"10 weeks stay as in patient"

I have been an in patient for 10 continuous weeks at the Priory Roehampton , being treated for depression and anxiety. I stayed in the Garden Wing.

My consultant was very good and really care about me getting better.

My feedback re the nursing staff in the garden wing is more mixed : some (not the majority) were very good and really helped me during my stay at the hospital. In fact I felt I was getting more out of those 'very good' nursing staff than some of the therapists (more about this below). But some were not great at all and did not seem to care about you. This was worse at night times and week ends when very often bank staff who did not know you at all were on shift. So at the time when it is more difficult, ie evening and weeks ends (there is hardly anything going on Saturday afternoons and Sundas), for patients , the quality of the staff is not great at all. It is something that Roehampton management ought to address.

My big disappointment was with the therapy department....my one to one therapist was , in my personal view, not very good. I did not feel that there was a structure to what we were doing and all I had after 10 sessions (one session per week - which is not enough in my view) was 2 or 3 pages with some scribble on them.

Then we had group sessions. Usually one in the morning and one in the afternoon. You are booked on them depending on what you are being treated for but sometimes it feels that some are being put on your schedule just to fill your time as the content has not got much link with what you are being treated for. Then during those sessions themselves, the opportunity for each individual to talk in depth about their issue is very limited as there are up 10-12 patients at the session making it impossible for each to share their respective issue. What is odd is that at the same time your consultant is asking you to work on your issue during those group sessions when in fact the format and the number of people make it impossible to do. It felt that the consultant, who was as I said very good, did not know really how those group sessions were being conducted and to what extend patient were able (not able in this case) to talk about their respective issues.

So overall my feedback on Roehampton is very mixed : good accommodation, good food , some very good nursing staff, some very average nursing staff in particular at week ends , a therapy department which is really doing bulk work : ie working with sometimes fairly large group of people with very different issues or source of issues and therefore as a result offering very little to each patient in reality (at least that was my own perception and finally therapists who are providing one to one session a bit of a mixed bag too. My advice on that point would be to not hesitate to change your individual therapist early on if you feel chemistry is not there.

To finish on a positive note, I left the hospital in a better state to when I came in....