We are currently recruiting for a Training Co-ordinator (3 days p/w). Please email recruitment@clinicds.com for full details of the post, the application form and to ask us any questions you may have. The deadline is midnight on Sunday 27th April. Good luck!
Category Archives: News
We are delighted to announce that Dissociative Identities: Attachment-based Approaches to Psychotherapy was published yesterday (31st March) by Routledge. Valerie Sinason, Mark Linington and Emma Jack have chapters in the book and it marks a wonderful collaboration between CDS and The Bowlby Centre.
Dissociative Identities draws on expertise from practitioners and survivors to explore therapeutic approaches to dissociation resulting from complex trauma. The contributors provide a vivid insight into what it is like for therapist and survivor to be alongside one another in the therapy room . They highlight the challenges of work with the fragmented internal worlds of those who have survived attachment trauma and explore together what approaches can promote healing and repair. Dissociative identity is reframed from being a disorder to an essential survival skill, and the book includes an open recognition from the perspective of both therapist and survivor of relational challenges, pitfalls, and their impact on the healing process. Dissociative Identities will be invaluable for all professionals working with survivors of complex trauma, including psychotherapists, nurses, social workers, clinical psychologists, and counsellors. It will also be of interest to survivors and their networks.
In March 2025, Mark Linington and Emma Jack attended the ISSTD Conference in Boston. CDS Trustee Julia Beker and associate therapist Judith Marlow were also there to present and learn. Below, Emma shares some thoughts on the experience…
“I had a thought provoking time in Boston for the ISSTD Conference and learned a number of things that I will be researching back here and discussing with the wider CDS team.
I focused the sessions I went to around diagnostic challenges and assessment tools. I attended a full day learning about the usefulness and application of the Multidimensional Inventory of Dissociation (MID) with Dr Michael Coy and Jennifer Madere. I was interested to see if it might be useful at times in our assessment process or early in treatment. It is administered in a very different way to the SCID-D and could be valuable as a tool where we are less certain at the outset of the depth of dissociative symptoms. I will be thinking further initially with Lora Dimitrova who I hope, can help me to understand the full range of pros and cons.
The second tool I took a deep dive into was the TADS-I which was developed by Suzette Boon. Her presentation illuminated the way in which it takes a broader look at trauma symptoms and has the capability to explore trauma symptoms in connection with a PTSD or BPD diagnosis. This is something that is (to my mind) is a little lacking in the SCID-D. I will investigate this tool further and potentially see if further training in it would be a good next step.
I went to a very interesting presentation by a group of psychiatrists, Benjamin Israel, Judith Lewis, and Tim Brewerton. Their presentation was titled ‘Complex Trauma and Dissociation: What Psychiatrists Need to Know….But May Not’. They spoke about the way in which psychiatrists (in the USA) are trained and the lack of understanding around trauma. They talked through the big ‘misdiagnoses’ and the ways in which dissociation has been confused, in particular, with psychosis. They talked through the Schneiderian First Rank symptoms and how one might begin thinking in such a way you could tease apart delusion and dissociation. I really enjoyed this talk and feel inspired to add some of this thinking to a training Nancy and I are running in Bristol.
Judith Herman’s keynote lecture was also a standout moment and her recent research around justice had Mark and I pondering the ways in which the clinic could begin to think about justice (in a much wider way than just criminal justice) and to support our patients to feel we are alongside them in their various justice journeys.”
Emma Jack – Clinical Director – CDS UK
Today, 5th March, is Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) Awareness Day and that provides a great opportunity to share the latest news from The Dissociative Disorders Alliance (The DDA). This day can leave people with other types of complex dissociative disorders such as OSDD/P-DID feeling excluded, so we’d like you all to know that The DDA will be for people with any complex dissociative disorder regardless of initialism!
We are delighted to announce that The DDA has now achieved charitable status! We hope that this organisation will become a great support to people with DID and those working in the field too.
Please stay tuned for future communications – if you would like to be kept updated, please email theddaglobal@gmail.com with permission to hold your details on file.
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On the 16th November, CDS UK hosted a day for the core staff, associate therapists and trustees to meet and to discuss the future of the organization. We listened to Sam Griggs, Director of Operations and Business present the 2024-26 Business Plan before breaking into groups to reflect on our ideas and experiences from our different positions within the organisation in relation to what we’d heard. This was then fed back to the rest of the attendees. We then enjoyed a buffet lunch and the chance to meet colleagues from all parts of the organisation who work across the UK. The day was closed with speeches from Chair of Trustees Nigel MacLennan and CEO Mark Linington.
The feedback we have had from the survey shows that attendees most enjoyed networking with other associates and sharing a meal together, and we will be organising more events that offer such opportunities over the year to encourage a greater sense of community within and connection across the organisation. We also noted that people would like the upcoming events to include more clinically focussed material, and we will be taking this into account for the next event ‘Making Connections’ which will be held in London on Saturday 17th May, as well as providing other training opportunities outside of this day. We are currently planning to employ a Training Co-ordinator who will focus on these developments. We are in the early stages of planning the May event, and will send out more info as the event planning develops. We would like to give a big thank you all attendees for giving up their time to offer such valuable insight into their work and to share ideas on how CDS UK can improve in the coming years.
One of the CDS trustees Julia Beker has had her work published in Clinical Psychology Review, which is available for open access (link at the bottom of this post). Co-written with Martin Dorahy, Jaimee Moir, and Jacinta Cording, it explores their systematically reviewed and meta-analytically assessed empirical research investigating inter-identity amnesia in dissociative identity disorder. They hope to bring a nuanced lens to this important and understudied phenomenon. Julia adds:
“Individuals who experience dissociative identity disorder often report a degree of amnesia between different identities. That is, while one identity has encoded, and has access to, particular memories or information, in another identity this may feel completely inaccessible. Recently, research on this phenomenon of ‘inter-identity amnesia’ has accrued. This paper collates such research systematically and meta-analytically to try and better understand the nature and extent of inter-identity amnesia in DID. Overall, we find disparate results, unclear conclusions, and some methodological considerations suggesting that we are still at the beginning stages of our understanding. The paper urges a nuanced lens into empirically assessing and conceptualising memory processes in DID.”
You can find the paper here: https://lnkd.in/eX9RJhVy
CDS UK Consultant Psychotherapist Nancy Borrett and Clinical Director Emma Jack have now completed their four-day training with senior mental health clinicians from Somerset NHS Foundation Trust. It was a real privilege to share knowledge, experience and ideas with the aim of improving mental health provision for people with DID and other dissociative disorders.
The training was underpinned by some fundamental principles such as compassion, collaboration and maximising on clients’ felt sense of safety within services. They explored ways of working with different dissociative identities, assessing risks and the management of complex safeguarding dilemmas. The input from a former CDS patient with lived experience of DID was a powerful contribution to the training and hugely appreciated by everyone.
Nancy and Emma really enjoyed having time to think together and reflect on this incredibly rewarding and often challenging area of work. The clinicians in Somerset were very enthusiastic and engaged, with some fantastic ideas.
CDS UK hope to continue to offer training to NHS trusts all over the UK to support the nationwide development of dissociation and DID-informed practice.
CDS UK Consultant Psychotherapist Nancy Borrett and Clinical Director Emma Jack are delivering a four-day training to senior mental health practitioners from Somerset NHS Foundation Trust.
The first day was about understanding dissociation and DID and was presented to around 65 professionals from various disciplines, including Psychology, Psychiatry, Nursing, various therapy modalities and some representatives from Social Work.
The following 3 days will focus more on clinical aspects of the work with around 35 senior clinicians attending from all over the county. They will present material on understanding the complexities and challenges of working with DID, how assessment and risk management can be different with multiplicity, and ideas for working with people effectively and ethically within Somerset’s current service limitations. A former CDS UK patient will be joining them for one of the days to talk about their life as a person with DID, their therapy journey and a Q and A session.
Nancy and Emma have had excellent feedback so far and are hoping to deliver this kind of training nationally, in order to develop awareness and understanding.
In October 2024, Mark Linington (CEO), Emma Jack (Clinical Director) and Matt Bordonada (Deputy Clinical Director) attended the ESTD (European Society for Trauma & Dissociation) 9th congress in Katowice, Poland, entitled ‘From Diagnosis to Treatment: Recognising Complex Trauma and Dissociation’. In addition, CDS UK Associate Therapists Sally Urquhart, Denise Stowe, and Amanda Wells were also present at the congress.
Before the congress, all of the above CDS UK staff and associates visited the Memorial and Museum at Auschwitz-Birkenau, visiting both the prison and workcamp site. All in attendance agreed this was a very moving experience.
There were many excellent speakers and presentations, including by Bethany Brand who spoke about her TopDD research and the findings of a clinical trial of the ‘Finding Solid Ground’ programme that has come as a result of this research, which CDS UK would like to consider utilising in future for some patients.
The 10th ESTD congress will be held in October 2026 in Lisbon, Portugal. CDS UK intend to present at this congress, and we would be open to joint delivery of presentations with our Associate Therapists.
CDS UK’s CEO Mark Linington, Clinical Director Emma Jack and Deputy Clinical Director Matt Bordonada were interviewed for their expertise for an article in the i Newspaper, published on 31st March 2024. The article touches on an honest and insightful account of living with DID, and collaborates with the CDS UK team to recount the injustice of lack of access to treatment within the confines of the UK ‘postcode lottery’ and a society that often does not support the existence of DID.
You can read a copy of the article here: ‘Multiple people live within this body – I am only one of them’ – inews.
