World Mental Health Day

As part of Mental Health week we’re publishing a series of blogs from our Primary Care Mental Health IAPT Partnership (Leeds IAPT) service. You can see more about them on our website.
 

Here Anne Briggs – Senior Mental Health Practitioner and IPT therapist trainee talks about a typical day

I started my work day with supervision. This was a good opportunity to discuss two clients. I could reflect on a successful session with a client, and also the great progress she has made during the therapy sessions so far. She told me that whereas previously the world was grey and full of sadness, she can now see colours around her and the sadness has been replaced with hope and joy. The second client talked about in supervision is providing me with much to think about and learn. As always, my supervisor offers encouragement, wise advice as well as specific strategies to use and ways to take the therapy forward. I read a chapter from a book which also outlined the specific treatment strategy, and spent some time planning our next session and how to make the most of it, for both of us.

 I telephoned three clients whom I spoke with four weeks ago. At that time they had completed a telephone screening with myself, and having described their situation and well-being we had agreed on a treatment pathway. The phone call is to follow-up this conversation, to hear if their situation or well-being has changed since then, and if there is any other support they need while they are waiting for their first treatment appointment.

 One of them said that she felt better just knowing that there was a plan for treatment, despite the wait for it to begin. She felt better for talking to someone about how she was feeling, and that the hardest thing to do was to call our service to make the appointment – like facing up to it, moving towards accepting there is a problem. I hear that often in this job, that the hardest thing to do is to acknowledge there is a problem, to accept it. By taking that step, then this is a step in the right direction, that is progress.