What do psychologists do?

We work with adults who are managing and living with chronic medical conditions, and who often face particular challenges such as following difficult medical regimes.

Our focus is to work with you and your healthcare team to try to maximise your wellbeing. We'll often involve your family, friends or carers with what we do as they can offer ideas and support on how to move forward.

Why you might meet with a psychologist

Some of the difficulties that you might choose to see a psychologist about include:

• stress arising from illness, diagnosis or treatment
• depression, worry, anxiety or feelings of panic
• sleep disturbance
• loss of confidence
• coping with changes in how you look
• coping with changes in work or home life
• sexual and relationship difficulties
• loss, for example physical health or independence
• fear of death and dying, and illness recurrence or exacerbation
• making the most of life despite serious or disabling health problems, for example chronic pain or breathing difficulties
• coping with complex treatment regimes and the effect of these on getting on with life

Meeting with us

When you meet one of our psychologists, they will talk to you about your medical condition and how it is affecting you, your family and your life. Through doing this, we will start to get a picture of your situation, how you want things to change and who or what can help you achieve this.

You may find that one meeting is enough or you could have several meetings over a period of time.

In these we may:

• talk about, and make sense of, difficult feelings
• work together to help you to develop practical strategies for dealing with difficult situations and managing unpleasant feelings
• help you to prepare for medical tests and treatments
• make sure you have the information you want from health professionals in a format that is clear and helpful for you
• put you in contact with specialist services who may be able to help you further

Sometimes we may ask you to complete short questionnaires to help us understand how you're feeling and help us get a clearer picture of the situation.

Patient information

We have produced an information pack to explain information sharing, why we ask for your consent, and to give you an overview of your therapy agreement.