ACT for Psychosis Recovery
Book Description
ACT for Psychosis Recovery is a comprehensive and unique workbook designed to provide an evidence-based, step-by-step approach to facilitating group work with clients suffering from psychosis.
We have written the book to make it accessible to therapists, carers and peer supporters who would like to facilitate groups in psychosis settings. We hope that readers will gain an understanding of the basic theory behind using an ACT approach for psychosis and be able to incorporate the groups in their settings.
This book will not only teach the reader how to facilitate ACT groups, you will also learn how a client’s recovery can be both supported and sustained by promoting acceptance, mindfulness, and values-driven action. The groups focus on a central metaphor (Passengers on the Bus), so that mindfulness and values-based action are introduced in a way that is engaging and memorable.
You will find tips and strategies to help clients identify valued directions, teach clients how to respond flexibly to psychotic symptoms, thoughts, and emotions that have been barriers to living a valued life, and lead workshops that promote compassion and connection among participants. You’ll also find tried and tested techniques for engaging people in groups, particularly those traditionally seen as “hard to reach”—people who may be wary of mental health services or experience paranoia.

Using The Book
The book is divided in to two sections. Part one incorporates six chapters that set the scene for facilitating ACT for psychosis recovery groups. The introduction and Chapter 1 provide an overview and theory behind ACT interventions for people experiencing psychosis. Chapter 1 also describes the development of the group interventions that have been conducted our research team. Chapters 2 and 3 describe adaptations for facilitating ACT groups in different settings, including groups for caregivers of people with psychosis and clients in inpatient settings. Chapter 4 discusses our experiences of supervising and training peer-supporters to co-facilitating the groups. This chapter also recounts the perspectives of peer-supporters who have been involved. Chapter 5 provides skills and tips for running successful workshops. Finally, Chapter 6 highlights the importance of on-going supervision and using ratings to ensure adherence to the model.
Part 2 of the book contains a step-by-step treatment manual for running ACT groups. We outline each session, which encompasses a taster session, 4 treatment sessions and 2 booster sessions. We also provide exercise prompt sheets and worksheets in the appendix to allow facilitators to run the groups.
Resources
We have provided resources to assist future facilitators to run ACT for psychosis groups. These include PowerPoint slides that can be used in sessions along with worksheets used in the groups. We also provide recordings of mindfulness exercises and scripts of these exercises, in case the readers want to make their own recordings. In addition to the mindfulness recordings, we also provide videos that are used in the groups; passengers on the bus animation and videos of Paul and George. Again, we provide scripts of the Paul and George videos so that future facilitators can create their own videos if required. Finally, we provide a video showing how to facilitate the acting out the passengers on the bus metaphor, which participant feedback has suggested has always been an extremely powerful and memorable exercise.
We hope that you find the book and additional resources enrich your practice as we support clients in their journey of recovery!