LOTILKO – MBT-I Block for Parents

Detailed professional description

As part of the MBT-I programme (Mentalization-Based Treatment information/education block), and drawing on the approach of the Anna Freud Centre, we offer parents a specialist educational training programme to help them better understand and support their adolescent children when facing mental-health difficulties.

The training consists of three sessions. Parents learn about mental states associated with an increased risk of self-harm and extreme behavioural responses. Through practical, problem-focused sessions, they acquire concrete techniques and tools that can help them support their child more effectively in difficult situations.

Theoretical themes include:

• Sensations and emotions: recognising and distinguishing internal states.
• Attachment: understanding the role of attachment patterns in family dynamics.
• Mentalisation and breakdowns in mentalising: how we interpret our own and other people's intentions, and what happens when this capacity becomes impaired.
• Window of tolerance and trigger points: recognising personal emotional limits and the 'red buttons' that can push us out of balance.
• Emotion regulation: practical methods that support the management of emotions.
• Coping cards: practical tools for managing stress and difficult situations.

If participating parents are caring for a young person who self-harms, the training also places specific emphasis on understanding what may be happening in the adolescent at moments of self-harm, when suicidal thoughts may arise, and how these warning signs can be recognised.

Where there is a need, an additional session can be organised in which parents practise how to remain supportively present with their child during a self-harm crisis. Parents who wish to continue after the three-session block can join the Reflective Parent Group, where the knowledge is developed further in a more practice-oriented format.

The programme offers a supportive environment in which parents can practise effective communication and problem-solving through individual and group-based exercises, helping to strengthen family relationships and support their child's mental health.

Attendance at all three sessions is required.

Group leader: Erika Pap – clinical psychologist, symbol therapist and MBT-A therapist.