Attachment and Forensic Psychotherapy

Format: Zoom (via Eventbrite)

Speaker: Prof. Gwen Adshead

Date: Saturday 9th October 14.00 – 15.30 GMT

IAN & AGIP Members fee £35 (enter members discount code at point of purchase) | Non-members fee: £50

Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/attachment-and-forensic-psychotherapy-tickets-142344429019

This Seminar is also Week 19 of our PG Certificate in Attachment Theory. Registered PG Cert students will be given a code to access free tickets on the Eventbrite page on the day of the seminar.

In this seminar Prof. Gwen Adshead explores how attachment theory can be a useful paradigm for both formulating risk of violence and helping violent offenders change their minds for the better. She reviews published work on attachment insecurity in violent offenders and discusses how theoretically, attachment insecurity could be a risk factor for violence, especially in relational violence. She also discusses how the therapist in forensic settings can develop a ‘secure base’ for therapeutic work, which can support both patients in therapy and staff who work in secure institutions.

About the Speaker

Gwen Adshead is a Forensic Psychiatrist and Psychotherapist. She trained at St George’s hospital, the Institute of Psychiatry and the Institute of Group Analysis. She is trained as a group therapist and a mindfulness based cognitive therapist and has also trained in Mentalisation based therapy. She worked for nearly twenty years as a Consultant Forensic Psychotherapist at Broadmoor Hospital, running psychotherapeutic groups for offenders, and working with staff around relational security and organisational dynamics. She now works with patients with personality disorder in high security, prison and in the community. Gwen also has a Masters’ Degree in Medical Law and Ethics; and has a research interest in moral reasoning, and how this links with ‘bad’ behaviour. Gwen has published a number of books and over 100 papers, book chapters and commissioned articles on forensic psychotherapy, ethics in psychiatry, and attachment theory as applied to medicine and forensic psychiatry. She was honoured with the President’s Medal for services to psychiatry in July 2013; an honorary doctorate from St George’s Hospital Medical School in 2016, and was the Gresham Professor of Psychiatry 2014- 2017.