ABOUT US
Who we are
CDS UK was founded in 1998 and established as an Independent Provider to the NHS with the help of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust. Since then, CDS UK have treated NHS patients with dissociative disorders across the UK, providing outpatient treatment locally to them wherever possible. In 2018 CDS UK became a registered charity.
We undertake and participate in research, and our staff have authored books and numerous papers on the subject of the dissociative disorders, regularly lecturing nationally and internationally. We are an active member of the International Society for the Study of Trauma & Dissociation (the ISSTD) and the European Society for Trauma & Dissociation (the ESTD). We are also participants in the ESTD’s UK Training Group and have worked closely alongside survivor organisations including First Person Plural, The Survivors Trust and NAPAC.
All our clinical staff are experienced Consultant Psychologists, Consultant Psychotherapists and Specialist Counsellors/Therapeutic Support Workers and have extensive experience of working with complex trauma and dissociation. Many have completed advanced training in these areas, and most are members of the ISSTD and ESTD, as well as being accredited with their respective registering professional bodies such as the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP), British Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy (BACP), British Psychoanalytic Council (BPC), Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) or Association for Child Psychotherapy (ACP). Our team includes a number of SCID-D-trained National Assessors for the specialist assessment and diagnosis of dissociative disorders.
The CDS UK founding director and Patron is Dr Valerie Sinason, who is President of the Institute for Psychotherapy and Disability and Honorary Consultant Psychoanalyst at the University of Cape Town Child Guidance Clinic. Dr Sinason was a consultant at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trusts, the Anna Freud Centre and St George’s Hospital Medical School. In 2016, Dr Sinason was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the ISSTD, and is now a member of their Board, as well as on the Editorial Team of the ESTD. More recently, the Frank W Putnam award from the ISSTD was given to Dr Valerie Sinason and Dr Ashley Conway, Chair of the CDS UK trustees, on April 4th 2022 for their co-edited book Memory and Trauma: The Science and the Silenced. Routledge 2021.