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Integrative Practice & the IPTF Framework · Foundation
The IPTF: Foundations
Understanding the Integrated Personality Treatment Framework
The Integrated Personality Treatment Framework Foundations course offers a concise, evidence‑informed pathway for clinicians who want to move beyond eclectic practice and adopt a principled, dimensional approach to personality difficulties. Over six modules and 21 lessons, the programme guides you from the rationale for integration through the theoretical architecture to a practical formulation method that can be used immediately in clinical work.
Module 1 sets the scene by examining the consequences of fragmented care for people with personality difficulties and showing what genuine integration must look like in practice. You will explore the problem the IPTF was created to solve, gain an overview of its three‑stage pathway, and consider the essentials of integrated practice that protect both client and therapist from drift.
Module 2 presents the clinician’s summary of the framework’s foundations, drawing together the evidence‑based traditions that underpin it. Lessons cover the model in brief, a dimensional reframing of personality disorder consistent with ICD‑11, and the therapeutic relationship positioned as the primary vehicle of change.
Module 3 translates theory into assessment and formulation, moving from ICD‑11 dimensional assessment to the IPTF Formulation Worksheet. You will learn to bridge dimensional data with the worksheet, formulate a straightforward case in IPTF terms, explain the framework to clients in plain language, and recognise when a case exceeds the framework’s or your current reach. Completion awards six verifiable CPD hours, a downloadable course workbook, an AI tutor embedded in every lesson, and a final quiz of five questions with a 70 % pass mark, leading to a certified record of achievement.
▶ See inside the digital classroom1 minute 36 seconds · how a course is laid out, how each lesson is taught, and how the tutor helps
Before you start
This is a Foundation course in the IPTF pathway. It assumes nothing: it is written for someone meeting the approach for the first time. What it adds is the working model, its vocabulary and its evidence base, so that the Practitioner course can assume them; it revisits the foundations only as far as it needs to before building on them, so it does not repeat the course below.
The IPTF pathway. The Integrated Personality Treatment Framework itself, stage by stage: its theoretical model, assessment and formulation at Foundation, stages one and two in practice at Practitioner, then recovery, adaptation and implementation at Advanced. The integrative practice pathway teaches integration using the framework; this pathway teaches the framework.
14 study hours14 CPD hours certified6 months of accessAI tutor in every lessonCertificate on completion (pass mark 70%)
What you will be able to do
✓Describe the IPTF's architecture and the problem it solves: principled integration instead of eclectic drift
✓Explain each stage of the pathway and its clinical purpose
✓Locate the major modalities within the framework and what each contributes
✓Formulate a straightforward case in IPTF terms from intake material
✓Explain the framework to a client in plain language that supports informed consent
✓Recognise when a case exceeds the framework's, or your own, current reach
What you will study
Module 1: Why an integrated framework
What fragmented care does to people with personality difficulties, and what integration must mean in practice.
The problem the IPTF exists to solveFragmentation and exclusion in traditional services
The three stages at a glanceStage 1: stabilisation and safety
The Consequences of Fragmented Care and the Essentials of Integrated Practice for Personality DifficultiesFragmented care disrupts therapeutic alliance and increases risk of self‑harm.
Module 2: The theoretical model
The clinician's summary of the IPTF's foundations and the evidence-based traditions it integrates.
The model in briefPrincipled integration, not eclecticism
Personality disorder reframed dimensionallyICD-11 severity: mild, moderate, severe
The Therapeutic Relationship as the Primary Vehicle of ChangeThe therapeutic relationship is the primary medium of change, integrating all four traditions within the interaction.
Module 3: Assessment and formulation
From ICD-11 dimensional assessment to the IPTF Formulation Worksheet.
The IPTF Formulation WorksheetThe worksheet's sections and their order
Bridging ICD‑11 Dimensional Data and the IPTF Formulation WorksheetMap each ICD‑11 dimension to the corresponding worksheet domain to create a structured narrative.
Module 4: The person and the system
What fragmented care does to a person by the time they reach you, the language this field uses and the language it should use, the team around the person and what splitting actually is, and the families, carers and friendships the third stage depends on.
The service history the person arrives withBy the late twenties, most people in this group have been assessed six to twelve times and ended on, without warning, by at least three professionals
Diagnosis, stigma and the words we useThe long-term studies found the majority no longer meeting criteria at ten years, with function lagging symptoms, which is why the framework has a third stage
The team around the person, and what splitting really isDivergent accounts have three sources at once: the person genuinely presents differently, they are communicating something unsayable, and the team has not organised itself
Families, carers and the life outside the serviceConfidentiality prevents sharing information about the person; it does not prevent listening, giving general information, explaining the service or supporting the carer in their own right
Module 5: The therapeutic relationship across the arc
Contracting and the forecast that makes the predictable crises survivable, rupture and repair as the central skill, boundaries and the honest limits of what a service provides, and the practitioner's own reactions.
Contracting: what the person is actually agreeing toA treatment for interpersonal patterns cannot rest on an implicit understanding of the relationship it is conducted in
Rupture and repair as the central skillWithdrawal ruptures are commoner and easier to miss than confrontation ruptures, and frequently feel like a session going well
Boundaries, availability and the limits of a serviceThe problem is almost never where the limit is set; it is variation in where it is set
The practitioner's own reactions, and supervisionForty years of research finds clinicians consistently rate this group as less deserving and less likely to improve; expect to be subject to the effect rather than exempt from it
Module 6: Risk, measurement and getting started
What the evidence says about risk in this population and what services do wrong, the measurement the staged structure commits you to, working coherently in a service built for something else, and what to do between this course and the next.
Risk: chronic, acute, and the errors services makeRisk here is chronic with a
