Mental Health Support

Mental health

Approximately 1 in 4 people will experience a mental health problem each year. 1 in 6 people in the UK will experience symptoms of depression or anxiety in any given week.

The symptoms of depression are different for everybody. As a general rule, if you're depressed, you feel sad, hopeless and lose interest in things you used to enjoy.

Anxiety can affect you both physically and mentally. How severe the symptoms are once again varies from person to person. Some people only have 1 or 2 symptoms, others have many more.

See your GP or practice based mental health practitioner if you feel you are developing a mental health problem or have been experiencing any of the above symptoms for over 2 weeks or it is starting to impact your day to day life.

Practice based Senior Mental Health Practitioners

The surgery has two very experienced senior mental health practitioners.

Yvonne graduated from NUI Galway in 2009 with a BSC in Psychiatric nursing. She has worked across a number of different settings including Forensic psychiatry, acute inpatient units and recovery community mental health teams.

Colleen graduated in 1995 from Ulster University as a mental health nurse. She has 27 years’ experience working across a variety of services within the community mental health setting including specialist areas of addictions, eating disorders and more recently low intensity brief CBT interventions.

The role and function of the Senior Mental Health Practitioner is to work alongside the GP in practice providing a first contact mental health service to patients. Senior Mental Health Practitioners undertake consultations with patients registered with the practice presenting with a range of mental health needs and based on a standardised assessment pathway will provide an initial formulation of need, provide clinical advice, offer initial short-term brief interventions and/or signpost to other C&V sector services. The Senior Mental Health Practitioner will refer patients with higher level complex mental health conditions directly to more appropriate Mental Health and Social Care Trust services.

If you would like to speak with our senior mental health practitioners regarding your mental health please request this at booking.

It’s ok not to be ok.

#itsoknottobeok