Our trainings
The 20-Day DIT Programme provides counsellors and psychologists working in IAPT with a structure to conduct a time-limited manualised psychodynamic therapy. It is a postgraduate certificate level training for IAPT employees who do not meet psychodynamic competencies. You will become a DIT practitioner on successful completion of the full training.
The 5-Day DIT Training provides psychoanalytically/dynamically trained practitioners with a structure to conduct a time-limited, manualised psychodynamic therapy. It is intended as a CPD course to hone the skills of established psychodynamic practitioners, to enable them to deliver an effective brief psychodynamic intervention to treat depression. To become a DIT practitioner, you are required to attend the five-day training, pass the role-play, successfully complete supervision and pass a case study. This course is accredited by the British Psychoanalytic Council.
DIT practitioners can avail of a unique opportunity with Anna Freud Centre to enhance their professional development by becoming a qualified DIT supervisor.
DIT for Complex Care is a two-day advanced training that supports qualified DIT practitioners to apply the model to a complex patient group in secondary care. The training assumes existing knowledge of working with the 16-session DIT model and that clinicians have the requisite competence. DIT for Complex Care modifies and extends the model and emphasises skills like mentalizing, developing epistemic trust, stabilisation techniques and risk management. The adapted DIT complex care model is a 28-session approach that is based on the published results of a pilot study carried out in Newham (Journal of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, 33(7) 1-22; August 2019.
We also offer annual courses such as: DIT Refresher, CPD Day and DIT and Mentalization.
View all live DIT trainings
DIT approved supervisors Resources
Recommended reading for Dynamic Interpersonal Therapy short course (the papers in bold are directly related to DIT).
Bateman, A. & Fonagy, P. (2006) Mentalisation-based Treatment for Borderline Personality Disorder. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Bateman, A, Brown, D and Pedder, J. (2000) Introduction to Psychotherapy: An outline of psychodynamic principles and practice (3rd edition) London: Routledge
Blatt, S and Luyten, P. (2009) ‘A structural–developmental psychodynamic approach to psychopathology: Two polarities of experience across the life span.’ Development and Psychopathology 21, 793–814
Bowlby, J. (1958). ‘The nature of the child’s tie to his mother.’ Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 39: 350-373
Douglas, A., Ablett-Tate, N. and Chad, N. ‘Dynamic interpersonal therapy in an NHS tertiary level specialist psychotherapy service’ Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy: Applications, Theory and Research, 30(3), 223-229
Fonagy, P. (2001) Attachment Theory and Psychoanalysis. London: Karnac
Fonagy, P., Gergely, G., Jurist, G., & Target, M. (2002). Affect Regulation, Mentalization and the Development of the Self (London: Other Press).
Fonagy, P. (2010). The changing shape of clinical practice: A comprehensive narrative review. Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, 24(1)
Gelman, T., McKay, A., Marks, L. (2010). Dynamic Interpersonal Therapy: Providing a focus for time-limited psychodynamic work within the NHS, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy: Applications, Theory and Research, 24(4): 347-361
Guthrie, E. (2010). Psychodynamic Interpersonal Therapy: Advances in Psychiatric Treatment. London: Sage.
Gomez, L. (1997) An Introduction to Object Relations. London: Free Association Books
Greenson, R. R. (1967) The technique and practice of psychoanalysis Vol. I. New York: International Universities Press
Kernberg, O. (1985). Internal World and External Reality: Object Relations Theory
Applied. New York: Aronson.
King, P. (1978) “Affective Response of the Analyst to the Patient’s Communications”, Int. J. Psychoanal., 59: 329-334
Lemma, A., Target, M., Fonagy, P. (2011) Brief Dynamic Interpersonal Therapy. Oxford: OUP.
Lemma, A. (2003) Introduction to the Practice of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. Chichester: Wiley, particularly the chapter ‘Working with Endings’.
Lemma, A., Roth, A., Pilling, S. (2008) The competences required to deliver effective psychoanalytic/ psychodynamic therapy. www.ucl.ac.uk/CORE
Lemma, A., Target, M., Fonagy, P. (2011) The development of a brief
psychodynamic intervention (Dynamic Interpersonal Therapy) and its application to depression: a pilot study. Psychiatry: Biological and Interpersonal Processes,74 (1): 41-48
Lemma, A., Target, M., Fonagy, P. (2010) The Development of a Brief Psychodynamic Protocol for Depression: Dynamic Interpersonal Therapy. Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy: Applications, Theory and Research, 24(4): 329-346
Lemma, A. & Patrick, M. (2010). ‘Introduction: Contemporary psychoanalytic applications: development and vicissitudes’ in Off the coach: Contemporary psychoanalytic approaches. London: Routledge.
Leonidaki, V., Lemma, A. & Hobbis, I. ‘Clients’ experiences of dynamic interpersonal therapy (DIT): opportunities and challenges for brief, manualised psychodynamic therapy in the NHS’. Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy: Applications, Theory and Research : 30(1), 42-61
Luborsky, L. & Crits-Christoph, P. (1990). Understanding transference: The core conflictual relationship theme method. New York: Basic Books.
Luyten, P., Fonagy, P., Lowyck, B., & Vermote, R. (2012). ‘The assessment of mentalization’ In A. Bateman & P. Fonagy (Eds.), Handbook of mentalizing in mental health practice (pp. 43-65). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association
Luyten, P., Fonagy, P., Lemma, A., Target, M. (in press) Mentalising and depression. In: A. Bateman and P. Fonagy (eds.) Mentalising in Mental Health Practice. Washington: APA
Ogden, T.H. (1992). The Primitive Edge of Experience. London: Karnac.
Perry, H.S. (1982) Psychiatrist of America: The Life of Harry Stack Sullivan. New York: Norton
FAQs Members area
If you have previously trained with the Anna Freud Centre or if you are a DIT supervisor, please use the link provided to you to access the members area.
If you would like the link to be resent to you, please contact [email protected]
Becoming a trainer
For those based in the UK
- Prospective trainer must be an accredited DIT Practitioner and Supervisor.
- Prospective trainer shadows the 5-Day DIT Programme run at the Centre or at least 10 days on the 20-Day DIT Training run at the Centre.
- Prospective trainers delivers a 5-day training at the Centre or at least 10 days of the 20-day DIT training as a support trainer.
- If approved by the DIT Programme Director, prospective trainers gains AFC Trainer status.
- The Centre can approach the trainer to deliver paid teaching for the Centre.
Maintenance:
- The trainer must attend a yearly CPD event for trainers and supervisors.
- The trainer is required to maintain their DIT Practitioner status by seeing at least one patient a year. This should include one hour of DIT supervision for every 12 hours of DIT therapy work for the first year of work as a DIT Practitioner and using peer supervision beyond the first year.
For those based outside of the UK
Step 1 – Initial Accreditation
- The Training Provider must be based outside of the UK and intending to train teams based outside of the UK and in the agreed countries identified in the licensing agreement.
- The Training Provider must employ at least one DIT trainer who:
- Has completed the 5-day or the 20-day DIT Training run by the Centre
- Is a registered DIT Practitioner and Supervisor
- Has shadowed the full 5-day DIT training or at least 10 days of the 20-day DIT training
- The training Provider must have at least two DIT trainers within 2 years of accreditation (any training exceeding 20 participants must be run by 2 trainers).
- The organisation or Training Provider must be currently involved with providing DIT treatments and supervision, or that its proposed trainers are providing DIT treatments.
- The organisation or Training Provider will have demonstrated relevant involvement in academic, research and practice settings involved addressing the social, emotional and mental well-being of adults.
- The organisation must provide a satisfactory plan for delivery of training and other associated services (e.g., supervision).
Once the above requirements have been demonstrated, Training Provider to pay a £1,000 initial accreditation fee.
Step 2 – Completion of one initial 5-day DIT training organised by the Training Provider, co-delivered with a Centre approved trainer (£5,500 fee plus tutor expenses, incl. travel, accommodation and subsistence).
Step 3 – Maintaining accreditation
- Training provider to pay £1,000 annual accreditation fee
- Training provider to attend minimum of 6 hours of supervision on training and delivery of DIT, within 1 year of the first training delivery, with an AFC trainer (ideally the trainer who co-delivered the first training)– at £200/hr (£1,200 fee)
- Training provider is required to maintain their DIT Practitioner status by seeing at least one patient a year. This should include one hour of DIT supervision for every 12 hours of DIT therapy work for the first year of work as a DIT Practitioner and using peer supervision beyond the first year.
- Training provider to submit regular training and supervision records, including the list of those who successfully complete the training.
- Training provider to share learning, including arranging for their trainers to attend at least one accredited DIT training Centre network event (online) annually to share learning across the community Sharing Learning
Dynamic interpersonal therapy (DIT)
Dynamic interpersonal therapy (DIT) can help people with emotional and relationship problems.
When a person can deal with relationship problems more effectively, their psychological symptoms often improve.
DIT is a time-limited psychodynamic therapy. Time-limited therapy happens over a fixed number of sessions. One of the main ideas in psychodynamic therapy is that when something is very painful we can try to ignore it. It’s a bit like the saying ‘out of sight, out of mind’.
Most of the time we know when we’re doing this, but sometimes we bury something so successfully that we lose sight of it completely. This is why difficult experiences in the past can continue to affect the way we feel and behave in the present.
DIT provides a safe place to talk openly about how you feel and to understand what might be causing your difficulties.
Issues we can help with
Dynamic interpersonal therapy can help people with emotional and relationship problems. It has been developed for the treatment of depression and anxiety.
Length of treatment
Dynamic interpersonal therapy usually lasts for 16 sessions. Therapy sessions are 50 minutes long and take place weekly.
Initial phase
Dynamic interpersonal therapy does not have an assessment period like other therapies. Instead it has an initial phase. The length of the initial phase is not fixed to a certain number of sessions.
During the initial phase your therapist builds a picture of what you find difficult in your life and how this affects you and people close to you. A questionnaire is used to help with this. They ask some questions, but you only need to give as much information as you feel comfortable with. Many people find that as therapy gets going they are able to talk more openly.
When your therapist has enough information they begin to think with you about what it would be most helpful for you to focus on over the 16 sessions.
Therapy sessions
You may find that your therapist is more ‘silent’ than you are used to. At the start of each session your therapist greets you, but beyond this may not ask questions. Instead they wait to hear from you about what is on your mind. This isn’t because they’re unfriendly, but because they want you to have space to work out what is on your mind. This can take a while to get used to, but your therapist knows how hard it can be and helps if you find this difficult.
Dynamic interpersonal therapy uses what happens in the relationship between you and your therapist to help think about the problems in your life. This means that your therapist often draws your attention to what you feel in the session. The idea is that by exploring the relationship between you and your therapist, you get a better understanding of what is troubling you.
You may find that your therapist doesn’t always answer your questions directly. Sometimes they may be interested in what lies behind your questions. For example, someone who is very worried about therapy may not feel able to say this. Instead they may ask lots of questions about what therapy involves. Rather than answering them directly, the therapist may notice that behind the questions is a worry about beginning therapy. Helping the patient talk about this, rather than answering all the questions, is a more helpful way forward.
Risks and side effects
Talking and thinking about emotional problems can be difficult. For this reason some people can feel worse before they feel better. We work with you to manage strong emotional reactions.
Questions or worries
Therapy can bring up difficult issues. We want you to feel able to discuss any questions or worries with your therapist. This is important to progress your therapy.
If you would like to discuss any concerns with someone independent of your therapy please contact our patient advice and liaison service.
