Skip to main content

Advertisement

Log in

“I’ve Lived that Thing that We do with Families”: Understanding the Experiences of Practitioners’ Undertaking a Three-Year Open Dialogue UK Training Programme

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Community Mental Health Journal Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Open dialogue is a systemically-based approach to mental healthcare, originating from Finland. Growing numbers of practitioners are being trained internationally, but little is known about the impact of such trainings within a UK setting. This study used interpretative phenomenological analysis of focus group data to explore the experiences of thirteen individuals undertaking a three-year UK open dialogue training. Four themes emerged: (1) a powerful experiential process; (2) personal therapeutic change; (3) deeper and more open relationships and (4) altered relationships to power in working practice. The findings suggest that open dialogue trainees experience greater depth in relationships with both clients and colleagues as a result of training, even participants who already had therapeutic training backgrounds. The findings also contribute to Transformational Learning literature regarding how experiential, non-hierarchical, dialogical teaching methods may enhance learning on therapeutic programmes and, therefore, lead to positive changes within clinical practice.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to A. Wates.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Wates, A., Allen, J., Cooke, A. et al. “I’ve Lived that Thing that We do with Families”: Understanding the Experiences of Practitioners’ Undertaking a Three-Year Open Dialogue UK Training Programme. Community Ment Health J 58, 788–798 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10597-021-00885-8

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10597-021-00885-8

Keywords

Navigation