MHT15 – Motivational Interviewing Training

The UK leading expert centre for motivational interviewing training and support. Equipping professionals with the knowledge, practical skills, and confidence to navigate complex conversations that support clients towards meaningful and lasting change.

Through expert guidance and practical application, you’ll learn how to unlock intrinsic motivation, build trust, and support sustainable change. Skills that elevate your practice and make a measurable difference in the lives of those you work with.

Our courses are immersive, dynamic, and grounded in the latest research, giving you the tools to motivate behaviour change with clarity and empathy

Our expert-led programmes blend teaching with hands-on practice, helping you master the art of MI. Whether you work in substance misuse, dual diagnosis, mental health / general healthcare, education, social care, the criminal justice system, or leadership, our training empowers the skills to support others healthier choices, more effectively. Achieving better outcomes in your everyday practice.

Why learn Motivational Interviewing skills?

Motivational Interviewing (MI) is a person-centred, yet directive counselling style that motivates healthier behaviours and life choices that are in the person’s best interests.

The skills and principles within Motivational Interviewing (MI) are essential to individuals and organisations who interact with, and support individuals vulnerable to self-defeating life choices. Even simple advice can negatively backfire. This is counterproductive to healthy change.

Understanding how language and skill-based strategies can influence and improve health outcomes is important. Then applying techniques that motivate and underpin healthy change becomes quite simple – and easy to learn with the right guidance and facilitation.

We offer motivational interviewing training to a wide range of environments and applications including (but not limited too):

Alcohol and substance misuse
Gambling
Health-related maintenance including eating, medication and health screening
Housing support
Relationship support and guidance
Child welfare
General Safeguarding including self-harm risk
Self-neglect concerns
Hoarding behaviours
Homelessness
Social media use
Risk taking & impulsivity
Supporting those facing domestic abuse

Our unique training blends aspects of validating practice into MI to develop trust and facilitate healthier outcomes. The blend of MI and empathy-based skills provides a stable and evidence-based strategy that will increase the potential for healthier client outcomes. It will also reduce staff-patients tensions and increase staff confidence in general.

This enjoyable training workshop can be delivered in a one-day or two-day format.

One-day workshop – The Principles & Application of Simple Motivational Interviewing

This workshop provides an excellent grounding in MI and behaviour change psychology. This workshop can help teams to get up and working within the MI framework quite quickly.

Two-day workshop – Advanced Principles & Applications of Motivational Interviewing Strategies.

This builds on the one-day workshop and blends associated psychotherapies into the model to improve outcomes. This training is delivered by psychology / psychiatry trained experts and is tailored to your sector of work.

Persuasive Conversations & Motivating Change Training – Where Healthy Change Provides Mutual Benefits

This workshop teaches communication skills and strategies that will improve an individual’s adherence to your advice or request – particularly where these requests have mutually beneficial outcomes.

In essence, this soft skills training effectively blends listening, empathy and validation practice with guidance, and an influence that’s better trusted, more effective, and is more likely to be adopted. It’s a conversational style that moves people towards an action that is good for everyone.

This training employs many of the skills and techniques within Motivational Interviewing practice. Motivational Interviewing is a person-centred counselling style. It supports people to reduce self-defeating behaviours in their best interests. This training is different, it will help your team influence behaviours that are in everyone’s best interests. Where the benefits of the outcomes to the request are shared.

It’s a training solution for organisations that have contact support roles with individuals vulnerable to impulsivity, life-stress, negative life choices and self-defeating behaviours. Importantly, these behaviours are impacting a number of people, including your organisation and its staff. In this instance, there’s a common ground – change benefits everyone.

In simple terms – people are not doing what you would like them to do and your desire to motivate them to adopt your ideas has an ethical basis.

You can phone 01332 362222 or email info@mentalhealthtraining.co.uk for more information

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Frequently Asked Questions about Motivational Interviewing Training

What is Motivational Interviewing training?

This Motivational Interviewing (MI) training teaches practical communication skills that can significantly and ethically influence behaviour change. Motivational Interviewing has been studied for over 40 years and is supported by hundreds of clinical trials and systematic reviews. It’s considered an evidence-based approach for behaviour change influence across multiple fields.

Our Motivational Interviewing (MI) training equips professionals with practical, evidence-based communication skills to support behaviour change. It focuses on having more effective, collaborative conversations that help people find their own motivation to change.

Who is Motivational Interviewing training for?

This training is suitable for professionals across healthcare, social care, mental health, education, leadership, and coaching. If your role involves supporting, influencing, or guiding others, MI can enhance the quality and impact of your conversations.

We provide carefully tailored and adapted training to support a wide range of organisations that want to incorporate the principles of MI into client counselling and behavioural influence / support. We help you adapt and blend MI effectively into your client support roles.

We work across wide sectors including health, social care, housing, education, charities, forensic mental health, enforcement and custody, advocacy and crisis support. The following areas and organisations can significantly benefit with the application of MI strategies.

Addiction, substance use and dual diagnosis (Support engagement where individuals may feel judged or misunderstood, help people prioritise changes without feeling overwhelmed)
Health behaviours (e.g. smoking cessation, diet, exercise, medication adherence)
Chronic condition management (e.g. diabetes care, treatment adherence)
Support for victims of potential abuse (that maintain a degree of ambivalence)
Mental health and wellbeing support (It builds engagement, reduces resistance, and strengthens a person’s own motivation to make positive changes)
Organisations that work in the criminal justice system (Strategies and conversations to reduce reoffending risk, improve engagement with programmes and interventions)
Social Care & Support Services (Safeguarding conversations, supporting behaviour change in families, encouraging independence and personal responsibility, working with individuals who may feel resistant or disengage.
Education & Youth Work (Teachers, mentors, and youth workers use MI to support student engagement and attendance, address behavioural challenges, encourage goal-setting and personal development, have more constructive conversations with young people
Leadership & Management (MI is increasingly used in workplaces to improve how managers communicate. It helps leaders have more effective performance and development conversations, support behaviour change in teams, reduce defensiveness and conflict, build a more collaborative, empowering culture
Please contact us for advice on other areas, further ideas and guidance.

Do you offer training for different levels of experience and roles?

Yes. We offer introductory, intermediate, and advanced options, and we can adapt delivery for frontline teams, managers, specialist roles, safeguarding leads, and multi-agency groups.

What problems does this training solve?

If you’re facing resistance, low engagement, or conversations that go in circles, MI provides a structured, evidence-based way to move forward without pressure or conflict.

How is your training different from other communication courses?

Our MI training is delivered by experts trained in psychology and psychiatry with years of frontline experience. They understand your organisational and interactional challenges and deliver the exact knowledge and skills that they know you need. This training blends theory and skills-based practice designed for real-world practice. It focuses on real-world application, not theory alone. Our sessions are interactive, practical, and tailored to your context, so your team can use the skills immediately.

Is Motivational Interviewing evidence-based?

Yes. MI is supported by decades of research and is widely used across healthcare, behavioural change, and professional development settings.

Do you offer in-person or virtual training?

We offer both in-person and live virtual sessions, with flexible formats to suit your organisation’s needs.

Can the training be tailored to our organisation?

Absolutely. We customise content, examples, and practice scenarios to reflect your sector, challenges, and goals.

How long is the training?

We offer a range of options, from short introductory workshops to in-depth multi-day programmes and ongoing coaching.

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Frequently Asked Questions