I wrote yesterday about the "European Positive Psychology conference: 1st day - a disappointing start & caution on over-selling mindfulness" ... but today's conference presentations rapidly kicked my doubts about being here into touch. We started with a couple of fine keynotes ... Claudia Senik on "The cultural dimension of happiness" and Willibald Ruch on "Character strengths: Unresolved issues, new frontiers".  Both talks were excellent.  

I'm in Angers, France at the 8th European Conference on Positive Psychology.  Yesterday I went to a couple of pre-conference workshops and then attended the Opening Ceremony and the first keynote lecture.  The conference venue is lovely, on the edge of Angers Botanic Gardens.  It feels too that the organising group here have put in a huge amount of work to try to make the conference a success ... so many thanks to them.  So why do I say that I found the first day disappointing ... and actually quite worrying?  

I have already written a blog post ... "Warwick BABCP conference: 3rd day - even more evidence that therapists themselves are central to improving outcome (5th post)" ... about the great last morning symposium "The singer and not the song? Evidencing therapist effects across the IAPT stepped care model".  I have described in some detail the first two symposium presentations ... Nick Firth's "Therapist effects and moderators of effectiveness and efficiency in psychological wellbeing practitioners: a multilevel modelling analysis" and Dave Saxon's "Variability in practice: therapist effects in an IAPT service delivering CBT and counselling".

Yesterday was the third & last morning of this year's BABCP summer conference in Warwick.  I have already written about the second day in "Warwick BABCP conference: 2nd day - behavioural activation, Kyrios OCD, 'mind the gap', & DeRubeis on personalization (4th post)".  Overall, there were two particular presentations I was especially looking forward to coming to this conference and they have both delivered in spades.

Yesterday was the second full day of the BABCP summer conference in Warwick.

I have already written about the pre-conference workshop I went to on "Anger dysregulation" and the presentations on the first morning of this year's summer CBT conference in "Warwick BABCP conference: 1st morning - trauma memories & a master presentation on four decades of outcome research (2nd post)".  In the afternoon I attended a symposium on "Improving treatment of anxiety and depression in adolescence" and then went on to a keynote by the Australian professor Michelle Moulds entitled "Rumination and memory in depression".

Yesterday I blogged about the pre-conference workshop I attended on "Anger dysregulation". Today was the first full day of the conference proper.  Breakfast illustrated the kind of helpful, fun conversation that can emerge at this kind of event.  I talked to Fiona McFarlene & Tara Murphy who were going on to run a skills class on "Exposure and response prevention: adapting skills you already have to the treatment of tics".

OK, the annual summer British Association for Behavioural & Cognitive Psychotherapies conference has come around again and this year it is back at Warwick University.  As usual there are a wealth of one-day pre-conference workshops - a dozen in all this year.  I'm off in a few minutes to Ray Novaco & John Taylor presenting on "Anger dysregulation: assessment, case formulation, and treatment".  

The last morning of this excellent BABCP conference dawned bright & sunny ... as it has all week.  I have particularly enjoyed this year's BABCP get-together.  I think this has been due to a combination of factors including presentations that have been personally of real interest, the weather, the University of Birmingham accommodation, good wifi access(!) and the general friendliness.  Not bad considering I hurt my back in the train on the way here and it has only gradually been easing over the four days of the workshops & conference.

So yesterday was the second full day of the BABCP conference.  I have already written initial blog posts about the first day of the conference and about the pre-conference workshop I went to on emotion regulation.  This is a bit of a pre-breakfast scamper over yesterday's experiences.  As with the other blog posts I've written about the conference & the emotion regulation workshop, I intend to re-visit the more personally relevant subjects in future posts.