Search results

Many people in severe mentally disturbed states do not use language or other symbolic media well or coherently. Therefore, the non-verbal medium needs to be understood by workers with such people. The “Learning from Action” experiential workshop was developed in order to provide an opportunity to learn about hidden messages in the relationships and roles occurring in activities. In August 2017, a workshop was run for the first time in Japan. The purpose of this paper is to report the experience and dynamics observed by the three consultants, who are here the authors of this paper.

After the workshop all the staff and members, including interpreters, were invited to give feedback.

Analysis of the feedback data showed certain important dynamics, concerning especially dependence, cultural defences and the defensive role of activity in a multicultural context.

This is an initial experience to be followed up by later feedback and further workshops.

Workers awareness of non-verbal communication within the roles of work activities is a training possibility. It faces various resistances including the mental health assumptions of meaninglessness of any communication outside the verbal.

This is a method of training not widely used even in European countries, and is the first in a country in the far east.

The learning from action (LfA) workshop was born more than 20 years ago and held in various places in Italy. This study aims to provide a learning experience for therapeutic communities (TCs) workers. During these years, the LfA work has developed by creating a dialogue between the experiential conferences and the group relations conferences (GRC) run by the Tavistock Institute. In this paper, the author explores the dialogue between (the leadership-oriented) GRC and (democratic) TC culture.

The authors intend to show how this dialogue has developed in LfA, describing tasks, purposes and critical aspects of LfA specific events: decision-making plenary, decision-making, TCs, action, dialog between cultures, GRC, learning methodology, decision-making group, activity group, morning and evening community meetings.

The authors confirmed the idea that acting and working together is a way of learning and communicating with each other. The role activities and works the authors do together to provide for the community in LfA have a more authentic quality of life than the purely verbal reflective work of a GRC.

The paper describes how LfA has developed and consolidated over the years, constituting an original learning model inspired by the typical activities of the culture of democratic TCs and the learning methodology of GRCs.

This study aims to describe Italian and UK therapeutic community developments during 1960–2021.

Historical review and personal experience.

After significant divergence in the nature of “therapeutic communities”, mostly based on the different sociopolitical contexts in the two countries, areas of formal rapprochement have been emerging in the past 20 years.

The details of how therapeutic communities developed in Italy, particularly in the wake of Law 180, deserves investigation and comparison to the UK and other countries.

The recent collaborative work in quality, training and research could support the future use of therapeutic communities and enabling environments.

The underlying principle of “relational practice”, which underlies the therapeutic community approach, could have wider implication in public services beyond mental health.

Much has been written about the progressive intentions of Italian mental health with Law 180, but not with a specific focus on therapeutic communities – which were an important initial impetus for Basaglia and his equipé.