Registration closes @ 9am on 29.09.25
‘I have had enough. I have chosen a place, I’m just waiting for the summer then I’m gone’:
Suicide is the biggest killer of men in the UK under the age of 50 and male suicides have consistently accounted for three quarters of all suicides in the UK since the mid 1990’s. In 2022 74.1% of suicides were men, with 59.4% of men choosing hanging as the method of suicide. In 2024, according to the Office of National Statistics (ONS 2024) rates of suspected suicide among men were 14.4 per 100,000, compared to 5 per 100,000 among women. Risk factors for suicide among men are being single, unemployment, relationship breakdown and loneliness. There are regional differences in suicide rates. The highest number per 100,000 is in Northern Ireland, followed by North West, the North East and the East of England.
When as a therapist you are confronted with a male client expressing hopeless and suicidal ideas how do you feel? What are the thoughts that run through your mind? How do you act as a result?
As clinicians, dealing with clients experiencing hopelessness and suicidality can be daunting prospect. Research tells us that men are more likely to express anger and irritability when their mood is depressed, less likely to seek help and support when distressed and more likely to use instrumental means to deal with depressed mood, for example alcohol and drugs. These factors have potential to unsettle the therapist and make engagement in tackling hopelessness and suicidality more challenging. Add to this the organisational context for managing risk and as clinicians working with hopelessness and suicidal can lead to increased stress and anxiety which can impede our clinical interventions.
CBT for hopelessness and suicidality in depression is a short-term intensive intervention that is highly effective in tackling the emotions, cognitions and behaviours that maintain the hopeless perspective.
This one day online workshop will help participants make psychological sense of men’s experience of hopelessness and suicidality in the context of depression and introduce a range of CBT clinical interventions that can rapidly ameliorate the distressing symptoms the client is experiencing.
The workshop will also give participants opportunity to develop skills in managing their own internal reactions to working with hopelessness and suicide and to consider how to use clinical supervision to support the use of CBT interventions for hopelessness and suicidality.
Throughout the workshop the facilitator will share her wealth of clinical experience of working with men experiencing hopelessness and suicidality in the context of depression. Participants will also have opportunity to discuss their own clinical cases.
Learning Outcomes
- To develop an understanding of the CBT formulation of hopelessness
- To develop knowledge and understanding of risk factors for suicide completion in men experiencing depression
- To have opportunity to engage with the theory and practice of CBT interventions that target hopelessness and suicidality
- To have opportunity to consider how to develop a plan for taking care of self when working with hopelessness and suicidality.
References
Garland, A. (2016) Case Formulation in Depression in N. Tarrier and J. Johnson (Eds.) Case Formulation in Cognitive Behaviour Therapy: The Treatment of Challenging and Complex Cases (2nd Edition) Routledge, Hove, East Sussex.
Morriss, R., Garland, A., Nixon, N., Boliang Guo., James, M., Kaylor-Hughes., C., Moore, R., Ramana, A., Sampson, C., Sweeney, T. and Dalgleish, T. (2016) The Efficacy and cost effectiveness of a specialist depression service versus specialist mental healthcare to manage persistent depression: a randomised controlled trial. The Lancet Psychiatry 3 (9): pp. 821-831.
Tarrier N, Taylor K, Gooding P. Cognitive-behavioural interventions to reduce suicide behaviour: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Behavior Modification. 2008 Jan;32(1):77-108. doi: 10.1177/0145445507304728. PMID: 18096973.
Presenter
Anne Garland, Consultant Cognitive Behavioural Psychotherapist
Dr Anne Garland, Consultant Psychotherapist is the lead for depression at OCTC. Anne is a mental health nurse by profession, trained in both behavioural and cognitive psychotherapy. Anne has 32 years’ experience of working clinically using CBT and has specialised in treating persistent, treatment resistant depression for the last twenty-eight years. Anne has a national and international reputation as a CBT trainer and has published widely in the field of CBT for depression. Anne has been involved both as a collaborator and grant holder in funded RCT’s the most recent of which tested the clinical and cost effectiveness of CBT in the treatment of depression delivered via the Nottingham Specialist Depression Service, established in 2009. This is a unique service within England offering NICE recommended pharmacological and psychological treatments for persistent, treatment resistant depression within a collaborative care model.
Additional Information
Cancellation & changes policy
If you cancel more than 14 days prior to your booked event, we will refund your fee minus a charge of 15% to cover our administration costs. We regret that cancellations 14 days or less before the booked event cannot be refunded or changed/transferred.
If you wish to change/transfer your booking after confirmation we will do our best to accommodate you if you notify us 14 days prior to your booked event, and if there is space to do so. However there will be an administration charge of £15 per change/transfer.
Confidentiality
Workshops often contain clinical material. This is always anonymised as far as possible but delegates are none the less reminded to respect confidentiality.
All that is discussed in your therapy sessions will be treated as confidential, with the following exceptions.
We are required to seek supervision by our professional body (The British Psychological Society or equivalent) as a means of ensuring good practice. We will usually inform your referrer of your progress, but the details that we disclose will be discussed with you. We do have a statutory obligation to break confidentiality under rare circumstances, namely, if we believe that a client is of danger to themselves or to others (under the Mental Health Act, 2001) or if we believe that a child is at actual risk of physical or sexual abuse (The Children Act, Section 47, 1989).
If we felt that it would be helpful to request additional medical, social or legal information, we could only do this with your consent. Similarly, should another medical, social or legal professional request information from us, we would not release this without your consent.
Disclaimer
OCTC makes every effort to ensure that this programme is delivered as advertised. However, should a presenter have to cancel, we will endeavour to find another suitable presenter. We will inform attendees as soon as is reasonably practical and, if requested, will offer a refund. In the rare event that we are unable to substitute a presenter, we may cancel a workshop and refund payments already made by attendees. OCTC will not refund travel and accommodation costs that attendees may incur.
All the workshops in this programme are carried out by highly experienced therapists and trainers. The individual presenter is responsible for the content of the workshop and any views expressed do not necessarily represent those of OCTC.
Although highly informative, none of the open workshops or workshop series confer a formal qualification or assurance of competence in CBT (or a specialist area of CBT) since we are unable to assess attendee competency within the training event. However, credit and award-bearing courses that lead to formal qualifications are offered by OCTC in conjunction with the University of Oxford. More about these courses is available on our website www.octc.uk
Levels of competence
Before booking a place on a workshop, please ensure that it is pitched at the appropriate level of competence for you. The guide to levels is as follows:
Basic
Basic workshops are for people from a variety of backgrounds, who have at least one year’s clinical experience. Cognitive behavioural knowledge is not necessary for attendance at these workshops, though in practice, a number of attendees will have some skills in the area, and are refreshing/updating their knowledge.
Intermediate
Intermediate workshops are directed towards people who already have knowledge of CBT, and experience in using cognitive formulations and treatment methods – for instance, they are able to identify and test automatic thoughts, and design behavioural experiments. Most participants will be using CBT as part of their clinical practice, and may still be acquiring new CBT skills.
Advanced
Advanced courses are directed towards those professionals who use CBT routinely as part of their clinical practice. They have probably undertaken a significant number of training courses and/or workshops, and use a broad range of cognitive behavioural strategies to work with a range of presentations at varying levels of complexity.
Making reservations
Bookings can only be considered confirmed after we have received your online registration or application form and payment (or invoicing details, including an official purchase order document).
The registration closing date for each workshop is shown on the workshop description page. Please note that no applications received after this deadline will be permitted.
If you are booking a workshop place for someone else, you must complete your own details in the billing field, but ENTER THE WORKSHOP PARTICIPANTS NAME/ADDRESS in the shipping field. If you wish to order items using a paper order form instead of online, you can view or download an order form in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format. Once downloaded, print it out, fill it in, and send off with your payment [cheque made payable to OXFORD HEALTH NHS FOUNDATION TRUST] to the address on the form.
Refreshments
The cost of the workshops includes hot drinks on arrival, mid-morning and mid-afternoon, but not usually lunch unless stated. However, for workshops that do include lunch, if you have any special dietary requirements please let us know at the time of application.
Accessibility requirements
We welcome applications from diverse backgrounds. If you have any particular needs, please contact us
prior to booking.