The Handbook of Person-Centred Therapy and Mental Health

The Handbook of Person-Centred Therapy and Mental Health

Mental Health and the Person-Centred Approach - Stephen Joseph Over recent decades the person-centred approach has become a major force in the world of counselling and psychotherapy. Yet the person-centred approach to understanding distress and dysfunction has been overlooked within mainstream mental health services. In the first edition, Richard Worsley and I speculated that perhaps this was the result of the false belief held by many psychologists and psychiatrists that person-centred therapy is a good idea for the worried well, but that serious mental health problems should be left to the truly competent. There is, of course, a self-fulfilling prophecy to this. As the person-centred movement becomes marginalised within the National Health Service (NHS) because of these beliefs, training courses struggle to provide placements and supervision for trainees to work with clients with serious problems. It thus becomes the case that person-centred practitioners are often ill-equipped to work with anyone but the worried well, at least in the eyes of these other professionals.

Anniversary Conference

PCCS celebrated 20 years with with a conference at the Clarendon Suite in Birmingham in October 2013. Find out more about the event and download the speakers' presentations.