Recently, European governments have been aware of the global burden of disease related to mental health (Wahlbeck, 2010; Wykes, et al., 2015). Emotional disorders (like depression, anxiety, grief and trauma/stress related disorders) actually represent significant challenges to national health systems and professionals, due to their high prevalence, comorbidity and tendency to develop into chronic conditions. Yet, there are major disparities in their treatment between European countries. Southern Europe shows higher burden of disease for depression (Horackova et al., 2019); higher prevalence of anxiety disorders (Alonso, 2017); higher rates of comorbidity and disability (Antunes, et al., 2019). This European unbalance especially affects those who suffered most in the 2009 economic recession (Navarro-Mateu et al., 2015; Eslami et al., 2017) and in the COVID-19 recession (Fernandes, 2020), affecting deeply countries like Portugal and Spain. Thus, better mental health care for emotional disorders is necessary, particularly in these countries, to address the major social costs related to the prevalence, comorbidity and chronicity of emotional disorders. Among psychological treatments, transdiagnostic treatments in particular, are a promising and innovative approach to treat these emotional disorders, based on the fact that many share common psychopathological features, etiology and maintenance mechanisms (Cross & Hickie, 2017). This proposal will support the training and supervision in Emotion-Focused Therapy – EFT, a humanistic and experiential evidence-based psychotherapy, recently studied as transdiagnostic approach (Timulak & Keogh, 2020). EFT is not only a highly research-based, innovative and effective treatment for emotional disorders (Elliott et al., 2002, 2013), but it focuses on changing deep, maladaptive emotional processes in parallel with symptom change, gathering strong evidence from biological and psychological frameworks (Kramer & Pascual-Leone, 2016; Peluso & Freund, 2018). This consortium involves 6 European partners, i.e. 4 universities: ISMAI, (Portugal – Project Coordinator), University of Strathclyde (Scotland – UK), Trinity College (Ireland) and Comillas University (Spain) and 2 professional EFT institutes: SPTFE (Sociedade Portuguesa de Terapia Focada nas Emoções, Portugal) and IEFT (Institut für Emotionsfokussierte Therapie, Germany). This partnership will create innovative Intellectual Outputs (IO) and develop opportunities to reinforce a network of local EFT trainers and supervisors to disseminate and reinforce good practices in the countries involved, throughout Europe, and especially in Portugal and Spain. Intellectual Output 1 (IO1) is an advanced Training Course for EFT Trainers, with a Training Manual, combining the expertise of partners from Ireland and the UK. IO2 is an advanced Training Course for EFT Supervisors and a Training Manual, with the collaboration of partners from Germany and the UK. These outputs will be implemented as short-term, international training events to train at least 12 new EFT trainers and 12 new EFT supervisors from Portugal and Spain, who show prior certification in EFT practice. Returning to their countries, these new EFT trainers will deliver EFT Master Classes and impact 180 other clinical psychologists/psychotherapists, training them in their native languages. The new EFT supervisors will support the practice of at least 24 to 36 novice EFT therapists in their own countries, providing a network to support high-quality treatment practices, which will ultimately benefit many clients suffering from emotional disorders. Afterwards, partners will collaborate in measuring the impact of these results and create Good Practices Guides for EFT Training (IO4) and for EFT Supervision (IO5). Intellectual Output 3 will be an e-platform of resources to encourage and support EFT practice, supervision and training in the multiple languages of the partners (English, German, Portuguese and Castellan/Spanish), where outputs will be accessible. The e-platform will gather a wide virtual community for the dissemination of EFT practice, supervision and training and allow collecting transnational data to monitor EFT practice/supervision. This represents a significant contribution for future, international joint-research projects on these topics. This proposal will surpass the following obstacles to EFT dissemination: 1) the language barrier that impedes access to high-quality international training (through developing resources/opportunities in several EU languages); 2) the short amount of local supervisors and trainers to support and widen European EFT practice. This strategic partnership will be a platform for coordinated efforts to monitor EFT practice, supervision and training in Europe, fostering European alliances and joint research on the EFT treatment of emotional disorders.
To address the identified obstacles for disseminating EFT, and boost local networks of EFT practice, training and supervision (in local languages), we established a strategic partnership between universities and professional institutes: ISMAI (Portugal), University of Strathclyde (UK), Trinity College (Ireland) and Comillas University (Spain), SPTFE (Sociedade Portuguesa de Terapia Focada nas Emoções, Portugal) and IEFT (Institut für Emotionsfokussierte Therapie, Germany). We aimed for the following outcomes: 1) Develop Intellectual Outcomes, namely a Manual and workshop to train EFT Trainers (IO1) and a Manual and workshop to train EFT Supervisors (IO2), piloted as LTTA1 and LTTA2; 2) Develop training activities in Portugal and Spain (reaching professionals in both countries) and supervision activities (reaching professionals in both countries); 3) Develop an e-platform of resources/tools in 4 languages (English, German, Portuguese and Spanish) for supporting EFT training, supervision and practice (IO3); and, finally, as corollary of previous activities, 3) develop Good Practices Guides for EFT Training and EFT Supervision (IO4 and IO5) gathering contributions from all partners to European and worldwide EFT community.
We applied for this project in the framework of the consistent discrepancy between European countries in the access to treatments offered to those suffering from emotional disorders (like depression, anxiety, grief and trauma/stress related disorders). Emotional disorders are raising concerns across Europe (Wahlbeck, 2010; Wykes, et al., 2015) and affect deeply countries like Portugal and Spain (Antunes, et al., 2019; Horackova et al., 2019), very vulnerable to successive economic recessions and the COVID-19 pandemic (Eslami et al.,2017; Fernandes,2020; Navarro-Mateu et al.,2015). This project aimed to address obstacles previously identified during the 2019 ISEFT Conference in Glasgow (Scotland) to the dissemination of transdiagnostic treatments for emotional disorders in the modality of Emotion-Focused Therapy – EFT (Timulak & Keogh, 2020; Shaw & Halliday, 2020). Specifically, we aimed to address: 1) the language and financial barriers preventing access to high-quality training in Portugal and Spain (countries that cannot afford high training fees from international trainers or English-based training and supervision); 2) the short amount of local EFT supervisors and trainers to support and widen EFT practice in these countries.