Friday was the "conference" day.  A real old fruit salad of presentations.  Nearly always I find it hard to stay awake and focused during this kind of "educational event".  It does however allow a lot of speakers to throw a lot of information at the audience!  The 2007 Marinopoulos et al review on the "Effectiveness of Continuing Medical Education" commented that " ...

Yesterday, in "BABCP spring meeting, first post", I described my initial thoughts arriving at the "Collaborative case conceptualization" workshop.  Well, now it's Friday morning.  A very social time yesterday evening after the workshop.  Slept on a friend's couch.  It's fairly bright and early now and their kids haven't yet emerged.  How was yesterday's workshop?

So here I am sitting in a cafe at Euston station.  I came in on the sleeper half an hour or so ago.  I slept well, which was a blessing.  I love it.  A full day's work yesterday, travel while asleep, well set up for a full day today.  Sleepers don't always work out so well, but my old tricks of aiming to be pretty tired when I get on board and using earplugs seemed effective this time.  I didn't even resort to the further favourite of having a good slug of whisky before tucking in to the rather narrow bunk.

Here are three websites that I have recently found interesting.  The first two are possibly more for therapists, while the third can be very helpful for therapists and general public alike.

I recently looked again at Professor Michel Dugas's interesting work on Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) at Concordia University, Montreal.  On his Anxiety Disorders Lab website he writes: "Over the past 17 years, I have conducted clinical research on the psychological processes involved in the etiology of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). This line of research has led to the development of a cognitive-behavioural treatment for GAD ... which targets the four model components (intolerance of uncertainty, positive beliefs about worry, negative problem orientation, and cognitive avoidance), has now been validated in four randomized controlled trials ...

On the 15^th March 2010 my dear, precious mother Edie Hawkins died.  She was 97 and I'm writing this post ten days later.  After the funeral, after the flurry of forms and arrangements and visits and paperwork have quietened down.

I woke early this morning.  Thought about her.  A sense of her.  She was an immensely kind, giving, determined, selfless person.  This website wouldn't be here without the influence of her and my father, Jim Hawkins (who died back in 1989) - also such a generous, caring, thoughtful human being. 

If you've found anything of value on this site - if it's helped you personally or in your work, please say an inner thank you to Edie and Jim.  This website wouldn't be here if it wasn't for them and how they've influenced what I believe in and what I work for.

I read a lot of research.  When I find an article of particular interest I download it to my bibliographic database - EndNote - which currently contains over 14,000 abstracts. 

See the earlier blog post "Interpersonal group work 1" for comments and handouts particularly orientated to pre-group assessment.  It's usually time very well spent, orientating would-be participants to what interpersonal process groups are likely to involve.  This both speeds up the time it takes new group members to start engaging helpfully in group interactions, and reduces drop-out rates.  Participants who know roughly what the group is going to be like, why the experience is relevant to what they want to change in their lives, and how they can best engage with the group to gain most benefit, are likely to be participants who get most from the group experience.  Below I've listed various handouts that can be relevant in this orientation process.