Kenzie’s mother, Maria, emailed me. She told me that she needed advice about ‘how to control’ her 16-year-old son, and that he needed professional help to ‘sort himself out’. This type of language isn’t unusual at the time of...
therapy
This is ‘reality’ TV, a ‘fly on the wall’ series which gives the audience a sense of what it’s really like to be in couple therapy: the nervousness and shame, the sudden rising fury and talking over each other, followed by painful silences. Dr Orna Guralnik also gives us a...
I woke up on the morning of 15 March 2016, with a first session booked with my new therapist. I was wondering why on earth I was bothering… it seemed all therapists were the same. The thought of spending the rest of my life doing what I had done before was intolerable. I...
Years ago, I had a patient who could not drive on highways or over bridges. She felt like she was going to die, and her body would shake so much she could not safely drive. Driving to a location that required going over a bridge was much harder than driving home...
Divine Charura is Professor of Counselling Psychology at York St John University in York, and a member of the British Psychological Society. Colin Lago is an independent counsellor/psychotherapist/consultant and a Fellow of the British Association for Counselling and...
I come from a background in neuroscience and mathematical modelling. I started my academic life at Cambridge University, studying natural sciences and majoring in neuroscience. I quickly became fascinated with how the brain works. After my undergraduate degree, I started to...
As a community we know that in addition to reducing the accessibility of face-to-face services, the Covid-19 pandemic has negative implications for mental wellbeing across the country. During the first lockdown, one survey found that 24 per cent of UK adults and 44 per cent...
Psychologists and psychiatrists came together on 15 December to share evidence with the House of Lords Covid-19 Select Committee on the long-term impacts of our use of technology during the pandemic on our mental wellbeing. The peers also touched on the use of technology in...
It was a day I won’t forget in a hurry.
I was an inpatient on an acute psychiatric ward, sectioned under the Mental Health Act. I was meant to be in a place of safety. But perched on the end of my unmade bed, with tears rolling down my face, I felt so alone. I wanted to...
In the October issue, Jonathon Dawson asked how to address racism in therapy. Dawson mentioned that a key aim of therapy settings is to build therapeutic alliance, yet his...