How Do CAMHS Help?
At CAMHS we will work together with you to try and find the best kind of help to meet your needs. The first visit to us will help us to learn what kind of support might help. There are several types on intervention that we offer within our CAMHS Service;
Art Therapy
Art Therapy helps young people to express and explore how they feel and what they think through art. This can help young people understand themselves better and lead to positive changes. You don't need to be good at art to benefit from art therapy.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
CBT is a talking therapy that looks at the link between thoughts, feelings and behaviours. It looks to change unhelpful ways of thinking and acting that may lead to young people feeling low in mood or worried. There is a helpful video explaining CBT in the video part of our resources section.
Family Therapy
Understanding a young person as part of the wider family is important in making sense of problems a young person can experience. Family therapy involves working with you and the people that are important to you. In family therapy sessions, you and the people who come with you are encouraged to consider each other’s points of view, experiences and beliefs and find ways to make positive changes that work for everyone involved.
Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (DBT)
DBT is a therapeutic approach for young people who experience trouble managing their emotions, thoughts and behaviours. It involves using mindfulness, managing difficult emotions and distress, developing more positive relationships with those around us as well as better problem solving skills.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
When we have an experience that is particularly frightening or distressing this is called a trauma and can lead to unpleasant memories or emotions. EMDR is a technique we use to help deal with traumatic experiences. It involves reliving traumatic or triggering experiences in brief doses while the therapist directs your eye movements. EMDR is effective because recalling distressing events is often less emotionally upsetting when your attention is diverted. This allows you to be exposed to the memories or thoughts without having a strong psychological response. Over time, this technique is believed to lessen the impact that the memories or thoughts have on you.
Medication
There are times when a young person may need medication to help with how they are feeling. We have 2 doctors in our team, a consultant and a GP who will discuss with you options available and support you to decide on what you wish to do with treatment. Information about medication is available at the HeadMeds site.
Can I change my CAMHS worker?
If you would like to change your CAMHS worker, for whatever reason, you can speak to your current CAMHS worker or another member of staff. We want to hear what you think about coming to CAMHS and speaking about this won’t negatively affect the way you are treated. It will just help us think about how to work best with you.
Moving On From CAMHS
Through the work with CAMHS it is our hope that a young person will get better and no longer need mental health services. There are times when further care is needed into adulthood, past the age of 18 requiring a transition to adult services. When this is the case we will look to support this change with a period of overlap between the 2 services to help ease the change from one to another. The Royal College of Psychiatrists web page has useful information about transitions for young people which can be found here.