Angus Adult Psychological Therapies Service

You will need to be referred by your GP or another professional within NHS Tayside.

The team consists of Applied Psychologists and Psychological Therapists. We are also supported by a number of admin staff.

We help people with mild to moderate mental health problems. These may include:

• Anxiety
• Depression
• Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
• Panic Attacks
• Bulimia Nervosa
• PTSD and other trauma related difficulties

We offer appointments in GP practices and Health Centres across Angus, in normal office hours, Monday to Friday. You will be offered the first available appointments within Angus but you can choose to be seen in your own area or by a particular clinician, if you prefer. Please be aware that this may delay your initial appointment by a number of weeks.

Your first appointment will be an assessment and will last about 50 minutes. It will involve talking about your current difficulties and how they have developed. You will also be asked to complete some short questionnaires to provide more information and help us monitor your progress. A summary of this meeting will be discussed with you and a report sent to the person that referred you.

If the assessment indicates that you would benefit from psychological intervention, treatment options will be discussed with you. Should our Service be unable to meet your needs, we will discuss alternative options available to you.

Treatment is provided in a number of ways:

• Supported self-help
• Computer based therapy
• Group treatment
• Individual treatment

Your therapist will discuss the best options with you, following your assessment.

Most treatments will encourage you to:

• Explore your difficulties
• Agree aims for treatment
• Complete tasks between appointments
• Learn how to cope with difficult situations

Sessions are conducted on a weekly or fortnightly basis, and are usually about 50 minutes. Treatment is time limited and you are likely to be seen for somewhere between 6 and 10 sessions.

Progress depends on regular attendance. It is therefore important that you attend all appointments given to you. If you ever need to cancel or change an appointment, please contact us on 01356 692 865 as soon as you possibly can. Our policy is to end treatment if there are broken appointments with no notice given.

We take care to respect your confidentiality and ensure that your records are only accessed by those involved in your care. We provide reports to the referring clinician outlining the content of our sessions, and may discuss your care with them as appropriate. We also discuss our work with a clinical supervisor. We will not discuss your sessions with anyone else without your permission. We have a legal duty to breach confidentiality if there are concerns that you or anyone else is at risk. If you have any queries about confidentiality please ask your clinician.

NHS Tayside Psychological Therapy Services provide training placements for Applied Psychologists and Psychological Therapists from Edinburgh, Dundee and Stirling Universities. All work undertaken by trainees in our service is closely supervised by a qualified member of staff.

The service undertakes research into psychological processes and interventions, as approved by NHS Tayside Ethics Committee. During your contact with the service you may be invited to participate in specific research projects.

We welcome feedback about our service, and if you have any suggestions about how we could do things better, please let your clinician know. Alternatively contact the team by email on aptt.tayside@nhs.net or contact the Lead Clinician by telephone or writing at the address above.

If you have not been satisfied with the service, please let your clinician know or contact the Lead Clinician as above. Alternatively you can make a formal complaint by emailing Complaints and Feedback Team at feedback.tayside@nhs.net or by writing to the address above.