Patient complexity and Resistance result in limited or adverse treatment effects in psychiatric care and psychotherapy alike.

Hence, it is critical to detect complicating factors that will hurt your and your patient’s treatment efforts.

Intensive Short-term Dynamic Psychotherapy was developed through decades of video based research to help detect and handle patient complexity and resistance. In Halifax through 20 years of clinical study of over 3000 cases, a systematic approach to detecting and handling resistance has been developed and condensed into the book Reaching through Resistance. A key research study of ISTDP in Treatment Resistant Depression led by Dr Joel Town was published in 2017 and showed advantages over community mental health team care as usual for this complicated patient group. 10 other studies conducted by colleagues around the world support ISTDP in refractory and complex populations.

In this 15th Halifax Immersion, Dr Allan Abbass and colleagues, will review this system in detail starting with the basic metapsychology of the ISTDP model then moving to study a series of complex cases to assist you with your own complex cases. Presenting with Allan are Dr Joel Town and Dr Kostas Monas from University of Thessalonica, Greece.

The 3 day immersion is followed by a second training event: observation of a 2 day video-based case consultation process to review some cases from those attending the course. This will allow further review of the concepts covered in the Immersion. The Immerison course goes from 830 monday the 24th to 430 wednesday the 26th september and the 2 days of training follow.

This course will be at the brand new Nova Center in Downtown Halifax and will include a harbour cruise or reception and dinner out to meet your colleagues. Lunches and nutrition breaks are also included.