I recently attended the 4th Annual BPD Conference in Melbourne which seems to have grown in popularity. One of the reasons for this (I believe) is that the conference was just $20 for students to attend. For this reason, I saw a lot of my fellow students at the event. This was both refreshing and encouraging – all of the conferences, training and professional development I have attended has been paid for by my workplace. The Childhood Trauma Conference I attended in August – while very helpful – was about $700 to attend! Often these events offer “discounted student rates”, which shave $50 off a price (thanks) but remain outside the budget of your average postgraduate student.
For this reason, I wanted to share some student (and budget)-friendly professional development, training and events I am aware of.
1. Adavic Events Calendar – ADAVIC’s calendar has a range of PD opportunities. Some are pricey (around $200) however there are quite a few workshops on for around $15. Not sure if this could be counted as actually PD, but provisional psychologists don’t have to worry about that (yet).
2. Orygen Youth Mental Health – Orygen are a world-leading centre treating and researching mental health and mental illness in young people. Their community sector training sits at $140 which is good considering that they are a world-leader in the treatment and research of mental illness in young people.
3. The Bouverie Centre – The Bouverie Centre in Melbourne has a very comprehensive training and professional development calendar. These range in price, from the very expensive (usually accredited training and qualifications) to the very cheap ($50 or free for carers and consumers). These cheaper ones include “Mindfulness for Practitioners” and “Resilience, Relationships and Recovery”
4. The Black Dog Institute - The Black Dog Institute offers training opportunities nationally. They range in price from $55-$360 and cover important topics such as “Dealing with Depression in Rural Australia” and “Building Resilience to Mood Disorders”.
I realise most of these are skewed to the East Coast of Australia. Have you spotted a professional development bargain elsewhere? if so, please share below. I hope to update this list in the coming months when I get more time, and training calendars for 2015 are released.
