THE ULTIVATE FRAMEWORK
Ultivate specialises in providing individualised psychosocial solutions to address psychological distress and
enhance personal, social, and professional performance.
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The Science-Practitioner Model
The scientific-practitioner approach is used to identify therapeutic solutions with a causal-effect hypothesis. An Ultivate psychologist then creates a time-efficient plan to meet your therapeutic objectives. The scientist-practitioner model encourages clinicians to allow empirical research to influence their applied practice; while simultaneously allowing their experiences during applied practice to shape their future research questions. This model makes cutting-edge research more relevant to practice, provides structure and a theoretical framework for practice, encourages lifelong learning, and, most importantly, research-based practice provides for accountability.
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Ultivate programs are founded on neuroscientific principles, interpersonal development, mindfulness and leadership skills useful for individual and organisational growth.
SOLUTION-FOCUSED BRIEF THERAPY (SFBT)
Traditional therapy has historically been problem-focused. It has analysed a person’s problems from where they started and how those problems affect their lives. SFBT is a future-focused, goal-directed, collaborative approach that fosters therapeutic change conducted through direct observation of clients’ responses to a series of precisely constructed questions. This approach to therapy highlights the importance of searching for solutions rather than focusing on problems.
MOTIVATIONAL INTERVIEWING (MI)
Motivational interviewing is a client-centred counselling style for eliciting behaviour change by helping clients explore and resolve ambivalence. Enhancing a client’s motivation to change is supported by four guiding principles, represented by RULE’s acronym.
Resist the righting reflex
Understand the patient’s motivations
Listen with empathy
Empower the patient.
POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
Positive psychology is a branch of psychology focused on the character strengths and behaviours that allow individuals to build a life of meaning and purpose—to move beyond surviving to flourish. The science of positive psychology operates on three levels: the subjective, individual, and group levels. The subjective level includes the study of positive experiences such as joy, wellbeing, satisfaction, contentment, happiness, optimism and flow.
VOCATIONAL HEALTH​
Vocational health is focused on our human capacity to cultivate personal satisfaction and fulfilment from our work and occupational endeavours, maintain balance in our lives and positively impact the organisations we participate in and the communities we help shape.
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Ultivate offers a range of professional and work-focused programs for individuals and teams seeking to address vocational stress and improve vocational outcomes. These programs use cognitive, behavioural, and vocational psychology principles to enhance workplace health and professional performance. Ultivate programs are cost-effective, safe, confidential, dynamic, action-focused and engaging. These are research-based and conducted by a Board Approved Registered Australian Psychologist equipped to improve and enhance human performance.
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Ultivate seeks to draw in organisations that don't just seek to receive more from their team but also desire to give more! To give more to their employees and to the communities they inhabit. Health in this human development arena is achieved at the micro and macro level of the workplace. Ultivate supports leadership teams in depicting their project's vision, mission, and values. Evidence has found that a clear vision, mission and well-defined values draw a team together to achieve more. Values have been found to inspire and motivate individuals. So with this in mind, concepts and practices like transformational leadership, interpersonal excellence, resilience, mindfulness, personality development, emotional intelligence and non-violent communication, Ultivate supports individuals and the workplace to achieve more as individuals and as teams.
EVIDENCE-BASED METHODS
Ultivate uses evidence-based models to help solve psychological problems and
cultivate a flourishing mind.
Pioneered by Dr. Aaron T. Beck in the 1960s
COGNITIVE BEHAVIOURAL THERAPY (CBT)
Cognitive behavioral therapy is a psycho-social intervention that aims to improve mental health. CBT focuses on challenging and changing unhelpful cognitive distortions and behaviors, improving emotional regulation, and the development of personal coping strategies that target solving current problems. CBT aims to help you deal with overwhelming problems in a more positive way by breaking them down into smaller parts. You're shown how to change these negative patterns to improve the way you feel. Unlike some other talking treatments, CBT deals with your current problems, rather than focusing on issues from your past. Research shows that CBT is the most effective form of treatment for those coping with depression and anxiety. CBT alone is 50-75% effective for overcoming depression and anxiety after 5 – 15 modules.
Pioneered by David Epston and Michael White in the 1970s
NARRATIVE THERAPY (NT)
This therapeutic theory is founded on the idea that humans have many interacting narratives that make up our sense of who we are. It’s assumed that the issues we bring to therapy are not necessarily restricted to (or located) within ourselves but rather are influenced and shaped by cultural discourses about identity. NT centers around a rich engagement in re-storying a client’s narrative by re-considering, re-appreciating, and re-authoring the client’s preferred lives and relationships. Narrative therapy was developed during the 1970s and 1980s, largely by Australian social worker. It was influenced by the work of philosopher Michel Foucault. There is a significant and ever-increasing amount of evidence for the effectiveness and durability of narrative therapy practices.
Developed by Gerald Klerman and Myrna Weissman in the 1970s
INTERPERSONAL THERAPY (IPT)
Interpersonal psychotherapy is a brief, attachment-focused psychotherapy that helps us resolve interpersonal problems and symptomatic recovery. It is an empirically supported treatment that follows a highly structured and time-limited approach and is intended to be completed within 12–16 weeks. IPT focuses on addressing psychological distress caused by interpersonal functioning. It addresses current problems, relationships and relating styles versus needing to spend too much much time on childhood or developmental issues. Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT) is an empirically validated treatment for a variety of psychiatric disorders. The evidence for IPT supports its use for a variety of affective disorders, anxiety disorders, and eating disorders, and for a wide range of patients.
Developed by Zindel Segal, Mark Williams, and John Teasdale first in 2000
MINDFULNESS-BASED COGNITIVE THERAPY (MBCT)
This therapeutic approach helps us learn how to use cognitive methods and mindfulness meditation to interrupt automatic processes that trigger low mood, negative thoughts, and body sensations such as weariness and sluggishness. MBCT helps participants learn how to recognise their sense of being and see themselves as separate from their thoughts and moods. This disconnect can allow people to become liberated from thought patterns. The same negative messages may be replayed repeatedly. The approach, which is still relatively new, was primarily derived from the earlier work of Teasdale, Jon Kabat-Zinn, and Phillip Barnard. There is evidence from multiple randomised controlled trials (RCTs) demonstrating the efficacy of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) to prevent depressive relapse/recurrence, and it is included in several national clinical guidelines for this purpose.