"Access to depression and anxiety support"

I am sorry to hear that you are struggling with low mood and anxiety; I can only imagine the impact this is having on your life on a daily basis. I do wish that as soon as we assessed someone, we could offer them the treatment that they need immediately and am sorry to hear that you have been informed that there will be a wait. I also appreciate you taking the time to leave a review of your experience on Care Opinion.

Whenever someone is referred to the Wellbeing Service or Renew, they are offered a psychological assessment of their needs via telephone. During this call, we try to get a sense of the primary difficulties a person is facing as well as the severity and duration of the mental health issues. We also ask people about their goals and what they would hope to achieve from therapy. During your assessment we identified that our Cognitive Behavioural Therapy skills course might meet your needs. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, or CBT for short, is an evidence-based psychological therapy designed to help people manage symptoms of low mood and anxiety. We know that CBT is effective for a lot of people. In the skills course, you will hopefully learn CBT strategies to help manage your emotions including looking at making changes to the way we think and behave when feeling depressed and anxious. An important part of this treatment includes offering everyone the opportunity to have a one-to-one review with a Psychologist at the end of the course to see if they require further treatment.

Since there is a wait for this skills course to commence, it might be helpful in the meantime for us to consider if there are any materials we can provide that might be useful. If you could contact us, using the details on your appointment letter, and leave your name and number, I am happy to call you back to discuss this and update you on when the skills course will likely start.

Kind regards

Dave Barker

Clinical Psychologist