Fiona Yassin is the International Program Director at The Wave, holding multiple credentials including being a registered Psychotherapist and Accredited Clinical Supervisor in both the U.K. and UNCG (Registration number #361609 National and International Council of Psychotherapists). She is EMDR trained (EMDRIA) and practices as a Trauma therapist (Registration number #10000054651).
Fiona’s expertise includes being a member of the International Chapter of IAEDP, with training in CBTe (Oxford Group), FREED (King’s College, London), TF-CBT, RO-DBT, and GPM. Her specializations cover the treatment of Eating Disorders and Borderline Personality Disorder, as well as families in High Conflict Divorces and Psychiatry across the female lifespan.
Additionally, Fiona holds the distinction of being a Fellow of APPCH, a senior accredited Addiction Professional, and a member of The Association of Child Protection Professionals. She is also trained in MBT (Child and Family and Adult) and Reflective Parenting with The Anna Freud Centre for Children and Families, and is a Member of The Australia and New Zealand Eating Disorders Association.
Fiona holds an MSc in Neuroscience and Mental Health awarded by King’s College London, where she received The Dean’s Award. She is currently completing an MSc in Psychiatry at Cardiff University Medical School and is a PhD Candidate in Mental Health Research at Lancaster University. Outside of her professional pursuits, she enjoys spending time with her three cats, going for long walks on the beach, and appreciating the beautiful animals in her garden.
Divorce and unhealthy parental relationships can have a profound effect on young people. They’re linked to emotional and behavioural mental health problems both during adolescence and young adulthood. This means that supporting parents undergoing conflict – and helping young people manage its consequences – should be a priority.
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a serious mental health disorder that affects the way a young person sees themselves and interacts with the world around them. Young people with BPD often have an unstable or incoherent sense of self, patterns of unstable relationships, and intense emotional reactions. They may experience chronic feelings of emptiness and a fear of abandonment by others.
Dissociative experiences often happen when someone is exposed to a traumatic event. When someone experiences trauma, they may be overwhelmed by stress and detach, in some way, from their experience, emotions, and/or body. People who have experienced acute trauma often describe dissociating from their bodies and watching something happen to themselves.
Despite the mental health epidemic among adolescents and young adults, only a minority access treatment. Barriers to treatment are often institutional: in many places, specialist services do not exist, or spaces are lacking with long waiting lists. But many young people don’t seek help for mental health problems in the first place. Studies suggest that only 18-34% of young people with mental health disorders try to access professional support.
Internal family systems (IFS) therapy is a type of psychotherapy that understands each person – or mind – as having multiple parts. These inner parts are all valuable, but sometimes experiences like trauma can push parts into more extreme roles. This can cause a person to feel and act in negative or harmful ways and pull them away from their genuine, authentic self.
Families play a huge role in child and adolescent mental health. As some of the young people’s closest relationships, families can constitute a support system
For adolescents with BPD, early intervention and timely treatment are crucial to prevent long-term harm such as other mental health conditions or problems in school and social life. But research on adolescent treatment for BPD is still relatively limited and many established treatments for adults haven’t been studied among young people with the disorder.
Young people with all body shapes and weights can have eating disorders. Eating disorders are complex psychological conditions characterised by harmful attitudes and behaviours, such as restrictive eating, binge eating, and body dissatisfaction. Disordered eating behaviours can happen regardless of a person’s weight or what their body looks like.
While eating disorders are complex conditions, they are treatable. With the right support, young people can recover and enjoy a healthy, fulfilling future. Treatment providers who have experience working with autistic people can adapt therapy sessions and other approaches to ensure that treatment is comfortable and welcoming for each individual.
Depression is a mental health disorder that interferes with a young person’s daily life and ability to do the things they normally would. It’s often difficult for a young person with depression to feel better without additional support. However, effective treatment can help young people to recover, make positive changes, and enjoy life.
Parental addiction affects young people in different ways. Parents are often unable to meet children’s physical and emotional needs when their lives are dominated by seeking a substance or engaging in a behaviour. In many cases, families experience role-reversal, when children or adolescents become responsible for meeting their parents’ and family’s needs, disrupting normal processes of child development.
If a young person is misusing alcohol, it’s important that they receive additional help. With professional support, teenagers can develop new coping mechanisms and address underlying experiences that underpin their behaviours.
In this blog, we offer some basic information about schizophrenia, treatment and recovery. We touch on the impact of schizophrenia on the family, trauma therapy within schizophrenia treatment and the prevalence of the disorder in different places around the world.
