Integrative Spin: Understanding and Treating the Person with Persistent Dizziness
People living with persistent dizziness often experience disability, decreased independence, psychological distress, and reduced quality of life. Therapists who treat them are challenged not only by the complexity of these presentations, but by a gap between what patients describe feeling and what conventional models can explain. This course explores the critical factors that distinguish recovery from persistence in dizziness, centering the lived experience of dizziness — how it’s felt, how it reshapes what a person believes they can do, and how avoidance and engagement each carry real tension for someone trying to get their life back. Drawing on active inference, enactivism, and ecological psychology, the course builds an integrative framework from first principles — one where the patient’s lived experience isn’t an add-on to the clinical picture, but part of what the model is built to explain from the start. Participants will leave with a comprehensive understanding of persistent dizziness and a critical lens on conventional interventions, alongside new approaches grounded in this framework, including a reframed role for the clinician in helping patients re-engage with valued activities.
Learning Objectives
Upon completion of this course, participants will be able to:
- Describe the cognitive-perceptual, affective, environmental, sensorimotor, and vestibular factors involved in both recovery and persistence.
- Synthesize first-person accounts of living with persistent dizziness into a clinical understanding of what drives avoidance, distress, and disability.
- Critically evaluate conventional interventions for persistent dizziness and identify novel, evidence-informed approaches.
- Identify practical strategies for helping patients re-engage with valued activities they’ve been avoiding because of symptoms.
Interested in bringing this course to your program? Get in touch.