Lars Madsen
Lars is clinical and forensic psychologist and Accredited Schema Therapist and Supervisor with experience working in the private and public sectors in both Australia and England. His schema journey started when he commenced work within a newly established specialist unit for ‘severe and dangerous’ personality disorders in the National Health Service (NHS) in the north of England about 20 years ago. It was a visionary initiative with the best of intentions however from its inception the project was fraught with an unwieldy complexity and challenges that ultimately proved insurmountable. His role, at this time, as a clinical psychologist was to provide treatment to patients diagnosed with personality disorders who had histories of violence and sexual offending. In this context he found that of the various treatment modalities attempted – schema therapy was the most accessible to the patients’ and at the same time the most instructive to the staff group about the patient’s unique vulnerabilities, triggers and emotional needs. Upon his return to Australia in the late 2000’s Lars started working in private practice where his experiences in England provided him with the opportunity to again work with similar issues and problems here. At this time Lars commenced his accreditation in Schema Therapy and continued to work within community, hospital and institutional contexts applying schema therapy to complex adult difficulties both with clinical and forensic clients. In the course of his work as an advanced accredited schema therapist Lars has been called as an expert witness to the Supreme Court on the application of the schema therapy to high risk offenders. In recent years Lars has also provided supervision for accreditation and delivered schema training to staff within prisons and the parole and probation services as well as mainstream settings.