The Parma Conference was a unique experience for me. I am a psychiatrist and CBT therapist. The ACBS community is so warm, energetic compared to our communities. At the Parma Conference I have reached what I could consider an intermediate level about ACT, metaphors and mindfulness techniques.
When I returned to Turkey I decided to study more on ACT and related topics. I have started to try to treat my patients from the ACT point of view. I see that creative hopelessness, in particular, is a very useful technique for resistant patients and it can be useful for CBT too.
I have been working at a full time inpatient clinic for three months. With ACT techniques I’m helping my patients to accept and be mindful about their hallucinations and delusions without any response. I finished two of my client’s therapy with only ACT techniques. One is PTSD and the other one hypochondriasis. I realized that ACT provides motivation quickly for functional behavioral change.
I organized a half day workshop called “Three waves of Behaviorism” at the National psychiatry congress which was held on October 2011. It includes basic RFT principles and RFT views of psychopathology, too. At the same congress we organized a session about “new behavioral therapies” and I did a presentation called “What ACT brings to Cognitive and Behavioral Therapy?”
I am working at the biggest Psychiatry Hospital in Turkey. On December 2011, I did a presentation called “Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: A new behavioral model for psychopathology” at my hospital. At the same time I am teaching and reading together with my psychiatry residents about ACT at my inpatient clinic.
Nowadays I am working about meta-cognitions (rumination, avoidance, thought action fusion, etc.) and have some researches with these processes. Soon I will start to research for the reliability and validity of Turkish version of AAQ-2. I took permission from the authors. I think this will be an important experience for me.
I am a founder member of a new association in Turkey called “Association for Cognitive and Behavioral Therapies of Turkey”. I am responsible for the ACT unit of this association. I am planning to arrange workshops and trainings about ACT and RFT in midterm.
I am planning a two days workshop at a psychotherapy training center in Istanbul. The content will be about the history of behaviorism and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. With this workshop I want to constitute a basic level for further trainings.
This year there will be two psychiatry congresses in Turkey. I will suggest half or full day ACT workshops to congresses’ committees.
With my colleagues this year I am planning to start to translate one of the ACT books into Turkish.
It seems that my direction is on the ACT path at this point in my professional development...
K.Fatih Yavuz, MD
Psychiatrist
Bakirkoy Psychiatry Education and Research Hospital
Istanbul, Turkey
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