Resources

There is an ever-growing number of resources for those interested in Open Dialogue. Below is a very select offering of audio, videos/DVDs, websites, books and journal articles. Please feel free to suggest additions (via the contact page), although this site will continue to offer only a curated subset of resources.

Audio resources:

  • Madness Radio: Open Dialogue Alternative (53min 16sec). Will Hall interviews Mary Olson, both Open Dialogue practitioners in the United States. First broadcast: 19th April, 2010.
  • ABC All in the Mind: Open Dialogue (28min 50sec). In this show, Lynne Malcolm interviews: Anna Arabskyj, one of the founders of Soteria Bradford and a UK mother who has participated in Open Dialogue meetings; Flick Grey, an Australian mental health researcher and peer worker who is training in Open Dialogue; and Dr Jaakko Seikkula, psychologist and family therapist from Finland and one of the key developers of Open Dialogue. First broadcast: 21st February, 2016.

DVD and video resources:

  • Open Dialogue – An Alternative, Finnish Approach to Healing Psychosis  (1 hour 14 mins), by Daniel Mackler. This DVD is available for purchase but is also available for free on YouTube. 
  • Introductory Open Dialogue Workshop (2 day workshop) with Markku Sutela, who was Chief Psychologist at Keropoudas Hospital, Finland. This educational DVD was recorded during Open Dialogue training in Brisbane in 2014, and is available for $50 from ISPS (the International Society for Psychological and Social Approaches to Psychosis).
  • The Parachute Project (6min 42sec), a brief, inspiring video showcasing a large-scale Open Dialogue/Intentional Peer Support project in New York.
  • Peer-Supported Open Dialogue (2 min 11 sec), an even briefer introduction to the work of POD (Peer-Supported Open Dialogue) in the UK, with footage from participants in the 2016 POD conference in London.

Books:

  • Open Dialogues and Anticipations: Respecting Otherness in the Present Moment, by Jaakko Seikkula and Tom Arnkil, published in 2014.
  • Dialogical Meetings in Social Networks, by Jaakko Seikkula and Tom Arnkil, published by Karnac, London and New York, 2006.

These (and many related books) are available through the Open Dialogue UK resources page.

Websites:

The following four websites have been selected because they are great repositories, and because their creators are well-connected within the international Open Dialogue community:

Journal articles:

There are innumerable journal articles – with numbers rapidly increasing – but here are five particularly valuable resources:

  • Olson, M., Seikkula, J. and Ziedonis, D. (2014) The Key Elements of Dialogic Practice in Open Dialogue: Fidelity Criteria. The University of Massachusetts Medical School. Worcester, MA.
  • Seikkula, J. and Olsen, M. (2003), The Open Dialogue Approach to Acute Psychosis: Its Poetics and Micropolitics. Family Process, 42: 403–418.
  • Seikkula, J., Aaltonen, J., Alakare, B., Haarakangas, K., Keränen, J. and Lehtinen, K. (2006), Five-year experience of first-episode nonaffective psychosis in open-dialogue approach: Treatment principles, follow-up outcomes, and two case studies. Psychotherapy Research, 16(2): 214-228.
  • Seikkula, J. (2011), Becoming Dialogical: Psychotherapy or a Way of Life? Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy, 32: 179–193.
  • Brown, J., Kurtti, M., Haaraniemi, T., Löhönen, E, and Vahtola, P. (2015), A North–South Dialogue on Open Dialogues in Finland: The Challenges and the Resonances of Clinical Practice. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy, 36: 51–68.