How often is wellbeing compromised because our patients just can’t get going, can’t take that first step. And how often does therapy slow or halt because they struggle to keep going? We see this across disorders: the person with depression who lacks initiation and who suffers from fatigue, the person with anxiety who fears change, the person with an eating disorder who can’t maintain a new regime, the person with ADHD who procrastinates, the person with GAD exhausted by chronic worry. Once we start to consider the impact of apathy, fatigue and poor motivation it becomes evident that they are very real pan-diagnostic phenomena and can blight a patient’s best attempts to live a fulfilling life or even to make use of CBT.
This workshop draws on our neurological and psychological understanding of:
· Drive: the desire that identifies a key behaviour
· Motivation: the reasons and processes underlying behaviour
· Initiation: the first step in getting going, making changes,
· Apathy: impaired initiation and/or motivation
· Fatigue: tiredness & lack of stamina that makes it difficult to sustain change
The workshop aims to help therapists conceptualise apathy, fatigue and poor motivation in a compassionate and systemic CBT framework that guides interventions. The day comprises:
· A neuropsychological understanding of drive, motivation and apathy
· A novel CBT framework of apathy and fatigue that will inform conceptualising a patient’s difficulties
· CBT strategies for helping patients initiate and maintain helpful behaviours
· Strategies for helping patients overcome ambivalence and dare to risk change.
The presenters are experienced CBT practitioners within the NHS, who have been involved in researching the neuropsychological mechanisms of apathy, fatigue and motivation with the University of Oxford.
