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"Suspension of therapy amidst the pandemic"

About: Hawick Community Hospital / Mental Health outpatients

(as the patient),

I had a therapy session yesterday, via telephone, and was told that my therapy is to be suspended for an unknown time due to the coronavirus pandemic. As much as i understand the reasoning for this, I felt I must explain why, for me, this is terrifying.

I have been seeing a therapist for nearly a year now. Due to my issues, it is ongoing, with no clear end date as of yet. I came to therapy with crippling anxiety and depression and was also quickly diagnosed with an Anxious Avoidant Personality Disorder. My therapeuric journey is a LIFE-CHANGING journey. It had to be, as I could barely function, was not 'living' due to extreme anxiety and fear etc. It has taken to this point for me to, only just, start changing how I think and deal with life, meaning I am at possibly the most crucial part of my therapy because I am starting to shed my harmful ways of thinking which makes me extremely vulnerable at this point as I am on very unsteady ground.

Therapy is like my anchor, and my ONLY truly safe space. It is the only place I can talk about ANYTHING I need to talk about. I cannot just make do with talking to friends or family, if that was a possibility, I would not have had to go to therapy in the first place. I need the therapist/patient dynamic in order to feel I can talk freely, without judgement or shame, and without causing the ones I love extreme concern. Therapy is where I am shown other ways of looking at things, doing things, and shown things in a perspective other than my own that I am unable to see myself. I understand that this crisis is huge, and I understand the extreme pressure on the NHS more than any others, but it is this crisis that makes me feel it is more important than ever to continue my therapy as stopping now will almost certainly prove catastrophic, as I am in a very unsteady place, effectively functioning with a borrowed 'shield'. By 'shield', I mean self-worth/confidence/self-respect and the many other things that allow us to live a fairly healthy well-rounded life.

Therapy is my borrowed shield, therapy is where I am constructing my own shield. I am also a 'key-worker' as a home carer which brings it's own anxiety due to the current pandemic and I know that in order to keep working, to keep going outside I need to stay in therapy. My biggest fear just now is not the coronavirus, it is the thought of trying to cope with all of these things on my own. I am fairly certain I can't cope on my own. Which means my mental health may revert to how it was a year ago, barely leaving the house etc, and then become ever more exacerbated by the worldwide crisis.

Thank you for your time.

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Responses

Response from Timothy Sporle, Consultant Clinical Psychologist & Lead for Adult Mental Health Psychology, NHS Borders 5 years ago
Timothy Sporle
Consultant Clinical Psychologist & Lead for Adult Mental Health Psychology,
NHS Borders
Submitted on 14/04/2020 at 13:37
Published on Care Opinion at 15:23


Dear AC1979,

Thank you for taking the time to share your experience of our psychology service, we value receiving feedback about the care that we provide. I apologise for the delay in responding.

As your therapist has hopefully explained to you, the coronavirus pandemic has placed our local services under unprecedented demand. We had switched to offering therapy over the phone given the current social distancing measures that are in place across the country. However, as the crisis has developed we have had to make some difficult decisions about how our psychology resources are going to be used to support other areas of the service. Unfortunately this meant that we had to suspend therapy with some patients. Where we have moved towards suspending therapy with a patient our psychologists have tried to do this as sensitively as possible, but I appreciate that having to suspend therapy has caused you anxiety and distress and I am sorry for the upset that this has caused you.

If you haven't already done so, I would recommend for you to discuss this further with your therapist to see if this decision can be reviewed. In circumstances where we have had to suspend therapy we have aimed to do this by mutual agreement as much as we are able to. In some cases we have been able to continue offering therapy during the coronavirus pandemic and it would be worth discussing this with your therapist to see if this would be possible for you too.

I am pleased to learn in your feedback about how much you have valued the therapy that you receive. It is important for me to make you aware that the therapy we offer in our psychology services is time limited and tends to be around 12 to 16 sessions in duration. I recognise that as the end of therapy approaches it can bring up many different emotions. For this reason our therapists aim to plan in advance what it may be like for each individual as they approach the end of therapy. I would recommend that you discuss this further with your therapist.

I would also be happy for you to get in contact with me if you would like to discuss any of the above in more detail. My number is 01896 827 270.

I would like to thank you again for your feedback.

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