THERAPY

At Mind Recovery, we develop bespoke recovery plans for each individual. Keely mainly works with Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) methods, but is also trained in EMDR and teaches mindfulness techniques. Keely may incorporate one method into your plan, or combine different approaches depending on your specific needs.

Take a look at the list below to see which type of therapy/therapies may be best for you based on some common mental health concerns.

COMMON CONDITIONS

DEPRESSION

Depression is a common mental health disorder characterised by the following symptoms lasting for at least two weeks. These include loss of interest and motivation, social isolation and withdrawal, self-neglect, suicidal thoughts, sleep disturbance, appetite changes and powerful, negative and distorted thinking.

Treatment:
Treatment interventions would include behavioural activation or activity scheduling.This aims to help patients engage more often in enjoyable activities and develop or enhance problem-solving skills. Cognitive restructuring is another technique that refers to the process in CBT, of identifying and changing inaccurate negative thoughts that contribute to the development and maintenance of depression. This is done in a collaborative way on an average of eight sessions or more if required.

ANXIETY

Anxiety is characterised into a group of different disorders. Amongst these are Generalised anxiety, Obsessive Compulsive disorder,

Social anxiety, Phobias and Panic disorder. Anxiety is a normal physiological response to threat. Everyone suffers with anxiety at some point and worries from time to time. Physical symptoms of anxiety are feeling dizzy or light headed, feeling hot, dry mouth, difficulty concentrating, butterflies in stomach, shallow breathing and pounding heart.

Treatment:

Within each of these disorders the treatment would vary as each present different symtoms. Different techniques would be used such as challenging and evaluating anxious thoughts, exposure response prevention, behavioural experiments and exposure.

The aim would be to by the end of therapy to be able to face situations that would normally be avoided. CBT would aim to teach effective coping strategies from dealing with different problems that cause anxiety throughout life.

OCD

OCD is classified as an anxiety disorder. Other anxiety disorders include Generalised Anxiety Disorder, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Panic Disorder (Panic Attacks), Social Anxiety Disorders and Phobias.

Panic attacks are extremely frightening. They may appear to come out of the blue, strike at random and make people feel powerless, out of control and as if they are about to die or go mad. Many people experience this problem, and it is not uncommon for someone with OCD to experience similar feelings to panic attacks. However, many also learn to cope and eventually to overcome it successfully.

When panic attacks are experienced out of the blue without an apparent trigger, this is classified as panic disorder.

Sufferers of panic disorder often feel fine one minute, and yet the next may feel totally out of control and in the grips of a panic attack. Panic attacks produce very real physical symptoms from a rapid increase in

heartbeat to a churning stomach sensation. These physical symptoms are naturally unpleasant and the accompanying psychological thoughts of terror can make a panic attack a very scary experience. For this reason, sufferers start to dread the next attack, and quickly enter into a cycle of living 'in fear of fear'.

Treatment: Exposure Response Prevention and CBT.

PANIC ATTACKS

Panic disorder is an anxiety disorder where you regularly have sudden attacks of panic or fear. Everyone experiences feelings of anxiety and panic at certain times. It's a natural response to stressful or dangerous situations.

But for someone with panic disorder, feelings of anxiety, stress and panic occur regularly and at any time, often for no apparent reason.
A panic attack is when your body experiences a rush of intense mental and physical symptoms. It can come on very quickly and for no apparent reason. A panic attack can be very frightening and distressing.

Symptoms may include:

a racing heartbeat, feeling faint, sweating, nausea, chest pain, shortness of breath and trembling. Be aware that some of these symptoms can also be symptoms of other conditions or problems, so you may not always be experiencing a panic attack – for example, you may have a racing heartbeat if you have very low blood pressure. So please visit a GP initially.

Treatment:

Your GP can refer you to Mind Recovery for CBT. You might discuss with Keely how you react and what you think about when you're experiencing a panic attack.Keely can teach you ways of changing your behaviour – for example, breathing techniques to help you keep calm during an attack.

PHOBIAS

Phobias fall into the category of anxiety disorders, because anxiety is prominent in both of them. Sometimes obsessive-compulsive disorders are confused with phobias, which are excessive and irrational fears. With the important exception of a fear of contamination, patients with OCD do not appear to be particularly prone to develop phobias. The fear of contamination tends to be intense, spreads rapidly, is dominating, and generates widespread avoidance. This fear drives the classical symptom of the disorder— compulsive washing and cleaning. With this exception, compulsive behaviour of the obsessive-compulsive type is uncommon in phobias. A person who has a phobia usually feels safe in his day-to-day life, if he successfully avoids the object or situation that scares him. Someone with a phobia of elevators, for example, will avoid using elevators and be able to lead an untroubled life, as long as he is not obliged to use an elevator; and someone with a phobia of spiders can lead a normal life, as long as he avoids encounters with spiders. In contrast, an obsessive-compulsive patient cannot escape from his

problems as easily; even if he manages to minimise contacts with places/people that trigger his obsessions or compulsive urges, his problems are not contained. Obsessions in particular, frequently intrude at times and places that are not containable. In fact, for many patients the potential 'trigger', an intrusive thought, can emerge anytime, anywhere. For example, a woman with obsessive-compulsive disorder may totally avoid knives, scissors, and other sharp objects, which she fears she may use to attack people, but will still be tormented by thoughts that she might commit these acts, or be engulfed by self-doubts about whether or not she has already attacked someone. Fears of becoming contaminated by direct physical contact with a dirty/dangerous object (contact contamination) come closest to resembling a phobia, but the related fear of mental contamination, which often arises without any contact, is less like a phobia.

Obsessions and compulsions are more intrusive and more pervasive than phobias, and frequently interfere with daily living.

Treatment:

STRESS

Stress causes physical changes in the body designed to help you take on threats or difficulties.

You may notice that your heart pounds, your breathing quickens, your muscles tense, and you start to sweat. This is sometimes known as the fight or flight response.

Once the threat or difficulty passes, these physical effects usually fade. But if you're constantly stressed, your body stays in a state of high alert and you may develop stress-related symptoms.

Stress can affect how you feel emotionally, mentally and physically, and also how you behave.

You can't always prevent stress, but there are lots of things you can do to manage stress better.

Treatment:

BEREAVEMENT

The death of a loved one can be devastating. Bereavement affects people in different ways. There's no right or wrong way to feel.

You might feel a lot of emotions at once, or feel you're having a good day, then you wake up and feel worse again. Powerful feelings can come unexpectedly. It's like waves on a beach. You can be standing in water up to your knees and feel you can cope, then suddenly a big wave comes and knocks you off your feet.

Experts generally accept there are four stages of bereavement:

accepting that your loss is real
experiencing the pain of grief
adjusting to life without the person who has died
putting less emotional energy into grieving and putting it into something
new – in other words, moving on

You'll probably go through all these stages, but you won't necessarily move smoothly from one to the next. Your grief might feel chaotic and out of control, but these feelings will eventually become less intense.

Treatment:

EATING DISORDERS

An eating disorder is when you have an unhealthy attitude to food, which can take over your life and make you ill.

It can involve eating too much or too little, or becoming obsessed with your weight and body shape.

But there are treatments that can help, and you can recover from an eating disorder.

Men and women of any age can get an eating disorder, but they most commonly affect young women aged 13 to 17 years old.

The most common eating disorders are:

anorexia nervosa – when you try to keep your weight as low as possible by not eating enough food, exercising too much, or both
– when you sometimes lose control and eat a lot of food in a very short amount of time (binging) and are then deliberately sick, use laxatives (medication to help you poo), restrict what you eat, or do too much exercise to try to stop yourself gaining weight
binge eating disorder (BED) – when you regularly lose control of your eating, eat large portions of food all at once until you feel uncomfortably full, and are then often upset or guilty.

Treatment:

At mind recovery a thorough assessment is completed with view to understanding what factors maintain the problem. From this an idiosyncratic treatment plan is agreed.

BDD

Body dysmorphic disorder is an anxiety-based problem related to body image and worries about appearance. It can affect both men and women and who may worry about an area of the body or specific feature which ultimately impacts on everyday living.

Treatment:

Techniques such as cognitive restructuring and exposure would be used. Cognitive techniques would help identify maladaptive thoughts and beliefs, challenge and evaluate them, to help develop alternative, more helpful thoughts. Avoidance of situations would be addressed through exposure. Read more about CBT.

LOW SELF ESTEEM

Low self-esteem is often rooted in depression and anxiety and measure of worth is quite low. In therapy we learn self-acceptance and develop a high self-esteem. By the end of therapy we will have identified negative thoughts about oneself, identified and challenged distorted thinking and negative biased beliefs.

Treatment:

Confidence will be increased and learning to value oneself will be part of therapy.

PTSD

Post Traumatic Stress disorder is an anxiety problem triggered by a traumatic event. Symptoms include nightmares and flashbacks and avoidance of people, places or situations that remind you of the event.

Treatment:

Both CBT and EMDR are both effective treatments. The goal of therapy would be to improve confidence, reduce avoidance behaviours and an overall sense of feeling more in control.