On January 18th 2018, in London, the British Psychological Society’s Division of Clinical Psychology (DCP) publicly launched the Power Threat Meaning (PTM) Framework … the culmination of a five year project.
The framework is subtitled: “Towards the identification of patterns in emotional distress, unusual experiences and troubled or troubling behaviour, as an alternative to functional psychiatric diagnosis.”
The framework follows on from work “in conjunction with service users, on developing a multi-factorial and contextual approach which incorporates social, psychological and biological factors.”
It’s not meant to be replacement for all existing models and practices, but instead integrates many of them within a larger overall framework. And it’s not about formulation, but about narrative in a broader sense.
And – in part – it’s a framework that:
- Moves beyond the ‘DSM mindset’ and its medicalisation of distress.
- Is for understanding people in their social and relationship contexts … which sees them as actively making choices and creating meaning in their lives, within inevitable bodily, material, social and ideological constraints.
- Recognises that emotional distress and troubled or troubling behaviour are intelligible responses to a person’s history and circumstances
You can view all the slides from the launch-day presentation here.
You can access Frequently Asked Questions, the PTM documents and related videos and resources here.
And this radio interview with Dr. Lucy Johnstone (one of the PTM framework’s lead authors) outlines the framework in a perhaps more accessible way.
