Drs. W.H. Oppenoorth

Walter H. Oppenoorth works at the RMPI, a psychiatric-psychotherapeutic institute for Children, Adolescents and Families, since the completion of his training as a psychiatrist in 1985. He is in charge of the Family Department of the Institute.

Under the pressure of the growing waiting lists for Clinical Family treatment, together with his team, he developed a Family Day Treatment program and the Family Week Hospitalisation Program. These short-term treatment programs are based on the principles of Solution Focused Therapy in which he was trained at the Mastercourse from the Korzybski Institute in the early nineties. The Solution Focused approach matched with his earlier work: treating what he called the Disempowerment Syndrome.

Walter did outcome research on these programs, organised symposia and workshops with Insoo Kim Berg and other experienced Solution Focused Therapists and translated Insoo’s book “Family Based Services” into Dutch.

Articles have been published about his clinical work in various professional journals and books. He regularly gives lectures, consultations, workshops and trainings on his (solution-focused) work in the Netherlands and abroad.

Together with Arnoud Huibers and his team he is currently developing competency-oriented questionnaires like the Family Competency Inventory.