Our Services / Specialist Adult Services
The Acorn Programme
The Acorn Programme is an intensive psychotherapy programme designed to provide treatment for women who may have experienced complex trauma in their lives and self-harm, and/or have an eating disorder or a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder. The programme has been treating women for about 10 years and in 2007 received validation from a national professional organisation, The Community of Communities in partnership with The Association of Therapeutic Communities as the first ever therapeutic community to be accredited.
Description of Service Model
The Acorn Programme offers an approach to treatment built around a co-operative relationship with the person who uses self-defeating behaviours, in a joint attempt to understand the behaviour and to control it. We start from the understanding that a person uses self-defeating behaviours for a reason, and that if this behaviour harms or leads to isolation and rejection, the reasons must be powerful. Our job is to help find out what triggers the behaviours, and to teach how the individual might act to cope in a more self-affirming way. This is a difficult and serious task: at times it will really test the individual’s determination to change things.
The goal of the programme is to help the patient find a life worth living. Part of that is asking the patient to take care of their own safety, and to make choices about how they wish to live their life. The Acorn Programme is not a suicide prevention programme: there are no locked doors or special observations.
The Programme
The Acorn Programme has two central elements - The Therapeutic Community and Dialectical Behaviour Therapy:
The Therapeutic Community
Although we do a fair amount of individual work with patients, therapy takes place in a group programme. Patients live with others who have their own difficulties, attending groups and sharing time together. Much learning can come from patients understanding one another, and supporting each other in the process of change. Therapy comes from whole-hearted participation in the whole programme, so it is not possible only to be involved in part of what happens here.
The unit is set up as a Therapeutic Community. It is part of the treatment for patients to share their life with others, and to take responsibility for sharing decisions about how to live together. While the staff set the overall structure of the programme, patients are expected to contribute to keeping the treatment safe and therapeutic, both by acting responsibly themselves and by helping others think about the effect of their behaviour in the ward.
We encourage a ‘culture of enquiry’ in which everyone can question the conduct of any other individual or group of individuals, psychological processes (‘I wonder what made you do that’), and managerial issues. Such questioning is an important learning opportunity, for those asking the questions and for those questioned.
Everything that happens in the community is open for discussion. We have a principle: ‘if you have a secret, you have a problem’. For many people the letting go of the need to keep parts of their lives hidden is a major part of their therapy.
Dialectical Behaviour Therapy
The group of people on the programme work in a range of settings, including several expressive therapy groups. Most of the structured work of the group is built around developing strategies and skills to handle the demands of daily life, using a plan of treatment called Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT). This is focussed into two skills training groups each week, a workshop and an individual DBT session. Patients are expected to keep a diary of problems and of their attempts to handle them using the skills they learn. The goal is to reduce their need to use old self-defeating behaviour patterns by learning more effective strategies to cope with distress, with frightening impulses and with challenges they encounter in the world.
Individuals will be helped to plan how to expose themselves to experiences which make them anxious so they can become accustomed to coping; to manage their world actively to reduce difficult experiences; and to challenge negative or fearful expectations of themselves and the world.
Click here to download a pdf of the Acorn Guide
Contact Us
To arrange a visit or make a referral please contact:
Chris Dawson
Clinical Service Manager
01904 412551 ext 2913
or
Wendy Cochrane
Medical PA (Specialist Adult Services)
01904 412551 ext 2305
wcochrane@theretreatyork.org.uk
Please click on the following link to another website which you may find useful:
Community of Communities
