Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy Description
Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) is an empirically validated program designed to prevent depressive relapse and reduce the impact of mood disorders more broadly. Developed by Drs. Zindel Segal, Mark Williams, and John Teasdale, MBCT integrates the clinical application of mindfulness meditation with the tools of cognitive therapy. Self-knowledge grounded in sustained meditative awareness is its central tenet.
The heart of MBCT lies in acquainting participants with the modes of mind that often characterize mood disorders while simultaneously inviting them to develop a new relationship to these modes. Participants learn to view thoughts as events in the mind, independent of their content and emotional charge — not to be disputed, but held in a more spacious awareness.
MBCT TTI Training
The MBCT TTI is an intensive professional training that provides clinicians with the knowledge, skills, and experiential foundation needed to deliver MBCT. Registration is limited in order to cultivate an intimate, personal, and highly interactive training environment.
This training emphasizes the importance of the clinician's own meditation practice and self-inquiry. The intensive blends didactic teaching, experiential practice, and small-group learning.
Across the training you will:
- Experience the MBCT program from the inside, as a participant.
- Role-play client-practitioner encounters in a simulated MBCT group.
- Gain hands-on experience delivering the core elements of MBCT, including leading meditations and guiding inquiry.
- Deepen your own meditation practice.
- Learn to work with what arises in your own practice, so your teaching goes beyond scripts and techniques and rests on direct experience.
Through role-play, simulated classroom and patient-practitioner encounters, the MBCT TTI explores the actual application of mindfulness practices in working with clients. The curriculum integrates didactic, experiential, and small group learning, and includes daily meditations, yoga/mindful movement, and periods of silence.
The curriculum explores our capacity to clearly experience, in the midst of our everyday lives, the interplay of thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations, the experiential phenomena known to contribute to depressive relapse. Participants examine how awareness of these domains can accurately inform or distort our capacity to understand ourselves and work with others. The content and curriculum of each MBCT session is explored in detail, and descriptions of session themes, curricula, and samples of client handouts are provided.
Who Should Attend
This training is for licensed mental health and healthcare professionals who want to bring MBCT to the people they serve. It is well suited to psychiatrists, psychologists, counsellors, social workers, family physicians, nurses, and allied clinicians who work with depression, anxiety, and mood regulation.
Where This Training Fits
The MBCT TTI is the foundational professional training in the UC San Diego Mindfulness-Based Professional Training Institute (MBPTI) certification pathway for teachers of MBCT. Completing the MBCT TTI satisfies the professional training requirement for Phase 1: Teacher Qualification, which establishes a basic level of training and proficiency sufficient to offer MBCT to the general public.
The UCSD MBPTI certification pathway proceeds as follows:
Phase 1 — Teacher Qualification
- Completion of the MBCT TTI (this training)
- Enrollment in the MBPTI as a Teacher in Training
- Completion of an 8-week MBCT program (as participant/observer)
- Teaching at least two 8-week MBCT groups under mentorship (minimum 20 hours)
- Application to the Teacher Qualification and Certification Committee
Phase 2 — Teacher Certification
- Completion of the MBCT ATTI (Advanced Teacher Training Intensive)
- Additional mentorship (minimum 10 hours beyond Qualification)
- Established personal mindfulness and mindful movement practices
- Attendance at annual silent teacher-led meditation retreats
- Application to the Teacher Qualification and Certification Committee
For full details on the certification pathway, requirements, mentorship, and fees, see MBCT Teacher Qualification and Certification.
CE Credits require an additional $75 fee - paid for before the start date of the program. You must attend all sessions in order to receive the CE certificate.
Continuing Education Credits are awarded in the following categories: American Psychological Association (APA) and Board of Registered Nursing (BRN).
Psychologists
UC San Diego Center for Mindfulness is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. The UC San Diego Center for Mindfulness maintains responsibility for this program and its content. 30.0 CE credit.
California Licensed MFTs, LPCCs, LEPs, LCSWs
This activity is an approved continuing education program by the American Psychological Association. Credit hours may be applied to your license renewal through the California Board of Behavioral Sciences. 30.0 CE credit.
Nurses
UC San Diego Center for Mindfulness is approved by the California Board of Registered Nursing to sponsor continuing education. Provider Number CEP16351. 36.0 contact hours.
A refund (minus your $300 non-refundable/non-transferable deposit) will be made for cancellations submitted in writing up to 14 days prior to the event start date by emailing mindfulness@health.ucsd.edu. No refunds will be allowed within 13 days of the event start date.
Registration fees, deposits, and funds are non-transferable.
In the unlikely event that the course is cancelled, UC San Diego Center for Mindfulness is responsible only for a full refund of the registration fee. The center is not responsible for any refunds to transportation, hotel accommodations, or any miscellaneous expenses.
Refunds are processed using the same method as the original payment (unless past 180 days).