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Training with Talking Therapies UK


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..

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Talking Therapies UK
Integrative Practice & the IPTF Framework · Advanced

Treating Personality Disorder: Evidence and Systems

The evidence-based treatments and the case for integration

This advanced integrative course equips experienced clinicians and service leaders with the conceptual and practical tools to deliver evidence-based personality disorder interventions within real-world systems. The curriculum begins by dissecting the four major structured treatments—Dialectical Behaviour Therapy, Mentalisation-Based Therapy, Schema Therapy, and cognitive approaches—examining exactly what each modality targets (for example, affect dysregulation, impaired mentalising, maladaptive schemas, or maladaptive cognitions), the strength of the empirical support for each, and their respective limitations. Learners will critically appraise randomised controlled trials, meta-analyses, and service-level outcome data, enabling them to distinguish between first-line, second-line, and adjunctive interventions and to match modality choice to patient need with precision. The second half shifts from individual technique to system design, interrogating why fragmentation persists across British mental health services despite decades of guidance. Participants analyse the organisational, commissioning, and workforce barriers that sustain siloed pathways, and explore how these structural issues translate into poorer continuity of care and disengagement for people with personality disorder. Building on this analysis, the course presents the Integrated Personality Treatment Framework (IPTF) as a stage-based, stepped-care roadmap that synthesises the strengths of each evidence-based modality into coherent, service-level pathways. Through case-based discussions and service mapping exercises, learners will translate the IPTF into actionable plans—auditing existing pathways, identifying gaps, and redesigning referral and care-coordination processes to deliver cohesive, recovery-oriented treatment. By the end of the course, participants will have not only deepened their clinical fluency in the evidence base but also developed the strategic insight required to advocate for and implement IPTF-aligned systems within their organisations, thereby bridging the gap between individual treatment fidelity and systemic transformation.
▶ 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 an Advanced course in the personality disorder pathway. It assumes that you already work with the approach at Practitioner level and want complexity, process and supervision-level thinking rather than the method itself, which is what Assessing and Formulating Personality Disorder teaches. What it adds is complex presentations, comorbidity, ruptures and impasses, the research and process literature, and the judgement needed to supervise or lead the work; it revisits the foundations only as far as it needs to before building on them, so it does not repeat the course below.

A caution. Taking an Advanced course without the foundational understanding will make it harder to follow and to complete, and you will get less from it. If you are new to this approach, begin at Foundation; if you hold the foundations but have not yet used the approach with clients, begin with Assessing and Formulating Personality Disorder. Choose the level that matches your existing experience and knowledge.

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.

14 study hours14 CPD hours certified12 months of accessAI tutor in every lessonCertificate on completion (pass mark 70%)

What you will be able to do

✓Compare the evidenced treatments, including DBT, MBT, schema therapy and TFP, and their shared factors
✓Apply general therapeutic principles for personality difficulty in any modality: consistency, coherence and continuity
✓Design care pathways that avoid both neglect and iatrogenic over-intervention
✓Work with the system around the client: crisis plans, admissions policy and team splits
✓Hold staff dynamics: splitting, burnout and the pull to reject
✓Evaluate long-term outcomes and argue for realistic, hopeful expectations

What you will study

Module 1: Part 1: The structured treatments compared
Lessons 1 to 5 of the course.
  • The structured treatments compared DBT: emotion dysregulation and behaviour
  • Evidence, limits and common factors Reading the trial evidence honestly
  • Mechanisms of change and differential treatment targets in DBT, MBT, schema therapy and cognitive therapy for personality disorder DBT targets emotion‑regulation skill acquisition as its primary mechanism of change.
  • Integrating Evidence‑Based Modalities in the Treatment of Personality Disorder Integration of DBT, MBT, schema therapy and cognitive approaches is empirically supported and addresses the multidimensional nature of personality disorders.
  • Pharmacological Integration in the Treatment of Personality Disorder Pharmacological interventions should be viewed as a collaborative tool to support, rather than undermine, psychological treatment targets.
Module 2: Part 2: Staging and Stepped‑Care Models in the Treatment o
Lessons 6 to 10 of the course.
  • Staging and Stepped‑Care Models in the Treatment of Personality Disorder Staged and stepped‑care models align treatment intensity with client readiness, risk and functional level.
  • Maintaining Gains and Preventing Relapse in Personality Disorder: Integrative Strategies Across DBT, MBT, Schema Therapy and Cognitive Approaches Maintenance phases must reinforce skills while gradually reducing therapist contact.
  • Digital and Telehealth Delivery of Evidence‑Based Treatments for Personality Disorder Digital delivery can preserve core mechanisms of DBT, MBT, schema therapy and cognitive approaches when fidelity and risk protocols are maintained.
  • Formulation‑Driven Personalisation of Evidence‑Based Interventions for Personality Disorder Formulation links presenting problems to maintaining mechanisms and guides modality selection.
  • Therapist Competence, Training, Supervision and Fidelity in Evidence‑Based Treatments for Personality Disorder Therapist competence, measured through validated fidelity scales, predicts treatment outcomes across DBT, MBT, schema therapy and CBT.
Module 3: Part 3: The British service context
Lessons 11 to 15 of the course.
  • The British service context Service organisation and policy
  • The synthesis: the case for the IPTF From many treatments to one framework
  • Governance, commissioning and the economics of integrated personality disorder pathways Governance structures such as joint commissioning boards align funding, clinical leadership, and outcome monitoring across the personality disorder pathway.
  • Operationalising the IPTF: The Clinical Interface and the Multidisciplinary Team The consultant psychiatrist must transition from a gatekeeper to a collaborative member of the multidisciplinary team, utilising a biopsychosocial formulation to guide medication and referral decisions.
  • The Continuum of Care and Outcome Measurement in the IPTF Having outlined the structural and economic rationale for the Integrative Psychotherapy Treatment Framework (IPTF) in personality disorder services, the present…
Module 4: Part 4: Embedding Integrated Personality Disorder Pathways
Lessons 16 to 20 of the course.
  • Embedding Integrated Personality Disorder Pathways: Change Management, Leadership, and Workforce Development Implementation success depends on addressing intervention characteristics, outer setting, inner setting, individual traits, and implementation process (CFIR). Effective leadership follows Kotter’s eight‑step model, creating urgency, vision, and cultural anchoring. Workforce development requires tiered training, mentorship, and fidelity monitoring to sustain therapeutic quality. Continuous quality improvement using data feedback loops consolidates gains and embeds the IPTF into routine practice.
  • The Clinical Interface: Maintaining the Therapeutic Frame within Integrated Systems