"Referred for computer therapy"

Hello,

I'm really sorry that you have not found the treatment that you were hoping for from the Talking Therapies service. I have passed your comments onto the manager who will advise what further steps can be taken and what other options are available to you, if the web approach is not right for you. I will post back here when I have more information in the next few days. Apologies for the delay but I hope this offers you some hope.

LUCY

Hello,

I have received more information from the Talking Therapies Service Manager, which I hope is helpful to you.

Talking Therapies are very sorry to hear this was your experience of our service. The service would be very keen to review your care with you if you want to get in contact and speak to one of our clinicians on the telephone number 0300 323 0033.

The Talking Therapies service offers short-term, brief work with patients. We always want to start work as soon as possible with our patients.

All patients referred to the Talking Therapies service receive a full assessment on the telephone. This includes telling people about charities and local groups that might be helpful, coaching over the telephone in mood management skills if appropriate, and sending out self-help materials suited to issues that have been identified during the assessment.

It appears you were referred to Silver Cloud, an online self-help portal. Modules are made available for you to work through, based on the original assessment. Research shows that this type of treatment is very helpful to large numbers of patients.

It is self-directed (at your own pace) and available at any hour to suit you. A clinician calls you before you begin and reviews your progress at 3-weekly intervals by email, and can open up more modules as is helpful. Normally there is no waiting list for Silver Cloud, so we would like to apologise that you waited a few weeks to receive the necessary link.

As you say, we also offer many courses (what you refer to as groups). We call them ‘courses’ because you do not need to speak about any personal things. The courses are psychoeducation based on well-researched, cognitive behavioural ideas – this means that they can teach you skills to help cope and manage things better.

It is certainly possible to have face to face therapy (counselling or cognitive behavioural therapy) in our service, but evidence shows that this is not necessarily the best first option for everybody. Because it can be quite intense treatment, it may in fact make some problems worse for some patients. As well as this, we are a short-term service and have to maximise our resources as best we can. Usually face-to-face therapy is offered to people who have not benefitted from treatments above such as Silver Cloud or courses. That’s why it would be great if you could ring us to review your care.

While we do have trained counsellors in our service we also have many other types of worker, for example Psychological Wellbeing Practitioners, who are trained to assess and support people with common mental health problems such as anxiety and depression. Evidence shows that the best thing to do is to offer a variety of different things that will benefit patients, so that we can help as many people as possible and not just offer a ‘one size fits all’ solution.

I hope the above is helpful and that you are able to find a solution that works for you.

Kind regards,

LUCY