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Primary Care Mental Health Worker

We have a Primary Care Mental Health worker that provides mental health support and counselling in the surgery and over the phone.

If you feel you would benefit from speaking to our CMHW please don’t hesitate to get in touch. You can do this by either contacting the surgery via telephone or econsult. Once this is done our admin staff will liaise with our CMHW to organize you initial appointment. Please see below for more in depth detail of who they are and what they do.

Dumfries and Galloway Primary Care Mental Health Service

A guide for patients and their families/carers

We are a Primary Care based service offering mental health early intervention within GP surgeries. We are a team of specialist nurses who have in-depth training, experience and understanding of mental health issues.

The Primary Care mental health service aims to promote partnership working with patients and carers. We aim to identify, involve and advise carers.

Support available

We offer mental health assessments, short term therapy and signposting for individuals aged eighteen and over who may be having difficulties with:-

· Low mood / Depression

· Anxiety/Health anxiety

· Stress

· Life adjustments

Accessing the service

You can access the service via your GP Practice; a member of staff will discuss this with you first. There is no self referral option at present.

What happens next?

You may be contacted by telephone to arrange an appointment or your GP practice may schedule this for you. At present due to Covid-19, the service is mainly offering telephone appointments. The use of NHS near me for Video consultations is also an option.

Your first appointment will take place via telephone. If you require a full mental health assessment, this will last approximately 30-45 minutes. At this appointment we will discuss any difficulties you may have, identify available treatments/support options and agree any follow up appointments.

Following your first appointment it may be appropriate for us to refer you to another service; this will always be discussed and agreed with you first.

We understand it can feel daunting speaking to someone new about personal issues and that this can be difficult. We encourage you to bring along to your appointments anyone who provides you with support or if it would be helpful, involving family or carers in discussions with mental health staff.

Follow-up appointments

We are a short term service offering appointments usually every two weeks, however this is flexible to suit individual needs. Support is person centered and aims to promote self management of your mental health. When your support is complete we will discuss discharge with you and ensure any follow on referrals or additional support required is in place.

Confidentiality

The therapeutic relationship we have with you is based on having confidence that information is not disclosed without your agreement. We will only discuss information on a need to know basis. Similarly we treat any discussions with your family/carer in confidence.

We will discuss information sharing consent with you at your first appointment and will explain fully the information that we are required to share. As standard procedure following your appointments we will share clinical information with your GP/Nurse. At times we may be required to discuss clinical information with senior nursing and medical staff in the mental health team in order to obtain advice on managing your care.

Service Improvement

We are a new service and would welcome feedback in order for us to continually improve.

To assist with this you may be asked to complete a post support survey. This is completely anonymous, confidential and optional.

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