Level 1 training in Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (MBCT, Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy) is an innovative, standardised, manualised treatment programme developed with the aim of creating a significant clinical and quality-of-life improvement in people suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).

Based on the scientific studies and clinical experience of Dr Fabrizio Didonna and documented in his handbook 'Cognitive Therapy Based on the Therapy for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder' (New York, Guilford Press, 2020), the programme integrates the most effective tools of cognitive behavioural therapy with the principles and practice of Therapy and self-compassion.

This therapeutic model is the result of more than twenty years of the founder's experience with hundreds of OCD sufferers and almost twenty years of practising and teaching meditation mindfulparticularly with respect to the Cognitive Therapy model based on the Therapy.

Obsessive compulsive disorder can be conceptualised as a severe state of lack of awareness or 'mindlessness'. The key aspect of the Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy programme for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is to make patients aware of the modalities that characterise OCD, while helping them to develop a new relationship with their inner states.

Patients thus learn to see thoughts and emotions as mere mental events, harmless and transient, regardless of their content and emotional charge. This intensive therapeutic programme aims to help OCD sufferers, step by step, to recognise the specific and/or generic distorted and dysfunctional mechanisms that activate and maintain their disorder, to learn new effective strategies to neutralise these mechanisms, and to develop stable and healthy ways of relating to their inner experience.

The course

Conducted by Fabrizio Didonna, clinical psychologist, Mindfulness teacher and meditation retreat leader, this course analyses - using a perspective based on the Therapy - the specific characteristics of the relationship that OCD patients have with their personal experience, thus helping therapists to understand the important role that this relationship could play in terms of activating and maintaining obsessive problems. Through the use of Therapy and videos from MBCT sessions for OCD, this course illustrates how to concretely apply the practice of Therapy and compassion at work with OCD patients.

Furthermore, the course describes the theoretical foundations, objectives and contents of this therapeutic model, as well as some of the programme's practices, which will be shared with participants. Finally, the course integrates didactic, experiential sessions and exercises to be carried out in small groups, as well as both static and active meditations.