Online course

From Stress to Psychosis

How to prevent mental illness

New insights into the causes of mental illness, including severe conditions like schizophrenia, are explaining distressing symptoms and reducing suffering…

Course Factfile

From Stress to Psychosis online course

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Special offer

  • Price: £159 £127.20 per person

Price includes course notes and life-long access

Special Offer

£127.20

Despite the billions spent trying to alleviate mental illness around the world, the rates of mental and emotional distress are increasing. Why? What is going wrong? Why are millions of people so stressed? And what can we do about it?

Brilliant online course! At last, a clear explanation of what causes mental illnesses.

Psychologist

Why take this course

CPD Provider Logo‘From Stress to Psychosis: how to prevent mental illness’ gives you the answers – and much more..

Over the last two decades, course tutor Ivan Tyrrell has played an influential role in integrating psychotherapy and counselling with the latest findings about brain functioning and human behaviour. On his enlightening course, you will find out how this knowledge – and the many insights derived from it – can be easily applied to improve the mental health of people suffering from a wide range of conditions, including the more serious.

He explains, among other things, what happens to us when the brain is put under stress; why stress is associated with mental illness; why some people experience psychotic episodes and others don’t; what the difference is between being ‘stressed’ – which doesn’t feel good – and being ‘stretched’, which does. And why people on the autistic spectrum experience stress so intensely.

You will also discover what people need to lead mentally and emotionally healthy lives – and what the best type of help is for anyone requiring psychotherapeutic interventions in order to recover quickly from stress overload, depression and anxiety disorders (including PTSD).

And you will learn about a revolutionary new theory – described by some psychiatrists as “the only model on the table that explains the symptoms of schizophrenia” – which throws much-needed light on this distressing illness and explains why it has been virtually eliminated in communities where the correct approach to dealing with early onset of psychosis exists.

The resulting psychotherapeutic human givens guidelines are already improving treatment – bringing important new hope to sufferers and those working with or caring for them.

A different approach to the medical model – more humane and holistic, which is what is needed.

Outreach & Development Worker (Mental Health)

What will you learn

  • A better understanding of what ‘mental illness’ is
  • The three reasons why all mental illnesses arise
  • Why some stressed people – but not others – go on to experience psychotic symptoms (such as hallucinations, delusions and hearing voices)
  • A richer understanding of the mind/body connection and its impact on our emotional and psychological health
  • What increasing stress levels do to our brains and bodies
  • Information about more effective treatment possibilities that are opening up for clinical psychology, psychotherapy and counselling
  • A moving insight into Asperger’s syndrome
  • Why high functioning people with Asperger’s are easily stressed and cause stress in others
  • What everyone needs to be mentally and emotionally healthy – and how to maintain that wellbeing
  • Natural ways of reducing emotional arousal and avoiding stress overload
  • The central role of emotions in our lives – and why taking it into account is essential for psychotherapy to be successful
  • Knowledge of the APET™ model – which rapidly improves psychotherapeutic outcomes and interventions – and how to integrate it into your work
  • Illuminating case histories
  • The brain as a pattern-matching organ – and what this means for mental health and successful therapy
  • A remarkable observation (shown on film) about the connection between stress, dreaming, depression and psychosis
  • Includes: Course notes
  • Accredited CPD certificate
  • and much more…
Counts towards a Diploma

Counts towards a Diploma

By taking this course, you could be on your way to completing Part 1 of the Human Givens Diploma – a flexible, part-time psychotherapy course which will deepen your psychological knowledge and increase your ability to help people effectively and quickly.  Learn more >

Course Programme

Who is this course suitable for?

  • Anyone working with or caring for stressed, depressed and anxious people, or people suffering from schizophrenia or psychotic episodes, who wishes to understand what’s causing the symptoms and how best to help
  • This includes: psychotherapists, counsellors, clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, doctors, psychiatric nurses, occupational therapists, health visitors, nurses, pastoral workers, social workers, youth workers, HR consultants, HR managers, wellbeing officers, trainee counsellors, psychology students, etc.
  • Anyone wanting to know more about the latest effective strategies for alleviating emotional distress, which incorporate the latest insights from neuroscience
  • This course is for you if – for personal or professional reasons – you want to know the best ways to help someone who is overly stressed and/or you fear they could be heading for a breakdown

What's included?

  • Videos
    13 Videos
  • 17 Quizzes
  • PDF Course notes
  • Lifetime access
    Life-long access
  • CPD Certificate
    CPD Certificate

Course format

‘From Stress to Psychosis’ is based on our one-day seminar of the same name. This online course is split into 4 modules, each of which are broken down further into different sections containing filmed lectures given in English by the tutor, Ivan Tyrrell.

Each film clip is followed by a short series of multiple choice questions. These are designed to help you think about and absorb the course content and to check that you have understood the main points of that section before proceeding to the next.

There are also course notes for you to download, plus additional reading information and helpful links.

You can take as long as you like to work your way through the course and can view it as many times as you like.

Once you have completed the course, you will receive an Accredited CPD certificate, which counts towards the Human Givens Diploma.

CPD Provider Logo
This course has been independently assessed by the internationally recognised CPD Standards Office for 6 hours of CPD training.

Meet your tutor

Ivan Tyrrell tutor profile picture

Ivan Tyrrell

Ivan Tyrrell worked for many years as a psychotherapist and now spends most of his time lecturing and writing.

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Reviews for this course

4.9/5 (29 Reviews)
  1. Jennifer Humphries, Student of Human Givens

    This course contains in-depth teaching for dealing with psychosis and other related trauma issues by a one time technique. Easily explained and inspiring method for helping people overcome circumstances crippling their lives. Fits in on Part One of the Diploma which I am taking

  2. Ian Wilson, Landlord

    I recently finished the online course ‘From Stress to Psychosis’. There are many related themes to this, with the Human Givens principle at its core. My interest is a personal one, looking to help a family member, but also with one eye to perhaps retraining in a new field.
    The course itself is very accessible with lectures, slides and summary quiz recaps, but that does not make it lightweight, as there is plenty of meat in the content. Apart from the organising central idea of Human Givens itself, some standout concepts that gave me pause to re-evaluate what I had previously thought I knew include the following:
    The importance of the REM sleep cycle, and what happens when it breaks down.
    The key human brain function of evolved pattern-matching partial survival templates and experience to environmental situations for fast reaction-time and learning.
    The real reasons for dream-sleep, in order to resolve incomplete pattern-matching symbolically in dream metaphor. What can go wrong when this mechanism gets overloaded due to stressful or threatening environments.
    The relationship between right brain and left brain activity, in light of above.
    The notion of various mental health disorders and manifestations as seen on a continuum (with common denominator of disrupted REM sleep cycle).
    Workable and safe approaches to bringing people out of self-perpetuating stress, anxiety and even psychosis, by first calming the immediate situations, then addressing the missing human givens in their lives.
    There is probably more, but I will go back over the materials several times until I’m satisfied that I have fully appreciated it.
    Best moment:
    I never realised that the moment where kids or adults seem to go into a daydream in class, or glaze over momentarily, can actually be a moment of profound realisation of some new piece of information, that they are aligning into their deep store of knowledge by dipping into their right brain REM side momentarily, even while awake. This requires a brief state of trance. Now I know why they get upset if anyone disturbs them prematurely, as they are dragged back to left brain awareness and lose that connection. This has many implications for correct teaching, especially with children – we must never just assume that they are struggling with some concept and need help when they actually don’t.

  3. Marion McGeough, psychotherapist

    I am already a therapist, looking to add to my skill set. This is a well presented course and I have learnt additional techniques to add to my current skills.

  4. Sanchia Ryan, CEO, Charity Sector

    I’m slowly working my way through 16 of the Dip Part 1 courses and thoroughly enjoying them all. The content is excellent – clear and easy to understand and the format of the learning work very well with enough variety to keep you inspired. The HG approach is phenomenal and potentially revolutionary! It needs to be embedded in our culture on every level in my opinion, not just in the care provided for mental health and wellbeing.

  5. eileen scott, wellbeing coach

    Enjoyed the course very much, learned alot

  6. Robert Iannone, Teacher

    Brilliant, as usual. It is such a relief to know there are indeed concrete solutions to many of the problems that ail us as a society.

  7. Maria da Silva, A geologist in training to become a therapist

    I come from a scientific background. In physics, we search for this coherent theoretical framework that fully explains and links together all physical aspects of the universe. We call it  “A Theory of Everything” and this is one of the major unsolved problems in physics.
    It looks to me that HG found the framework that fully explains and links together all the mental health problems we face as human beings – from stress to psychosis.
    The theory explains, the practice proves it, the therapist helps, the teacher spreads the knowledge – perfect.
    In the name of the human kind – thank you. 

  8. Caroline, Clinical Hypnotherapist

    Excellent teaching and i have a much better understanding of psychosis in particular and how best to treat it.

  9. Pauline Ronan, NLP Practitioner and teacher

    This was such a great course. I found the step by step guide for the Rewind method really useful. Ivan is incredibly knowledgeable and passionate about his area of expertise.

  10. Lise Bratton, Book editor, designer, artist.

    From Stress to Psychosis is full of relevant and (to me) revelatory detail about how psychosis develops. I’m following the HGI Diploma Part 1 courses and From Stress to Psychosis adds to my growing understanding of this approach to mental health. The relationship of psychosis to stress and dreaming is particularly useful. I’m very appreciative of what I understand to be the Hebbian aspect of these courses where things I’ve absorbed in one course find relevance throughout each new course taken.

  11. Jason Davenhill, Performance Coach

    Very good. I particularly like the discussions about the REM state.

  12. Elizabeth McBarnet, Independent Speech and Language Therapist

    I am working through the HG diploma and it is such an extraordinary eye opener. I had no idea how much of the insights would be applicable to my everyday personal life as well as my professional work. At the start I found this module a little dry, but about half way through realised I was totally absorbed in learning about psychosis- a subject completely new to me. And at the end, the concept that so many emotional problems are connected with heathy dreaming and appropriate levels of REM state- well, this has really fascinated me. I can’t wait to learn more.

  13. Ranjini Rao, Homemaker.

    My course, From Stress to Psychotherapy helped me in more ways than one. The mere knowledge that we, as a species are endowed with innate resources to tend to our emotional needs was a powerful revelation. It empowered me and made me pay careful attention to my own live’s circumstance and that of those around me.
    Anxiety, is a problem troubling someone who I love dearly. This course helped me manifold in addressing anxiety. The need to remove an emotion from a memory was a strong insight. I intend to continue further with more diploma courses. At the end of the day, it is a gift to share space with each other and all the species in this universe. We have all been here before and we will come back again; so we need to carefully examine our connections to each other, not judge one another and genuinely believe that we are meant to serve. Thank you Dr. Tyrell, Dr. Griffin and the entire team at Human Givens.

  14. jamesathens, Hypnotherapist

    Insightful, full of a-ha moments, a must-watch for every mental health professional. At last a sound theoretical framework that gives hope for new approach in psychotherapy, outside the past-due Freud era.

  15. Melanie Kettner-Borough, Pastor and counsellor

    Absolutely essential knowledge to integrate into any therapy /counselling situation. I am so impressed with the possibility of easing and healing someone’s situation in such a short, life changing time. Thank you so much. Ps I found myself laughing out loud a number of times. Ivan Tyrrell has a way about him that even as he discusses a serious topic, he can get us laughing with his understating! I can’t recommend this course highly enough.

  16. Andrew Bradford, GP

    An excellent course which explains how the organising principles of the Human Givens are relevant to the aetiology and treatment of a broad range of mental health diagnoses. It includes several clinical case videos and gives a good overview of the HG perspective.

  17. Gloria

    Great!

  18. Dora

    Very informative, I have viewed this many times.

  19. Laurie

    My third On-line course with HG. Brilliant course as ever. Great practical advice built on underlying principles that are based on profound and compassionate principles about the human psyche. Looking forward to completing my diploma and putting the techniques and concepts in to use. There is something deceptively simple about Human Givens, but at the same time it touches themes that resonate with a higher as well as deeper form of understanding of our human condition and potential destiny. On a practical note – more real life examples of the concepts and themes would be welcome, to ground concepts in reality as much as possible.

  20. Keith

    Been in practice for around 30 years and have subscribed to Human Givens for a long time but this is the first course of theirs I have taken. I found it resonated deeply with a lot of what I had already concluded from experience and from other courses especially their take on the harm done both by drugs and by psycho-dynamic therapy,but was particularly interested in the significance of the REM state and their characterisation of it. I have a background in neurology which was of help but would recommend the course to any therapist. I look forward to doing more of their courses. Thanks….Keith

  21. Felicity

    The course materials were excellent. Some of the questions were so easy particularly those that ended with “All of the Above” It felt like I was just ticking the expected box rather than thinking about the right answer.

  22. Patrick

    This course was so useful in helping me understand the effect of stress on us and how it can lead on to severe mental health issues.

  23. Catherine

    Ivan Tyrrell has a way of making something which historically has been seen as complex and insuperable to something we can all play a part in healing. A good overview of psychosis and what it is all about with insights into the REM dreaming state which is daring and obvious once you understand it. My only comment for improvement would be if showing it as an online course give the slide longer on the screen as there are many words to take in and if you are a note taker like myself it is useful to have them up there longer rather than focus on the speaker. If you were there in the flesh you would be able to take in the slide at length while listening to the speaker. Instead online you have to pause the video in order to take it in.

  24. Sandra, Sandra

    Excellent!

  25. Clodagh

    excellent content

  26. Kimberly

    Good!

  27. Sue

    This was a useful summary of many of the over arching organising ideas in HG. The content was always excellent even though I found Ivan’s presentation style a little slow sometimes. I also appreciated the final conclusion content – the call to action!

  28. Rob

    A frank and straightforward explanation of psychosis – this approach is far too valuable to be ignored. A real contribution to humanity and our understanding of our fellow human beings. Thank you.

  29. Lisa

    This has given me a much clearer understanding of the causes of mental health problems and how to treat them, I love doing your courses online!

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