Walk Alone - emphasizing relational knowledge and skills in education

The Norwegian Center for Psychotherapy and Psychosocial Rehabilitation of Psychoses - SEPREP - was founded in 1990 with an idealistic, humanistic and psychodynamic approach, to help and to strengthen people suffering from... [ view full abstract ]

The Norwegian Center for Psychotherapy and Psychosocial Rehabilitation of Psychoses - SEPREP - was founded in 1990 with an idealistic, humanistic and psychodynamic approach, to help and to strengthen people suffering from severe mental illness. Since 1997 SEPREP has conducted 112 classes of students from the mental health and addiction field. Almost 4000 practitioners have joined our 2-year multilevel and multidisiplinary programmes. We must recognize that health care and social welfare in Norway during the past decades have had better opportunities and financial possibilities compared to many other countries with lower health budgets. But, as a disadvantage this has also reduced the speed of developing and implementing recovery based approaches in Norway. Meanwhile, SEPREP has been a solid rock to promote partnership between professionals and patients/users/peers/relatives through its educational programmes.

We will like to present to you different ways of highlighting both the evidence based theoretical knowledge on the professional side and the experienced knowledge of the patients/users, their families and the individual practitioners. The phenomenological and anecdotal experiences and hermeneutical scientific approaches must be given more attention in the educational programmes and on development of the mental health and addiction services, in the future. We will also like to emphasize the importance of professional supervision and mentoring, in order to prepare the students to increase and enhance the ability to reflect upon all aspects of their practices. Authentic relationships demand a humble, present and genuine attitude from the helping professional to offset the unnecessary and artificial borders between "us and them".

No one should ever walk alone struggling with severe mental problems or fighting the problems alone. That is why SEPREP wants to make a difference and to call on all good forces to cooperate for the benefit of disadvantaged people and their families.