Practitioners of open dialogue report their personal transformations as a result of conducting network meetings

Alita Kathryn Taylor; Fletcher Brandon Taylor; Deborah Ann Anderson

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1083996

Practitioners of open dialogue report their personal transformations as a result of conducting network meetings

Front Psychol. 2023 Feb 3:13:1083996. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1083996. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Alita Kathryn Taylor¹, Fletcher Brandon Taylor^{1

2}, Deborah Ann Anderson¹

Affiliations

¹ Open Dialogue Pacific, Lynnwood, WA, United States.
² Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, United States.

Abstract

As health care providers practicing Open Dialogue, we cleave to the notion that the support we provide to users and their communities will lead to the kind of enduring personal transformation that they would consider an improvement. But what effects do Open Dialogue network meetings have toward instilling enduring personal transformations within the practitioners themselves? This subject is rarely addressed, particularly in academic settings. In this autoethnographic account, an experiencer/occupational therapist, a marriage & family therapist, and a psychiatrist each describe enduring transformations that they attribute to working together as Open Dialogue network meeting facilitators at one stand-alone clinic over 2 years. Our report illustrates the potential of Open Dialogue network meetings, particularly the depth and breadth of transformation that can occur in all who attend them.

Keywords: Open Dialogue network meeting; collaborative-dialogic approaches to mental healthcare; dialogical supervision; mutual transforming; practitioner personal transformation.