ABSTRACT
A psychological formulation brings together a person’s behaviours, thoughts and feelings in different contexts and cultures with the psychological theories that help to understand why they occurred in the first place and what maintains them. The purpose of the formulation is to enable understanding of difficulties and the creation of a psychological intervention that will help. An important part of a formulation is checking out whether or not it is valid or correct. A common way of doing this is to see whether an intervention suggested by the formulation works. A formulation is often drawn as a complex diagram, such as the ‘hot cross bun’ formulation used in cognitive behavioural therapy, or as a flow chart, with optional branches, like the diagnostic diagrams on medical websites. Some formulations work very well first time, but most go through a cycle of intervention and reformulation at least once.
