At Talking Therapies UK, we are passionate about equipping professionals with the knowledge, confidence, and compassion to support mental health across diverse settings. With decades of combined experience in clinical practice, public health leadership, and service transformation, our training programmes are rooted in evidence-based approaches and real-world application.
We specialise in delivering high-impact, trauma-informed mental health training tailored to the needs of health, education, social care, and voluntary sector teams. From safeguarding and suicide prevention to emotional resilience and therapeutic communication, our courses are designed to empower practitioners at every level—whether you’re frontline staff, a strategic commissioner, or part of a multi-agency partnership.
Our facilitators bring many years clinical expertise , and a deep understanding of the social determinants of mental health. We prioritise co-production, reflective practice, and inclusive learning environments that foster curiosity, empathy, and professional growth.
Whether you’re looking to upskill your workforce, embed mental health into your organisational culture, or meet statutory training requirements, we offer flexible delivery formats including in-person workshops, webinars, and bespoke consultancy.
Together, we can build psychologically safe, responsive systems that promote wellbeing, reduce inequalities, and improve outcomes for individuals, families, and communities. Let’s shape the future of mental health—one conversation, one training, one transformation at a time..
Integrative Practice & the IPTF Framework · Foundation
Understanding Personality Disorders
Science, stigma and the modern dimensional model
Grounded in the principles of the Definitive British Textbook of Personality Disorders, this foundational course offers trainees and practitioners a comprehensive, humane, and evidence-based overview of personality pathology. We move beyond historical misconceptions to explore the biological and psychological underpinnings of personality, examining how temperament, early attachment experiences, and adversity shape neurobiological development. You will investigate the interplay between genetic predisposition and environmental stressors, gaining insight into why some individuals develop significant difficulties in emotional regulation and interpersonal functioning. The curriculum critically addresses the stigma that has historically surrounded these conditions, replacing judgment with a nuanced understanding of human complexity. Central to this module is the transition from outdated categorical typologies to the modern ICD-11 dimensional model. Learners will master the grammar of this new system, specifically focusing on trait domains and severity ratings, including the complex borderline pattern. By dismantling the myth that personality disorders are untreatable, this course demonstrates that a compassionate, dimensional framework is the essential prerequisite for effective assessment and intervention. Designed for those with no prior experience, it provides the necessary theoretical grounding to progress confidently into clinical assessment and treatment pathways.
▶ 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 personality disorder 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 personality disorder pathway. Understanding personality disorder and the dimensional model, assessing and formulating it, then treating it: the evidence, the treatments and the systems around them.
15 study hours15 CPD hours certified6 months of accessAI tutor in every lessonCertificate on completion (pass mark 70%)
What you will be able to do
✓Describe what personality disorder is and is not, and the harm loose usage does
✓Explain the shift from categorical types to the severity-and-trait model in ICD-11
✓Recognise the common presentations, including emotionally unstable and avoidant patterns, without caricature
✓Explain aetiology evenhandedly: temperament, attachment, adversity and their interaction
✓Challenge stigma, including your own service's, with evidence and language
✓Describe the evidenced treatment approaches and what they share
What you will study
Module 1: History, stigma and the case for change
How the concept developed, the harm stigma has done, and why understanding must change.
The history of a contested conceptThe concept's origins and evolution
Stigma and the untreatability mythStigma among the public and clinicians
Beyond Categories: Embracing Dimensional Thinking to Reduce StigmaDimensional models replace binary labels with continuous spectra of severity and trait domains, reducing stigma.
Module 2: The science of personality pathology
Development, attachment, adversity and neurobiology: how difficulties actually form.
Development, attachment and adversityTemperament and environment in transaction
Neurobiology and maintaining cyclesThreat systems and affect regulation
The Development of a Fragmented Self-StructureThe internal working model becomes rigid and distorted when caregivers are inconsistent, leading to a fragmented sense of self rather than a cohesive identity.
Module 3: The ICD-11 dimensional model
Severity, trait domains and the borderline pattern: the grammar of modern diagnosis.
From categories to dimensionsWhy categories failed
Applying the ICD‑11 Dimensional Model in Clinical Assessment and FormulationThe ICD‑11 severity rating is a three‑tiered gradient based on self‑functioning, interpersonal functioning and overall impairment.
Working with ICD-11 Severity and Trait Domains in Treatment Planning: From Diagnosis to InterventionThe Level of Personality Functioning Scale (LPFS) should guide the intensity and structure of treatment, with higher severity warranting more intensive, structured interventions.
Rating severity: the four levels and what they rest onSeverity is the organising principle because it predicts impairment, service use, risk and treatment response better than any category did
The five trait qualifiersThe qualifiers are optional and are not diagnoses; a severity level alone is a complete diagnosis
The borderline pattern specifierThe specifier is a pragmatic accommodation that preserves the link to the treatment literature and to commissioned services, not a validated category
Module 4: What the research actually shows
Epidemiology and comorbidity, the long-term course that overturned the untreatability assumption, what the treatments achieve and what they do not, the critiques of the construct, and the question of diagnosis before adulthood.
Epidemiology, comorbidity and mortalityPrevalence runs from around six to thirteen per cent in the population to over half in inpatient settings, and the gradient reflects impairment rather than detection
The long-term course: what the prospective studies foundThe classification defined these disorders as enduring; two prospective studies over ten to sixteen years found they are not
What the treatments achieve, and what they do notSeveral structured treatments have randomised evidence in borderline presentations; the comparative trials repeatedly find structured generic care performing close to specialist treatment
The case against the constructFive objections recur: that it medicalises adversity, that it is moral judgement in clinical dress, that its validity is weak, that the label does documented harm, and that it is applied unequally
Adolescence and the question of when to diagnoseThe features can be assessed from around twelve with psychometric properties no worse than in adults, and early intervention has supportive trials
Module 5: The experience from inside
What the qualitative literature says services get wrong and what helps, the identity disturbance and emptiness that outlast the crises, what self-harm is actually for, and what recovery means to the people concerned.
What people say services get wrong, and what helpsSix themes recur across twenty years and several countries: being disbelieved, being blamed, inconsistency, abrupt endings, exclusion, and the gap between what helps and what is offered
Identity, emptiness and dissociationIdentity disturbance presents as an absence rather than a conflict: being whoever they are with, not knowing what they like, unable to say what they want from treatment
Self-harm: what it is actually forThe functions people report are affect regulatio
