Mental Health Awareness Week – long term health conditions
My name is Maria and I’m a Senior Psychological Well Being Practitioner at Thinking Ahead. I support individuals who suffer with common mental health problems (anxiety, low mood, stress, panic etc) who also are also experiencing Long Term Conditions such as; Diabetes, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, Arthritis and Hypertension. These conditions are very common within England with approximately 20 million people experiencing these types of conditions.
Having a LTC can change your quality of life and ability to carry out day-to-day activities which can lead to feelings of low self-esteem, low mood, anxiety, panic and worry. It is also common that when someone is diagnosed with an LTC and the limitations this may bring, this can impact our sense of identity about who we are now.
Experiencing a common mental health problem like anxiety or low mood can impact on your behaviours such as change in appetite, withdrawal from every day activities, changes in sleeping pattern. These behaviours can then also impact on long term conditions, creating a vicious cycle.
Support at Thinking Ahead
Thinking Ahead offer several psychological therapies for people experiencing common mental health problems alongside experiencing a long term condition.
We offer Counselling. This aims to provide the space and opportunity for clients to explore their psychological situation in order to facilitate and increase client’s self-awareness towards making changes to live their life in a more fulfilling way.
We offer Low Intensity Cognitive Behavioural Therapy facilitated by a Psychological Well Being Practitioner (PWP). The PWP has a role as educator and supporter helping motivate the patient to use evidence based Low intensity CBT interventions but always acknowledging that the work is being undertaken by the client, who is seen as the expert in their recovery journey.
We also offer High Intensity CBT. CBT Therapists are trained to treat the NICE recommended treatments for the following clinical problems; Generalised Anxiety Disorder, Panic, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder, Specific Phobias, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Depression.