Medically unexplained symptoms (MUS) often confound both physicians and psychotherapists, as patients experience real and often debilitating distress without clear biomedical causes. In this engaging webinar, Dr Simon Heyland will trace the typical journey of MUS patients through the healthcare system—frequently marked by diagnostic uncertainty, frustration, and referrals—before arriving in the therapy room. From there, he will offer a conceptual overview of contemporary psychodynamic understandings of symptom formation, highlighting how unconscious emotional conflicts and relational dynamics may become encoded in bodily experiences. The webinar will also introduce key techniques from the Conversational Model, illustrating how this relational and affect-focused psychotherapy can help patients begin to articulate, regulate, and transform the distress underlying their physical symptoms. Drawing on clinical examples, this webinar is ideal for mental health professionals seeking a deeper and more compassionate framework for working with MUS.

Venue: Live Webinar. (Includes access to video recording for 60 days).

Date: Tuesday, 19th August, 2025

Time: 6.30 p.m. to 8.30 p.m. (Sydney/Melbourne Time)

Cost: 79.99

CPD certificate: 2 Hours. CPD certificates are issued to attendees who meet one of the following criteria: attend the live webinar with at least 80% attendance, or watch the webinar recording and complete the associated assessment component.

About Dr Simon Heyland: Simon Heyland is a UK consultant psychiatrist in medical psychotherapy and works in a tertiary NHS service delivering specialist psychotherapies. He has a special interest in psychodynamic-interpersonal therapy (PIT) which he teaches, supervises and delivers. He is the current chair of PIT-UK. With colleagues he has pioneered MUS services in primary and secondary acute care settings. He has published on topics including the therapeutic alliance, psychodynamic technique, psychotherapy research, and medically unexplained symptoms. He is the co-author of the 2017 Joint Commissioning Panel for Mental Health MUS commissioning guide, and author of the chapter on MUS in the 2021 edition of the RCPsych textbook 'Seminars In The Psychotherapies'.

About eiseEducation: eiseEducation delivers exceptional webinars, short courses, and professional development training to the mental health, social services & community services sector across Australia & New Zealand.  Find out more at eiseeducation.com.