As an organisation we benefit from the input from the senior researchers who sit on our Executive Committee. In 2020 IAN was represented by its then Chairman, Desmond King on the UKCP practise-based research initiative, which produced the journal article ‘Bridging the Gap between Clinical Practice and Research Part I: Findings of a Pilot Study on Daniel Stern’s ‘Moments of Meeting’ from the UKCP’s Practitioner Research Network’. Internationally IAN is currently the UK partner in the EU member state research initiative to improve EU wide cross-disciplinary service quality and delivery in family mental health. This ERASMUS+ project seeks to investigate, summarise and centralise European family and community resources with those of mental health, educational and social professionals in order to improve their work, to allow them to reach more patients in less time and to give to these patients and families a more efficient and high-quality care.

International Attachment Network visits Open Dialogue Groups in Lapland as research partners in the EU ERASMUS+ Project

As part of their role as research partners in the EU Erasmus+ Project which investigates family and community based mental health resources across the EU, IAN UK were invited to observe Lapland’s mental health system’s now internationally renowned and replicated ‘Open Dialogue Groups’. Open Dialogue is a system of engagement and treatment of mental health patients developed in Western Lapland in the 1980’s as a radical alternative to the traditional clinician – individual patient treatment model, whereby treatment decisions are made for patients by the clinical team behind closed doors, and delivered in the vast majority of cases by a single clinician to a single patient. In Open Dialogue the patient and their family and social support are invited from the outset to engage with the clinical team as a dialogical group, enabling the team to observe the systemic unfolding and understanding of the patient’s difficulties. All clinical thoughts and understandings are discussed openly in the group and patient’s are involved directly in clinical decision making. Western Lapland’s Open Dialogue system has attained remarkable success  in reducing patient’s symptoms and as a result has been replicated across the world including in the UK’s NHS. Here the International Attachment Network team of Roxana Parra, Jonathan Lloyd and Nicolas Lorenzini reflect on their experience of the groups and  attachment theory.