Training and Education Services

Many training courses about CBT are available either online or face-to-face. 

What characterizes this training workshop is its application skills base and cultural orientation. Expert clinical psychologists lead this interactive online course with broad experience in transcultural and social services. Skills gained by the end of this course are helpful for clinicians and professionals in various settings across mental health, primary health care, social work nursing, and psychology. 

Studies have shown that CBT is effective not only among psychiatric disorders such as depression, anxiety, personality disorders, and eating disorders. It is also influential among patients with medical problems associated with psychological reactions such as cancer, hypertension, fibromyalgia, etc.

Learning objectives

Upon completion of this training course, participants will be able to:

• Understand the principles, dimensions, and methods of CBT.
• Recognize how a person's beliefs influence their feelings, actions, and behavior.
• Understand how early experiences shape the personal core view of self and others and how this can affect daily      experiences. 
• Help their client identify helpful and unhelpful thoughts and beliefs.
• Understand how CBT can help people with mental ill-health conditions such as fear, anxiety, anger, and other destructive      emotions.
• Understand the cultural limitations of CBT.
• Understanding the social and cultural expressions of mental suffering has implications for the application of CBT's original guidelines 

Basic Counseling Skills

Counseling is an interactive, collaborative, evidence-based relationship to help people with difficult health conditions. 

It is different from daily social interactions and giving advice. Counselors must learn the art of helping others; they must acquire skills to empower their clients to deal with their problems and challenges. Therefore, building therapeutic relationships, accurate empathy, and prioritizing client concerns are essential counseling skills for counselors to provide practical counseling sessions. 

Participants in this course learn and enhance counseling skills while deepening their understanding of the role of a professional counselor. 

Learning Objectives

By the end of the training course, participants will be able to 

· Understand and conduct the basic counseling skills, including verbal and non-verbal attending skills, active listening, paraphrasing, reflection of feelings, questioning, empathy, and summarizing

· Identify and conduct a minimum of 4 basic counseling strategies

· Structure a regular counselling session

· Develop cultural understanding within the counseling sessions 

· Understand the importance of clinical supervision

· Develop an awareness of self, the counseling field, behaviors that influence the helping process, and how to empower clients to take decisions related to their health. 

The Mental Status Examination (MSE) is an essential first step to providing adequate quality psychiatry/psychological care for clients with mental ill-health conditions. 

It is a structured assessment of the client's behavioral and cognitive functioning. It is like the physical examination physicians perform to evaluate any physical disease. Equipping yourself with the skills and knowledge to conduct MSE is essential for creating a therapeutic care plan.

Learning Objectives

At the end of the training course, participants will be able to:

• Understand the purpose of conducting professional      interviews.
• Understand the BEST PICK (Behavior, Emotions, Speech,      Thoughts, perception, Cognition, and Knowledge) interviewing elements.
• Understand and develop diagnostic interviewing and      therapeutic skills.
• Identify the components of psychiatric/psychological      interviewing.
• Learn when to use MSE, how to facilitate it, and when      to end MSE.
• Underrated the adjunct testing 

The psychological, emotional, biological, and behavioral responses to traumatic experiences have universal physical features. However, the social and cultural representations of traumatic experiences and the meaning attached to these vary according to social, cultural, and political contexts and individual biographies. 

The main question is whether trauma has the same meaning amongst people living in conflict situations and whether trauma is seen as a pathological reaction to violence and traumatic experiences. These variations influence the interpretations and meaning of trauma and whether the person develops psychopathology. 

Unfortunately, PTSD has become synonymous with traumatic experience not only in the research and clinical arena but also among nonclinical populations and tends to eclipse other dimensions of traumatic experience. Inevitably, these emphases tend to medicalize people’s reactions to violent situations and traumatic events rather than seeing their experiences as part of an adaptive response to an extraordinary predicament. 

This course focuses on the psychopathological aspects of trauma as well as other responses to trauma.

Learning Objectives of Trauma

Upon completion of this training course, participants will be able to

• Understand the normal vs. pathological reactions to traumatic experiences.
• Learn the ways in which distress is expressed within particular cultural and social contexts that are characterized by      protracted conflict and political violence.
• Understand that research instruments, scales, and questionnaires developed to identify clinically significant symptoms do      not necessarily give the same meaning of trauma to different cultural      backgrounds.
• Learn various local idioms through which trauma and  traumatic experiences are mediated and become objects of perception, thought, and action.
• Identify relevant diagnoses associated with trauma and  the diagnostic limitations.
• Describe the adoption of competent clinical assessment  practices and tools to assess trauma history and its impact on functioning  to ensure appropriate diagnosis.  

Teaching and training therapeutic communication skills have gained great credibility among healthcare professionals for decades. Communication skills training is the backbone of patient-centered and effective quality of care. It is a standard expectation of patients, families, and peers in professional relationships. 

Breaking bad news, shared decision-making, dealing with patients’ emotions, not resuscitating (DNR) among cancer patients, professional assertiveness skills, convening a family meeting, etc., are all part and parcel of patient-centered communication that led to patients’ satisfaction, compliance to medical interventions, disclosure of concerns, understand patients’/families culture and appropriate language. 

It constitutes part of the patient’s rights and effective care. Unfortunately, practical communication skills training in health care is not generally taught as part of the medical/health schools’ curriculum. The lack of meaningful communication between health providers and patients is the main reason for most of the complaints by our patients against our doctors, nurses, and allied health professionals.  

Learning Objectives

By the end of the course, participants will be able to

• Understand the essential elements of professionals’ communication. 
• Identify communication barriers and principles to effective professional communication.
• Practice skills of breaking bad news 
• Plan and run a family meeting.
• Gain more skills in dealing with angry patients and  their families. 
• Apply shared decision-making and perform the DNR process.

Stress is a fact. It is part of our daily life activities that we can’t avoid. No one is immune to stress. Not all encountered stressors are harmful; some stress is desirable and good because it inspires us to meet expectations and to deal with life challenges. It is our choice to make stress an enemy or a friend.

Some pioneer stress researchers have argued that stress starts with the person’s appraisal of the stressful situation/event. How the person responds to these stressful events determines the impact of stress on a person’s life. Too much stress associated with a lack of coping skills to manage these stressors may activate the body’s stress response system, which causes physical reactions such as increased heartbeats, difficulty in breathing, tightness in the chest, muscle tension, high blood pressure, and many others. 

We all know escaping from painful feelings may make a person feel better in the short term; however, over time, avoidance prevents a person from obtaining positive corrective experiences associated with these painful feelings.

One of the first important skills a person has to learn is to recognize when s/he is in distress and then find constructive and healthy ways to deal with it. This workshop provides participants with non-medical practical tips and techniques to help them achieve better results and health through effective distress management. 

Learning objective of the training 

By the end of this training, participants will be able to:

• Identify the significant sources of stress,      stress-related body reactions, and tactics that are currently used. 
• Understand how stress works and develops.
• Understand the basic principles of stress management.
• Develop proactive responses to stressful situations.
• Practice stress reduction techniques that are convenient to the personal context
• Develop a balanced lifestyle to be able to deal with day-to-day stress.

Human beings are not perfect information processors and typically develop non-normative mind habits that hinder their accomplishments and affect their behaviors. People view relationships and organizational change from a more subjective perspective and are influenced by various factors such as perceptions, thinking styles, experiences, coping mechanisms, primary and secondary appraisals to change, and personal characteristics.

This psychology of change course provides a new perspective on promoting positive organizational change with different opportunities of where administrative management can intervene and positively change how people feel and think about change. In addition, it helps the organization to develop its outcome and increase its productivity. 

Learning objectives:

By the end of this course, participants will be able to 

• Identify unnecessary organizational sufferings that  lead to negative consequences at both personal and institutional levels, such as presenteeism and absenteeism.
• Learn healthy psychological methods to implement organizational change.
• Help employees identify and understand the perceived susceptibility, barriers, and benefits of change.
• Gain more knowledge about motivating, energizing, and boosting employees' performance.

Psychological assessment is a continuous process that refers to a wide variety of methods and techniques clinical psychologists use to evaluate, measure, and document certain phenomena such as behavior, social skills acquisition, acquired knowledge, styles of thinking, performance, etc. 

Psychological assessment is not only reaching a diagnosis; it is also about identifying and explaining what's unique about the patient's presentation. It requires additional information: how the patient feels and responds, why events have followed one another, the meaning of these events, and explanations. Psychologists use various psychological tests and screening tools to evaluate clients' psychological condition. 

Learning objectives

At the completion of the course, participants will be able to: 

• Differentiate between psychiatry diagnosis and psychological assessment
• Understand the difference between the term "normal" and "abnormal" in the psychology field
• Learn the various psychological assessments such as      interviewing, observation, psychological tests, and screening tools
• Learn various IQ tests such as WAIS and WISC, personality tests MMPI and others
• Understand the cultural biases and the way we define intelligence