half day workshop

MINDFULNESS-BASED COGNITIVE INTERVENTIONS FOR SEVERE DISORDERS IN INPATIENT TREATMENT
Fabrizio Didonna, Department of Psychiatry - Casa di Cura Villa Margherita -Arcugnano, Vicenza , Italy

CCIB Room: 219/220

Mindfulness is a state of consciousness, a mode of mind, or a metacognitive awareness, in which thoughts, feelings, and actions are freed from domination by the habitual, automatic, patterns of processing that support many dysfunctional states. Mindfulness-based approaches are a form of mental training to reduce cognitive vulnerability to reactive modes of mind (e.g. rumination) which may otherwise heighten stress and emotional distress or perpetuate psychological disorders. The focus of these approaches is on altering the impact of, and response to private experience (thoughts, feelings, and sensations) and for these reasons they may thus be particularly effective for clinical problems in which intolerance of negative affect and subsequent behavioral avoidance are central factors. Mindfulness-Based Trainings - e.g. MBCT for Depression (Segal, Williams & Teasdale) or MBSR (Kabat-Zinn and coll.) - train patients to enter a mode of intentional (non-automatic) processing and  teach skills in cognitive defusion and decentering aimed at reducing their experiential avoidance and allowing patients to turn toward and accept distressing thoughts, sensations and feelings, as a point of departure for working with them, in effect developing a different relationship to them. Research findings and empirical evidence suggest the effectiveness of a mindfulness-based clinical intervention for many psychological problems; among them, depression, anxiety disorders, and borderline personality disorder. In particular the use of mindfulness-based trainings in inpatient treatment seems to be a cost-efficient intervention. In this workshop we shall focus on the rationale and experiential aspects of the use of a Mindfulness-based Training (in particular MBCT) for several severe psychological disorders in inpatient treatment. In particular, the presenter will illustrate a new Mindfulness-Based Therapeutic Programme for Borderline Personality Disorders, Anxiety and Mood Disorders in inpatient treatment.

Fabrizio Didonna is a clinical psychologist and CBT Psychotherapist. He works at the Unit for Mood and Anxiety Disorders and at the Unit for Borderline Personality Disorders in the Department of Psychiatry of the Casa di Cura Villa Margherita in Vicenza, Italy. He is instructor of Mindfulness-based groups both in inpatient and outpatient setting. He gave a number of workshops worldwide in CBT for OCD, depression and Mindfulness training, has presented papers at many international conferences and published several articles and one book. He is Vice-President of the Italian Association for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Founder member of the Italian Association for Mindfulness.

Key References:
Germer, C. K., Siegel, R. D., Fulton, P.R. (2005). Mindfulness and Psychotherapy. New York:       Guilford Press  Linehan, MM, et al. (1991) Cognitive-Behavioral treatment of chronically parasuicidal borderline patients. Archives of General Psychiatry 48: 1060-1064. 
Segal, Z.V., Williams, J.M.G., & Teasdale, J.D. (2002) Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression: A New Approach to Preventing Relapse. New York: Guilford Press.