Published: March 2025

Keywords:
Open Dialogue, dialogic practice, mental health services, challenges, reflective spaces, focus group.

Christina Lagogianni

Christina Lagogianni is a psychologist and psychotherapist. She has been trained in Narrative Therapy, Systemic Therapy and Open Dialogue. She has worked in various settings in Greece and in the UK, with individuals that have unusual experiences, with vulnerable social groups, and in schools. Since 2016, she has been working with young people, couples and families at the Institute of Systemic Therapy in Thessaloniki. Since 2021, she has been collaborating with organizations in Greece, Italy and Ireland as a dialogic supervisor and trainer. Her research interests focus on the therapist’s experience during therapy as well as the cultivation of dialogical spaces among different professions and across services.

Mia Kurtti

Mia Kurtti is a psychiatric nurse, psychotherapist, and educator with over two decades of experience in mental health services at Lapland Wellbeing Service County, Finland. Her expertise includes psychiatry, family and couples therapy, crisis intervention, Open Dialogue, management, and training. She has led multiple projects, including the ITRO suicide prevention project and the DigiFamily project under the Erasmus+ programme, and directed in-house training programs in dialogical family and network-based approaches. Since 2011, Mia has been an international trainer and facilitator in Open Dialogue and psychotherapeutic methods, working in the USA, Japan, UK, Italy, and Finland, and has delivered keynote talks and workshops across Australia, Ireland, Singapore, Poland, Germany, and Scandinavia. She has contributed to several international publications and research studies on dialogical and family-based mental health care.

Abstract

In the past 15 years there have been some attempts to develop Open Dialogue practices in Greece. The aim of the present research was to explore the main challenges experienced by two teams working in an Open Dialogue inspired way in Greece. A focus group was employed to address the challenges in organizing services and in setting up network meetings. Two main themes arose that seem to have a dynamic relationship with each other, challenges in collaboration’ fed back to ‘cultural and systemic barriers. Despite its small sample, the research is unique in giving voice to practitioners’ challenges in implementing new ways of being with people and their networks. Implications for training and clinical practice are discussed, emphasizing the need to create learning spaces to promote dialogic decision-making amongst people in crisis, their networks and practitioners coming from different professional backgrounds.