Struggling with your mental health? (anxious, low mood, feeling like you can’t cope)

Mental health problems can be tricky to understand in short appointments, so if you are not in crisis, looking for medication or need a sick note, think about asking to see the surgery’s mental health worker, a psychological health practitioner (PHP) rather than your GP…

PHPs are NHS mental health workers based in surgeries across Aneurin Bevan. They are a first point of contact when you have a non-urgent concern about your mental health and are keen to think about ways to understand and address it other than medication. Because mental health concerns are often complex, our PHP appointments are designed to be longer than GPs offer; this means you have more time to explain what you are concerned about, and the PHP can take time with you to discuss and agree options that might best suit your needs.  We encourage you to be open with the PHP if the plan doesn’t seem like a good fit for you. They will also be open with you about what you might expect from services too (e.g. we can’t make referrals for somethings people ask us for).

Q&A’s

Question: Are PHPs able to start therapy with me?

PHPs are not counsellors, they are all experienced and knowledgeable practitioners who are skilled at understanding common mental health struggles people experience. Our PHPs are familiar with a range of options available to help people with mental health concerns; this might include offering information about mental concerns and skills that can help; directing you to things you can learn about and do yourself; or referring you into services that might be able to help if you need this. Our PHPs are supervised by a team of experienced therapists and may discuss your assessment with them to ensure that your plan is as strong as it can be.

Question: will my appointment be in person or over the telephone?

Whilst we prefer for PHPs to be able to offer face-to-face appointments in surgery, this is not always possible if the surgery doesn’t have a room. In this case, the PHP will have to have this conversation with you over the phone. If the PHP calls you from the surgery phone, you need to be aware that all calls into/out of GP surgeries are recorded in accordance with Welsh Government guidance. If you do not wish for your call to the PHP to be recorded, you can ask for a video consultation or for them to call on their work mobile phone.  Our PHPs will usually call within a 5 min of your appointment time, so you don’t need to hang around waiting for the call. Please make sure you are in a place where you can talk openly about your mental health when the PHP calls – we lose a lot of time and appointments where people have taken the call in a place that is not private and they can’t really talk.

Question: how often will I see the PHP?

Most often people only have one appointment with a PHP, but sometimes follow up appointments are needed to clarify the plan or understand your situation more fully. In these instances, they will have had some input from the supervisor who may also be adding some suggestions or guidance too.

You can always return if the plan you agreed doesn’t work or wasn’t enough so you can consider a new plan. It doesn’t mean that the plan was a bad one, it might just not have been right for you at that time and something else can be thought of together (or with discussion with the PHP supervisor).

Question: what happens to the information shared in my appointment?

Our PHPs make notes in the appointment so that there is a record of the concerns you raised and decisions made between you; this is so that we can ensure these meet the standard we expect. These notes are kept securely on the ABUHB patient management system, and a summary will be added to your GP notes. If you want to access your notes from the appointment, you can do so by making a ‘subject access request’ (SAR) via the ‘useful information’ section on this health board web page: Information Governance - Aneurin Bevan University Health Board (nhs.wales)