Resources

In Newcastle, Carla Walton and others undertook a randomised clinical trial that compared treatment by Conversational Model VS Dialectical Behaviour Therapy for people with Borderline/Complex PTSD. This was the largest trial in the Southern Hemisphere, and is published in Cochrane Review of Psychotherapy 2020. The researchers concluded the Conversational Model produces beneficial effects and is a cost-effective treatment of people with Borderline/Complex PTSD.  

Joan Haliburn, 2017, developed an abbreviated version of the model that has been manualised as ‘Psychodynamic – Interpersonal’ Psychotherapy. The Psychodynamic – Interpersonal form has been shown to be effective in depression, in certain psychosomatic disorders and to be cost-effective in treating repeated users of clinic services. The Psychodynamic – Interpersonal form of treatment is useful in reducing repeated episodes of self-harm.

A Conversational Model Adherence Scale was developed in 2016.

In the first study of its kind in the world, in 1992 Janine Stevenson published evidence of the effectiveness of treatment with the conversational model for patients diagnosed with borderline personality. Later research found the model is applicable for effective day-to-day psychotherapeutic practice.

The research has been undertaken in the Southern Hemisphere (Australia) and has local and cultural relevance.  

Contemporary advances in the fields of trauma, developmental theory, linguistics, memory and neurophysiology are continually incorporated into our theoretical framework and it is now known as the Conversational Model of Psychodynamic Psychotherapy.