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Talking Therapies are designed to help individuals deal with common Mental Health problems such as Anxiety and Depression.
Within Long-term Physical Health presentations, we recognise that our mental health can play a role in our physical health in relation to the symptoms that we experience and the impact this has on our ability to attend to our physical health the best we can. Expand the boxes to find out more.
“Individuals with a long-term health condition are 2 to 3 times more likely to develop a mental health presentation such as anxiety or depression.”
www.mentalhealth.org/uk
Common difficulties that individuals face after receiving a Long-term Physical Health presentation include, struggling to come to terms with the diagnosis, which is understandable as the impact on their lives is huge, as well as struggling to adapt to the changes which we might need to make to our lives in order to learn how to live with our new reality. Talking therapy support can help us in making those adjustments that we might need help with and also coming to terms with living with a long term health condition.
Bedfordshire Wellbeing Service also works closely with Physical Health Services throughout the local borough to ensure that every patient receives the most appropriate treatment approach.
Living with a Long-term condition can impact on our lives in many ways and we may find it difficult to understand what needs to be done differently causing further deterioration in our mood. Furthermore, we may not know how to do things differently, or potentially worry what our lives will look like in the future, what other people will think about our condition and also worry about judgement from others. Talking therapy support helps us in setting goals for our lives but also understand the impact of our Long Term Condition on our lives.
We use Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) to provide you with the support and understanding to help you ‘live well’ with your long term health condition.
The vicious cycle
What is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and how can it help me in managing my Long Term Health Condition?
CBT is an evidence based therapeutic approach, which helps people recognise unhelpful thinking patterns, behaviours and physical symptoms. Once identified, CBT helps us to challenge our problems through learning new ways of thinking and adapting our behaviour to alleviate our distress. Living with a long-term health condition can cause significant distress as our way of living may have changed, as well as our outlook for the future. We might be experiencing anxiety about the future, feeling quite low about our diagnosis or potentially be struggling with new ways to adapt to the changes that we are faced with. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy can help us in dealing with these challenges.
The service typically works with individuals with Long-term conditions such as Diabetes, Respiratory presentations such as COPD and Asthma, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia and Chronic Pain. If you are unsure if the service can support you, please continue to make your referral. If the service is not the correct service to offer you support, we will do our best to find an alternative service who can help you.
The Bedfordshire Wellbeing Service offers Cognitive Behavioural Therapy at two varying levels depending on your presentation and your goals for treatment. The main difference between these two levels is that sessions are either 1 hr long, or ½ hr long.
All of our practitioners have been trained in Cognitive Behavioural therapy approaches. The services does offer Counselling also, however the NICE recommendations and evidence base suggests that Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is the preferred option to help individuals in dealing with psychological distress as a result of living with a long term condition.
Uses for Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy has demonstrated effectiveness in treating a number of different mental health presentations. In addition to anxiety and depression, CBT can also help people with:
We have a variety of support available for different conditions, including groups and courses, webinars, online CBT and one-to-one therapy. Simply expand the boxes below to see what’s available for your condition: