Mentalization-Based Treatment for Adolescents (MBT-A) Basic Training

Mentalization-Based Treatment for Adolescents (MBT-A) Basic Training is organized by McLean Hospital and will be held from Jul 22 - 24, 2024 at Mass General Brigham, Somerville, Massachusetts, United States of America.

Description:
This will be an intensive training course in Mentalization Based Treatment (MBT) for Adolescents focusing on understanding and addressing difficulties in self-harm and interpersonal relating and supporting the development of an adolescent’s resilience to further psychopathology through enhancing mentalizing, social connectedness, and the adolescent’s sense of agency as they work towards adulthood. 

The current MBT Basic Adolescent Training is made up of 3 days of live, instructor-led content (including breaks) and 8 hours of self-guided online content - attendees will be required to complete the self-guided online content prior attending the live event (CME credit is not granted for the self-guided online content).  The self-guided online content provides video and audio presentations, selected reading, and further written tasks to develop participants' basic theoretical knowledge and understanding of mentalizing and Mentalization Based Treatment models with adolescents and families.

Mentalizing refers to our ability to attend to and understand our own actions and those of others on the basis of mental states. MBT for Adolescents focuses on enhancing and stabilizing mentalizing in the adolescent and their family or care network as a central aim to reduce symptoms and facilitate adaptation, resilience, and growth. Initially developed by Drs. Anthony Bateman and Peter Fonagy for the treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) in adults, MBT has now been implemented in a wide range of disorders and patient populations. MBT for Adolescents was adapted for work with young people and their families by Drs. Trudie Rossouw and Peter Fonagy and in keeping with MBT Adult was developed based on studies of early childhood development and attachment. In this course, participants will learn how to implement MBT techniques within their clinical practice with adolescents and families and as a specialist treatment for both inpatient and outpatient community settings.

Typical clinical situations are discussed and ‘role played’ to practice skills with further experiential activities employed to support participants' skills in thinking and working developmentally, using play, art, and creative techniques to support the adolescent’s engagement in therapy and develop further skills in attention control, affect regulation, and explicit mentalizing.

MBT requires therapists to focus on the adolescent’s mental state and their understanding of interactions with the patient. The therapist takes a ‘not knowing’ stance and yet explicitly develops with the adolescent or family alternative perspectives about what is happening. Clinicians will learn how to foster a shared representation of the adolescent’s experience and modify it to appreciate others’ perspectives using MBT techniques. Participants will learn how to use their own experiences of the patient as a way of increasing mentalizing within therapeutic encounters. The course considers therapist techniques, such as empathic validation, clarification, affect elaboration, challenge, and basic mentalizing in the context of some of the common clinical scenarios encountered in treatment with adolescents.  Participants will learn about mentalizing strengths and difficulties related to the developmental phase of adolescence and how to use them.

Objectives:
Upon completion of this course, participants will be able to:
• Describe the mentalizing strengths and needs of adolescents with particular focus on adolescents with emerging BPD and/ or self harming behaviours and interpersonal distress
• Recognize effective mentalizing and pre- non-mentalizing in adolescents and in clinical interventions
• Develop and maintain a mentalizing therapeutic stance with adolescents and parents
• Use basic mentalizing techniques in their everyday clinical work with adolescents and parents
• Describe how to deliver effective psychoeduction groups for parents and adolescents
• Use the Thinking Together Model for peer and self supervision to regain and maintain therapist mentalizing in the face of predicable clinical difficulties