Short Course: Mentalization Based Family Therapy (MBFT) Training

The Anna Freud Centre's short courses in the practice of MBFT are designed for NHS professionals.

MBFT is a brief (6 to 12 session) intervention for children and families. The aim of MBFT is to promote mentalization, which is the way people understand other people's ways of thinking and feeling.

MBFT, offered through the Family Support Service, also seeks to focus on helping the family to understand each other's ways of thinking and feeling. The idea is that, once this happens, communication and the capacity to solve problems together will improve in the family.

Usually families meet with their MBFT therapist on a fortnightly basis. The first meeting usually lasts for 90 minutes, while the subsequent sessions last 50 minutes.

At the beginning of each meeting the family and therapist remember what happened during the previous meeting and discuss what they thought about it after the meeting.

Sometimes, the family is given an activity to work at home and then report their thoughts about it by writing them down in a family notebook.

The therapist constantly invites the family to think about their feelings and those of the other family members and to learn how to speak to each other about the way they see their difficulties and ask each other for help thinking about them.

There are currently no dates scheduled for the next MBFT course. If you would like your contact details saved, to be notified as and when the next course is run, then please email course.enquiries@annafreud.org.

For more information about the AFC's ongoing MBFT Family Support Services, click here. To read about the MBFT project, please click here.

MBFT is also a key component to the AFC's Renal Project.

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