Do you care for someone with psychosis or schizophrenia?

Date: Wednesday, August 26th 2015
Categories: All Leicestershire Activities & Events

King's College, London (KCL) has recently developed a new online course, focused on some of the relevant issues for carers of people with psychosis and schizophrenia. The course is free and open to anyone interested in psychosis and caregiving issues, particularly carers, all you need to do is register. The course starts on 12th October and is based on you studying for around 3-4 hours a week. You can study how you like, in your own time.

The two-week course is designed to offer an in-depth understanding of some of the key issues and questions relevant to carers supporting people with psychotic disorders, including:

Why is schizophrenia commonly described as psychosis?
How can we best understand psychosis and its key symptoms such as hearing voices?
What are the links between cannabis use and developing psychosis?
Can psychosis affect physical health?
How do medications work and what effects can they have?
In what ways are siblings of people with psychosis affected?
How can psychosis affect a carer’s health and their relationships?

The course includes a mixture of activities such as talking head videos, quizzes, written texts and opportunities for moderated discussions between learners. It will be the first time a course like this has been developed for carers. The course includes people with lived experience of caring and a number of leading national and international academics and clinicians from psychology, psychiatry, pharmacy and nursing including: Professor Elizabeth Kuipers (Chair of the NICE Guidelines for Psychosis and Schizophrenia) Professor Sir Robin Murray (Chair of the Schizophrenia Commission) Professor David Taylor (Author of the Maudsley Prescribing Guidelines) Professor Mike Slade (Author of 100 ways to support recovery) Dr Fiona Gaughran (Lead Clinician, National Psychosis Unit) Dr Nadine Keen (Consultant Clinical Psychologist for the PICuP psychological therapies service).

No previous knowledge of psychosis or experience of caring is required to take the course. You can listen to a carer talking about the course here