I am writing this as i am on my way to the first open dialogue international training conference in helsinki, an exciting inaugural event which when i first commenced my open dialogue journey i could not have anticipated. I first started thinking of open dialogue as an approach that i would wish to incorporate into my practice after attending a presentation at an isps conference in the u.k. . At that stage i saw open dialogue as an intervention with a psychotherapeutic/systemic/psychodynamic/family based model combined with a person centred flexible approach attached to the theory. In many ways that is how i still envisage the approach only now i have more of an understanding of the ethos.
I suppose looking back i thought that i would be able to use some of the ideas i absorbed from that initial presentation in my work in early intervention in psychosis services where it would appear to be an excellent fit. Indeed it was the fact that open dialogue had originally been used in psychosis services in western lapland successfully and with considerably better outcomes that those achieved by treatment as usual within the u.k.that had encouraged me to attend the presentation.
I think i was quite naive and my expectations in relation to the uptake of open dialogue as an approach was more around promotin'g the concepts. Working for the nhs i could see that there would be difficulties in implementing the approach however i had thought in terms of a pilot project within the setting of eis which seemed to me a good fit. What i had failed to understand at that juncture was that open dialogue was more than an intervention but was an organisational structure and a way of being. The organisational aspects of open dialogue is of course difficult to replicate in an nhs setting because of existing team structures and the vastness and intransigence of the structure. The ethos is also difficult to replicate because the finnish team work together, they socialise together and because of the nature of the community in western lapland this forms a bond that is impossible to reproduce in the u.k.
I suppose looking back i thought that i would be able to use some of the ideas i absorbed from that initial presentation in my work in early intervention in psychosis services where it would appear to be an excellent fit. Indeed it was the fact that open dialogue had originally been used in psychosis services in western lapland successfully and with considerably better outcomes that those achieved by treatment as usual within the u.k.that had encouraged me to attend the presentation.
I think i was quite naive and my expectations in relation to the uptake of open dialogue as an approach was more around promotin'g the concepts. Working for the nhs i could see that there would be difficulties in implementing the approach however i had thought in terms of a pilot project within the setting of eis which seemed to me a good fit. What i had failed to understand at that juncture was that open dialogue was more than an intervention but was an organisational structure and a way of being. The organisational aspects of open dialogue is of course difficult to replicate in an nhs setting because of existing team structures and the vastness and intransigence of the structure. The ethos is also difficult to replicate because the finnish team work together, they socialise together and because of the nature of the community in western lapland this forms a bond that is impossible to reproduce in the u.k.
