: addressing power imbalances related to voice hearing experiences
Outline: We will present the Tripartite Relationship Theory, which conceptualises voice hearing experiences within voice hearer - voice - practitioner relationships, and is in turn situated within a predominantly bio-psychiatric healthcare context. In doing so, we will discuss how power is threaded through voice hearing experiences, for both individuals hearing voices and practitioners, and how we can utilise methods such as 'talking with voices' or 'voice mapping' to help individuals address power imbalances within their relationships with voices.
Bio: Rob Allison, PhD, is an academic and mental health nurse in the Department of Health Sciences, University of York. He has clinical experience from working in a variety of clinical settings with people experiencing a wide range of mental health problems, particularly working with people and families who experience psychosis. Rob is interested in alternative approaches to conventional mental health treatment, for example previous collaborations with practitioner colleagues and people with lived experience to establish a ‘Thinking about Medication’ group to support people to take more control of their prescribed psychiatric medication. From his years of experience working with and learning from people distressed by voices, Rob developed a tripartite relationship theory to help understand and support difficult voice hearing experiences.
Dr Rosa Ritunnano, Institute for Mental Health, University of Birmingham, UK
The logic of delusions
Outline: Delusions are often understood as irrational beliefs arising from abnormalities in reasoning or anomalous perceptions. Contemporary cognitive models have advanced our understanding of delusions by highlighting processes such as anomalous experience, threat anticipation, and belief inflexibility, yet the role of emotions within these accounts is often treated as secondary or nonspecific. In this session, I will review dominant cognitive models of delusions, with particular attention to how they conceptualise the contribution of emotion (especially worry and anxiety) to the development and maintenance of psychosis.
I will then introduce phenomenological approaches, which shift the focus from beliefs in isolation to changes in embodied experience, selfhood, and relationships with others. Drawing on clinical case studies and recent qualitative research, I will explore how emotions such as shame, guilt, fear, love, anger and awe may not simply accompany delusions but actively shape their meaning, content, and interpersonal structure. Rather than viewing delusions as arbitrary or bizarre beliefs, I will argue that they often express an intelligible logic grounded in emotional life, embodied experience, and the person's attempt to cope with episodes of emotional upheaval that disrupt their life project and threaten their identity.
By integrating cognitive and phenomenological perspectives, this session aims to provide clinicians with a richer framework for understanding psychosis - one that recognises delusions not only as cognitive errors but also as meaningful expressions of emotional, embodied, and relational experience. Such an approach has important implications for therapeutic engagement, formulation, and person-centred psychiatric practice.
Bio: Rosa Ritunnano, MD, PhD (University of Birmingham and University of Melbourne), is a consultant psychiatrist, philosopher and researcher whose work explores the experience of psychosis, particularly delusions, from a phenomenological perspective. Her interdisciplinary scholarship bridges psychiatry, phenomenology, psychology, and cognitive linguistics to develop more person-centred, ethically grounded approaches to understanding and responding to mental distress. Drawing on both clinical practice and research, she examines how psychiatry can engage seriously with experiences often regarded as difficult, extraordinary, or beyond conventional frameworks of understanding. Her work challenges reductionistic accounts of psychiatric diagnosis, arguing that psychopathology cannot be understood solely in terms of disordered cognition or modular brain dysfunctions, but requires careful attention to subjective experience, non-propositional thought and language, and the functions and expressions of human emotions as embodied and socially-situated phenomena.