About The Course
This advanced on-demand course led by Dr Sanil Rege builds on foundational formulation skills and transitions toward translating diagnostic insights into targeted treatment strategies. Using a neuroscience-guided framework, it integrates psychopharmacology, psychological models, and psychodynamic understanding to support real-world clinical decision-making.
Who Is This Course For?
This course is Ideal for:
Consultant psychiatrists seeking to refine strategic approaches to complex, treatment-resistant cases
Psychiatry registrars aiming to deepen diagnostic reasoning and bridge formulation with management
General Practitioners (GPs) involved in psychiatric care
Mental Health Nurse Practitioners (MHNPs) and Psychologists
- Experienced mental health professionals looking to move beyond categorical diagnoses toward mechanism-informed, patient-centred care
This course integrates clinical neuroscience to refine pharmacological and psychological interventions, using functional domains—cognition, perception, emotion, arousal, motivation, and sleep—as a framework for treatment planning.
Symptom patterns are reframed as expressions of network-level dysfunction, supporting a shift from diagnosis to mechanism-guided, patient-centred care. Complex and treatment-resistant cases are addressed through iterative, hypothesis-driven strategies.
Presented in a narrative-rich format, the course enhances clinical reasoning and strategic thinking across conditions like ADHD, OCD, PTSD, BPD, trauma states, chronic pain, and affective dysregulation.
Hierarchical models of arousal, cognition, and emotional regulation enable personalised, precision-based interventions grounded in biological, psychological, and developmental perspectives.
Accreditation Information:
- Psychiatry Accreditation: This course is available for self-accreditation with the RANZCP and other relevant psychiatric and mental health organisations.
- Upon completion, participants will receive 4 CPD hours (EA 4) and a certificate of completion, which can be used to claim CPD.
What You'll Learn
- Apply the strategic six-domain management model to guide interventions across mood, cognition, activity, perception, sleep, and relational functioning.
- Use the PACES™ framework (Perception, Activity, Cognition, Emotion, Sleep) to connect diagnosis, formulation, and personalised treatment planning.
- Translate diagnostic formulations into mechanism-guided, patient-centred management plans using hierarchical and network-based models.
- Integrate psychopharmacological principles across a range of medications, considering receptor dynamics, symptom domains, and treatment sequencing.
- Incorporate psychological models, including cognitive, schema, emotion regulation, and psychodynamic approaches, into management strategies.
- Formulate interventions by synthesising biological, psychological, and developmental perspectives to address complex and treatment-resistant presentations.
- Adapt pharmacological strategies based on diagnostic hierarchy, vascular risk factors, neurodevelopmental context, and functional impairments.
- Understand how psychodynamic formulation informs medication response, therapeutic alliance, and treatment engagement.
- Construct integrated care plans that consider biological, psychological, relational, and cultural factors.
Course Programme
7 Modules | 51 Units | 4 hours total length
- Limitations of guideline-based, reductionist approaches
- Modern psychiatry as a field requiring strategic, adaptive, and probabilistic reasoning
- Chess as an analogy for psychiatric strategy – embracing uncertainty, recognising configurations, and planning moves in response to complexity
- Broad-to-narrow diagnostic screening
- Diagnostic hierarchy: organic, substance-related, syndromic, dimensional
- Clinical formulation as a decision-making framework
- Diagnostic constructs bridging semantic and procedural knowledge
- PACES™ model: Perception, Activity, Cognition, Emotion, Sleep
- Six-domain strategy linking formulation to management
- Symptom clusters and functional overlap beyond categorical diagnosis
- Neuroscience-guided prescribing across receptor systems and functional domains
- Application of the PACES™ model to align pharmacological strategies with clinical dimensions
- Rational sequencing of antidepressants, mood stabilisers, antipsychotics, and psychostimulants
- Clinical reasoning in complex scenarios: resistance, activation syndromes, metabolic burden, and polypharmacy
- Recognising the influence of substances, medication effects, and withdrawal on mental states
- Integrating pharmacological choices with psychological formulation and therapeutic context
- Safety planning, informed by current risk, past behaviour, and relational context, to guide setting and support decisions
- Neural network dysfunction across psychiatric syndromes-salience, executive control (ECN), and default mode (DMN) networks
- Frontostriatal-limbic dysregulation in Affective Disorders, OCD, ADHD, BPD, and related conditions
- Network-based formulation to guide pharmacological and psychotherapeutic strategies
- Differentiating neurobiological drivers from psychological adaptations in clinical presentations
- Dopaminergic and non-dopaminergic mechanisms in psychosis—presynaptic dysfunction, receptor dynamics, and aberrant salience
- Extension of dopamine-based models to Tourette’s, OCD, and ADHD and BPD
- Principles of antipsychotic use—partial agonists, poly-receptor strategies, and individualised application
- Integration of psychological models (e.g. affect regulation, reward prediction errors) into medication decision-making
- Mood disorders: cognitive–affective residuals, neuroinflammation, endocrine factors, and neuroplastic shifts
- Bipolar spectrum: frontostriatal dysfunction, motivational dysregulation, risk of affective switching
- Anxiety phenotypes: network-level dysregulation, arousal states, and impaired inhibitory control
- OCD and rumination: disrupted prediction error, looping thoughts, and safety behaviours
- PTSD: hyperarousal, dissociation, stress-system fatigue, and phase-based treatment integration
- ADHD: dysfunction across PACES domains, dopaminergic strain, developmental vulnerabilities
- ADHD–BPD overlap: emotion regulation difficulties, attachment dynamics, and learning history
- Eating disorders and chronic pain: salience–arousal disturbances, interoceptive and reward circuit involvement
- Sleep dysregulation: circadian shifts, hyperarousal, and impact on emotion and cognition
- Broad focus on transdiagnostic circuits and symptom networks
- Formulation-guided sequencing of psychological and pharmacological strategies
- Psychodynamics of prescribing: transference, countertransference, and the “medication life”
- Treatment resistance: relational breakdowns, unconscious processes, and therapeutic rupture
- Emotional development: early caregiving, implicit memory, and regulation of affect
- Emotional language: symbolic expression of needs, shame, and unmet expectations
- Safety and change: the role of predictability, curiosity, and emotional containment
- Personality development: neurodevelopmental impact on emotional scaffolding
- BPD formulation: interpersonal distress, identity disruption, and affective dysregulation
- Complex trauma: integrating neurobiology, psychodynamics, and pharmacology for self-harm and emotional pain
- Application of formulation-to-management pathways in complex presentations
- Consideration of vascular and subcortical influences on treatment response
- Use of diagnostic hierarchy and domain-based intervention planning
- Strategic pharmacological targeting across mood, cognition, activity, and sleep
- Monitoring of symptom change to guide clinical decision-making
- Tracking functional outcomes across biological and psychological parameters
- Iterative strategy refinement through ongoing formulation updates
Course Description
Welcome to The Art of Strategic Problem Solving in Psychiatry – From Diagnostic Formulation to Management.
In today’s complex mental health landscape, clinicians require more than just adherence to guidelines—they need a dynamic, integrative approach. This advanced on-demand course led by Dr Sanil Rege, is designed for consultant psychiatrists, senior registrars, and experienced mental health professionals seeking to refine their formulation and treatment planning skills through an integrated neuroscience and psychological framework. Building on the foundation laid in Part 1, this course transitions from diagnostic formulation to targeted, mechanism-guided management.
Module 1: Framing Clinical Strategy – Thinking in Layers
Learn to operationalise psychiatric formulation by linking hypotheses to management pathways. Explore the value of multiple timelines, dynamic reframing, and temporal reasoning to structure assessments and revise strategies based on patient response. Develop a clear framework for applying biological, psychological, and social hypotheses to guide next-step interventions.
Module 2: Individualised Diagnostic Understanding
This module focuses on building diagnostic clarity through broad-to-narrow screening, applying the diagnostic hierarchy, and using clinical formulation as a decision-making tool. You’ll learn to integrate the PACES™ model across functional domains, understand how constructs guide flexible diagnostic reasoning, and link symptom patterns to personalised treatment strategies through a six-domain approach.
Module 3: Integrated Management Approaches
This module explores neuroscience-based prescribing across functional domains using the PACES™ model as a guiding framework. You’ll learn to align pharmacological strategies with clinical dimensions of perception, activity, cognition, emotion, and sleep, while addressing complexity, resistance, and safety. Case-based teaching highlights rational sequencing of medications, managing activation syndromes and metabolic burden, and integrating pharmacology with psychological formulation and therapeutic context.
Module 4: Neuroscience-Guided Pharmacological and Psychological Strategies
This module explores network-level dysfunction and its clinical application. You’ll learn to conceptualise clinical symptoms through the lens of network-level brain function, exploring how disruptions in cognitive control, salience processing, and internal-external awareness manifest across psychiatric conditions. You’ll examine frontostriatal-limbic dysregulation in affective disorders, OCD, ADHD, and BPD, and learn to apply network-based formulations to guide both pharmacological and psychological strategies. Key topics include dopaminergic and non-dopaminergic mechanisms, receptor dynamics, and personalised medication use. Psychological models, such as affect regulation and reward prediction errors, are integrated to support targeted interventions, helping distinguish between neurobiological drivers and psychological adaptations.
Module 5: Applying the Framework Across Diagnoses
Gain nuanced insights into complex conditions such as:
- Mood disorders, including cognitive-affective symptoms, antidepressant resistance, and bipolar affective instability.
- Anxiety and OCD, through hierarchical thinking and neurobiological models.
- Trauma and PTSD, including dissociative states and the role of inflammation, threat circuitry, and emotion dysregulation.
- ADHD across the life span, viewed through a developmental lens of reward prediction and self-regulation.
- Chronic pain and eating disorders, with emphasis on the mesolimbic system, overvalued ideas, and emotional processing.
- Borderline personality dynamics, with a focus on interpersonal instability, affective pain, and neurobiological correlates.
Module 6: Psychodynamic Integration in Management
This module explores how unconscious processes influence prescribing, alliance, and resistance—critical yet often overlooked elements that shape long-term functional recovery. You’ll learn to navigate transference, countertransference, and the “medication life” as part of therapeutic work. We examine emotional language, early caregiving, and neurodevelopmental pathways that shape affect regulation and personality structure. The module integrates psychodynamic, biological, and pharmacological strategies in complex presentations such as BPD and trauma-linked states, with a focus on managing emotional pain, self-harm, and therapeutic ruptures.
Module 7: Case Application – Strategic Thinking in Complex Presentations
Apply the formulation-to-management model in complex, evolving cases where diagnostic clarity is limited. This module explores how shifting patterns across domains—such as mood, cognition, perception, and sleep—require flexible, layered strategies. You’ll learn to integrate vascular, subcortical, and psychosocial factors while tailoring interventions using domain-based targets. Emphasis is placed on monitoring clinical response, tracking functional improvement, and iteratively refining treatment plans based on updated formulations. Designed to build strategic thinking, this module equips clinicians to manage diagnostic ambiguity with confidence.
By the end of the course, participants will:
- Master advanced Strategic Psychiatric Problem-Solving techniques
- Apply the diagnostic hierarchy to guide clinical decision-making and formulation
- Understand the neurobiological mechanisms underlying psychiatric symptoms
- Integrate psychodynamic and personality-informed insights into both formulation and pharmacotherapy
- Enhance strategies for emotional regulation in complex presentations
- Design personalised, function-focused treatment plans using psychological, psychopharmacological, and psychosocial principles
Advance your clinical skills and psychiatric practice with a course designed to mirror the depth and sophistication of modern psychiatry. Enrol now to sharpen your diagnostic clarity and therapeutic impact.
Upon completion of this course, participants will receive a course completion certificate and 4 CPD hours towards educational activities. This course supports Continuing Professional Development (CPD) in accordance with the CAPE Framework. It aligns with the domains of Addressing Health Inequities, Professionalism, and Ethics.
While our Academy members enjoy exclusive access to a range of courses and webinars—including this one—through their annual membership, we’re pleased to offer the option to purchase this course individually!
- Purchase Part 1 – The Art of Diagnostic Formulation in Psychiatry for $167
- Purchase Part 2 – The Art of Strategic Problem Solving in Psychiatry for $167
- Or save with the full curriculum, which includes both Part 1 and Part 2 for a discounted rate of $297
👉 Click here to purchase the full curriculum
For details, scroll down to the Pricing section below.
Enhance your clinical decision-making through advanced formulation and management strategies. This case-based course sharpens diagnostic hierarchy skills to support comprehensive assessment and personalised psychiatric care.
Course Information
- 4 hours
- 4 CPD
Inclusions
- 3+ Hours of Video lecture
- Case-based learning
- Certificate of Completion
Material Downloads
- certificate
Instructor
Dr. Sanil Rege MBBS, MRCPsych, FRANZCP
With extensive teaching experience through his various psychiatry course initiatives, Sanil is widely acknowledged as an enthusiastic and motivational training facilitator who promotes interaction and collaboration.
As the Academic Lead of Psych Scene and Chief Editor of Psych Scene Hub, he aspires to make a difference in mental health by empowering healthcare professionals to advance their skills and career through the provision of specialised training and education.
Dr Rege is also the founder of Vita Healthcare, a private clinic in Mount Eliza specialising in adult mental healthcare, with over 20 years of clinical experience and 13 years of private practice experience treating disorders across the spectrum. He currently works in the community across inpatient, consultation-liaison and addiction psychiatry spaces.
