Newcastle Cognitive and Behavioural Therapies (CBT) Centre – Patient Information Leaflet

We hope this booklet will provide you with information that you will find useful when attending the Newcastle Cognitive and Behavioural Therapies Centre. If you are not sure about anything in this leaflet please ask a member of staff.

The Newcastle Cognitive and Behavioural Therapies Centre (Newcastle CBT Centre) provides an expert Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) consultation service to people in the Northern Region of England.

We usually work with people who have struggled to benefit from CBT provided at other locations or have complex needs that may not be met in other services. This is primarily done on a one-to-one basis, but we also offer supplementary group work which may be appropriate for different people at different times in their therapy.

Our CBT is adapted to meet the individual needs of our patients.

CBT is a form of psychotherapy (talking therapy) used for a range of emotional problems and psychological disorders. It aims to help you understand how your thinking patterns may be affecting your feelings and your behaviour. You may have begun to give up on things, avoid things or be worrying a lot. The therapy aims to help you understand how you might make changes in these thinking patterns, and therefore help you overcome the distress they are causing you.

CBT has been shown to be an effective treatment for many anxiety based and mood related problems including:

• depression
• trauma
• anxiety
• eating problems
• panic
• relationship problems
• sleeping difficulties

You and your therapist will work together as a team to understand your difficulties and discover ways of overcoming them. CBT is an active therapy. This means that you will be expected to work on your difficulties outside the therapy sessions. This can involve keeping written records, trying out new methods of coping, doing some reading and so on. This work will be planned with you to make sure that it is relevant to you, your difficulties, and your circumstances.

Along with CBT, the service provides other effective treatments, such as Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR for short). We can provide you with more information about these treatments.

As per NHS standards, it is our aim to arrange an assessment appointment within eight to twelve weeks of receiving your referral. At this appointment the therapist will explain more about CBT and will also want to know enough about your problems to decide whether CBT is a suitable way forward.

If you and the therapist decide that CBT is a suitable treatment for your problems, the different treatment options will be discussed with you. It is important to bear in mind that you will have a further wait for treatment after this assessment.

We will write to you to let you know the outcome of the assessment sessions and will also inform the Doctor (or other health professional) who initially referred you. You are entitled to see a copy of that letter and any further correspondence.

Your therapist will usually discuss the findings from your assessment with other members of the team. If, together, you and your therapist decide cognitive therapy is not the right choice for you at this time, the therapist will write back to the clinician who referred you. You can then discuss further treatment options with that clinician or your GP. Rarely, it happens that patients disagree with the conclusion of the therapy team, particularly if it is that therapy at the CBT Centre is not the best way forward at this time. You are entitled to a detailed explanation of this conclusion if this is the case.

An important advantage of CBT is that it is a short-term therapy. If it is decided that CBT could be useful for you, at your first treatment appointment, you and your therapist will agree an initial course of between five and ten sessions. You and your therapist can then review progress and additional sessions can be offered if agreed they would be helpful.

Each individual session lasts approximately one hour and you will be asked to attend weekly or fortnightly. Some individual and group sessions may be longer.

The therapies we offer are structured and at the start of your therapy we will help you to set practical goals. At the beginning of a session, you will work with your therapist to decide upon an agenda for that session, i.e. what you want to discuss and what kind of outcomes you would like. Your therapist will often help you work out what you will do between sessions once you have reached those outcomes.

• Quality assurance
The Newcastle CBT Centre is a specialist service with expert practitioners in CBT. We routinely monitor and evaluate the efficiency and quality of our services in an effort to achieve excellence in what we do. Therefore, your feedback is important to us. In addition to this, we strive to keep up to date with current research in order to provide evidence-based practice.

In 2015 we looked at outcomes for people who had been through our service. We found that 57% of the people we saw met all their goals for therapy, and that the effect of the package of care they received for their symptoms was roughly equivalent to the effect of medication under clinical trial conditions

Whilst 43% don’t reach all their goals, many will have reached some of their goals. In 2009, 2010 and 2015, satisfaction surveys showed that our patients find our staff friendly, pleasant and respectful and the therapists caring, understanding and professional. In 2019 we successfully applied for accreditation through the APPTS programme. APPTS is the Accreditation Programme for Psychological Therapies Services, launched as a collaboration between The Royal College of Psychiatrists’ Centre for Quality Improvement (CCQI) and the British Psychological Society. Their goal is to identify and formally recognise services that have high standards, good practice, and to support continuous quality improvement.

• Qualifications and Training of therapists
Our therapists come from a variety of different training backgrounds. All therapists will have at least their professional training (i.e. as a Clinical Psychologist, Psychiatrist, Nurse, etc) as well as a significant degree of postgraduate training in CBT, plus several years of supervised practice and specialist experience in certain areas of mental health practice (e.g. depression, anxiety). They are all eligible for accreditation with the British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies (BABCP) which regulates the practice of CBT in the UK.

• Confidentiality boundaries
As part of our assessment process, and to help us plan your care, whilst in treatment, we need to gather information. It is sometimes also necessary to share information about you with other people involved in your care and appropriate colleagues within this team. The purpose of this is to ensure that we are able to make the most beneficial decisions about your care. At the point of assessment and again if you begin treatment with us, you will be asked to consent to this. Under normal circumstances we will not share information about you without your consent.

Another way in which your case will at times be discussed is with appropriate colleagues within the team for the purpose of supervision. All of our therapists are supervised. This is to ensure high professional standards are continually being met. Again, we will ask your consent for this.

Any information gathered will be kept in your Health Record (written or computerised). We have a duty to keep information about you private and confidential. As such, your Health Record will be required to be stored safely and securely. Also, we will only seek or share information that will be relevant to your assessment and helpful in planning your care. Where we seek or share information, those colleagues will be bound by the same rules of confidentiality.

• Exception to the Rule
There are certain circumstances when it does become necessary to share information without your consent, in accordance with Trust policy, common law obligations and the Data Protection Act (2018). Where there is a concern that you, a child or young person or other person are at risk of harm we are legally bound to share this with other appropriate professionals and this can be done without your consent. If possible, however, we would strive to discuss this with you first of all. The information shared will be kept to the minimum necessary and will be handled under the terms of the NHS Confidentiality Code of Practice.

• High standards of professional conduct
All our therapists act according to professional codes of conduct. You should be assured that your therapist will always be sensitive, respectful and non-judgemental.

The next section describes how our service operates and what will be required from you during therapy. It is important that you read this carefully so that you are fully informed about what to expect.

• Questionnaires
During the course of your therapy you will be asked to complete a number of short questionnaires. This is important in helping you and your therapist track your progress during the course of therapy. If you are having trouble completing the questionnaires then please discuss this with your therapist.
• Self Help
You will want to do assignments between sessions to help you build upon what you get from the therapy sessions and practice the techniques you learn in therapy. Assignments will vary according to goals for therapy, the agenda items covered and the stage of therapy you are at. CBT involves a certain amount of experimentation and exploration. A variety of ideas and techniques will be explored until an effective one is found which works best for you.

• Recording/Monitoring of Sessions
Recorded sessions (audio or video) are sometimes used by clients and therapists alike as they are a helpful way of re-visiting the many issues that arise during a session. They are sometimes used by your therapist within their supervision to ensure that your therapist’s practice is monitored and to ensure our high standards of care.

Audio recordings may sometimes be used for homework tasks. The reasons for this will be explained to you and you will be asked to consent to this. Your consent will be needed for the recording of sessions to be made. As with your Health Record, any recording made will be stored securely in accordance with the Data Protection Act (2018). Also, please be aware that you are entitled to request a copy of these recordings. You may withdraw your consent at any point.

Your treatment is not affected if you do not consent to being recorded.

If you need to cancel an appointment, you must give at least 24 hours notice where possible. This is so that your therapist can arrange to see another patient in that time, and to allow us to arrange a further appointment for you. Please see contact details at the end of this leaflet.

If you do not inform us of a cancellation after 2 occasions, then you may be discharged from the service and will need to be re-referred (if you wish to continue with CBT).

If you would like an interpreter, this can be arranged prior to your appointment.

Newcastle Cognitive and Behavioural Therapies Centre is based in Benfield House, Walkergate Park, Newcastle. There is good public transport and car parking in the area.

Car parking is available at Walkergate Park Hospital, charges apply. There are two disabled parking bays. Disabled visitors should contact centre staff for advice regarding access.
Contact Traveline: Tel: 0871 200 22 33
Website: www.traveline.info/

If you want to make a comment, suggestion, compliment or complaint you can:
• talk to the people directly involved in your care
• ask a member of staff for a feedback form, or complete a form on the Trust website www.cntw.nhs.uk (click on the ‘Contact Us’ tab)
• telephone the Complaints Department 0191 245 6672
• email [email protected] Please note that information sent to the Trust via email is sent at your own risk
• We are always looking at ways to improve services. Your feedback allows us to monitor the quality of our services and act upon issues that you bring to our attention.
You can provide feedback in the following ways:
– the quickest way for you to do this is to complete our short online survey at www.cntw.nhs.uk/poy
– complete a Points of You survey, available from staff.

Your local GP surgery should be able to provide self-help or information leaflets about CBT. Please contact us if you would like a list of related reading materials or if you would like us to send you any further information. In the meantime, if you have access to the internet, here are some useful websites:

• Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust www.cntw.nhs.uk
• Self help guides, Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust www.cntw.nhs.uk/selfhelp
• British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapists www.BABCP.com
• Royal College of Psychiatrists www.rcpsych.ac.uk
• Beating the Blues – a computerised CBT programme for depression and anxiety www.beatingtheblues.co.uk
• Fear Fighter – a computerised CBT programme for panic and phobias treatment www.fearfighter.com
• National Institute for Health and Care Excellence www.nice.org.uk
http://www.nice.org.uk/nicemedia/live/10966/29782/29782.pdf (information on PTSD and its treatments).
• Mind factsheets www.mind.org.uk

• Launchpad
Anderson House, Market Street, Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 6XA
www.launchpadncl.org.uk
Tel: 0191 233 0382
A local service user led group.

• Recovery College Collective (Re-Co-Co)
Anderson House, Market Street, Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 6XA
www.recoverycoco.com
Email: [email protected]
Tel: 0191 261 09488

• OCD Support Group
Tel: 0191 477 8310 or 0191 226 8776
Email: [email protected]
Open to anyone over the age of 18 who has OCD or suffers from an OC spectrum disorder such as compulsive skin picking or BDD (Body Dysmorphic Disorder). The group meets every Monday 6pm – 9pm (except Bank Holidays) at Molineux Street NHS Centre, Molineux Street, Heaton Park Road (Shields Road end), Byker, NE6 1SG.

• If you need urgent help with your mental health or learning disability, you can get in touch with the Trust’s Crisis team or Initial Response services
– Gateshead and Newcastle
Tel: 0191 814 8899 or Freephone 0800 652 2863
For Deaf service users please text 07919 228 548 and a member of the team will respond as soon as possible.
– South Tyneside and Sunderland
Tel: 0303 123 1145 or freephone 0800 652 2867
For Deaf service users please text 07889 036 280 and a member of the team will respond as soon as possible.
– North Tyneside and Northumberland
Tel: 0303 123 1146 or freephone 0800 652 2861
For Deaf service users please text 07887 625 277 and a member of the team will respond as soon as possible.
– Cumbria
Tel: 0300 123 9015 or freephone 0800 652 2865
• MIND infoline 0300 123 3393 (9am-6pm, Monday to Friday)

• SANEline 0300 304 7000 (4.30pm-10.30pm, every day)

• Rethink Mental illness Advice Line 0300 5000 927 (9.30am-4pm, Monday to Friday)

We are aware that coming for therapy can be a daunting and confusing experience for some people. Therefore, if you have any questions at all about this leaflet or about anything to do with the service, the NHS, mental health issues, or your therapy, then please use this leaflet to write them down.

You can then bring this leaflet with you to your appointment and discuss any queries with your therapist, or if there is anything you would like to know beforehand then please contact the Centre on
0191 287 6100 and we will do our best to help.

Specialist Centre for Psychological Therapies
Newcastle Cognitive and Behavioural Therapies Centre
Benfield House, Walkergate Park, Benfield Road, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 4PF
Telephone: 0191 287 6100– Monday to Friday 9am-5pm, or you can leave a message on our answering machine outside of these hours.
Email: [email protected]

Please note that information sent to the Trust via email is sent at your own risk, particularly if the information is being sent unsecured and/or from a shared computer.

• Roth A.,and Fonagy P. (2005) What Works for Whom: A critical review of psychotherapy research. Second Edition. The Guildford Press, London.
• Horton, K., Salkovskis, P.M., Kirk, J., Clark, D. (2006)
• Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Psychiatric problems. Oxford Medical Publications
• Williams C J & Garland A (2002). A cognitive-behavioural therapy assessment model for use in everyday clinical practice, Advances in Psychiatric Treatment, 8: 172-179.
apt.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/full/8/5/377
• NICE (2007) CG22: Anxiety: management of anxiety (panic disorder, with or without agoraphobia, and generalised anxiety disorder) in adults in primary, secondary and community care. www.guidance.nice.org.uk/CG22
• NICE guide (2010) Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for the management of common mental health problems. www.nice.org.uk/usingguidance/commissioningguides/
cognitivebehaviouraltherapyservice/cbt.jsp
 

Further information about the content, reference sources or production of this leaflet can be obtained from the Patient Information Centre. If you would like to tell us what you think about this leaflet please get in touch.

This information can be made available in a range of formats on request (eg Braille, audio, larger print, easy read, BSL or other languages). Please contact the Patient Information Centre Tel: 0191 246 7288

Published by the Patient Information Centre
2022 Copyright, Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust
Ref, PIC/669/0322 March 2022 V7
www.cntw.nhs.uk Tel: 0191 246 7288
Review date 2025