Course Professional Diploma in Advanced Therapeutic Skills for Complex Clients

The Professional Diploma in Advanced Therapeutic Skills for Complex Clients is designed for experienced practitioners who work with individuals presenting with multiple, longstanding or high-risk difficulties. The course focuses on deepening your clinical thinking and broadening your skills so you can stay steady, effective and compassionate in the face of complexity, uncertainty and strong emotions.

You will explore the nature of “complexity” in clinical work, including chronic and co-occurring difficulties such as trauma, personality-related issues, self-harm and suicidality, addiction, eating difficulties, relational instability, and physical and mental health comorbidity. The programme examines how attachment histories, shame, dissociation, neurodiversity, and systemic factors like poverty, discrimination and marginalisation shape presentation and impact engagement with services.

A core focus of the course is on formulation-driven, integrative practice. You will learn to draw on and flexibly combine ideas from different therapeutic models, including psychodynamic, humanistic, cognitive-behavioural, trauma-focused, and relational approaches, in a way that is coherent and responsive to each client. Emphasis is placed on pacing, boundaries, risk assessment and management, working with ambivalence and rupture, and sustaining a collaborative alliance over time.

The programme also pays particular attention to therapist factors: countertransference, burnout, vicarious trauma, and the emotional impact of working with high levels of distress and risk. You will be supported to use supervision more effectively, to reflect on your own patterns in the work, and to develop sustainable practices that protect both you and your clients.

Teaching methods typically include lectures, case-based learning, live demonstrations, structured skills practice, reflective groups, and opportunities to bring your own anonymised material. This diploma is particularly suited to counsellors, psychotherapists, psychologists, social workers, mental health and social care professionals. By the end of the course, you will have a more nuanced clinical lens, a stronger and more flexible skillset, and increased confidence in working safely, creatively and ethically with complex clients and contexts.