Mental Health Service for Older People Clinical Psychology

What does our service do?

Clinical psychologists work with the multidisciplinary community mental health teams. We make specialist neuropsychology assessments of memory, thinking and reasoning problems, helping our colleagues where there is uncertainty about diagnosing dementia.

We work with a range of psychological approaches, such as cognitive behavioural therapy and other ‘talking therapies’ to help recovery in depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, phobias, and relationship and bereavement problems. We can help with pain management and adjustment to chronic illnesses. Our aim is to reduce psychological distress and enhance wellbeing. This may be by working with patients directly, or by offering advice and supervision to other staff or carers.

How does our service work?

There are five clinical psychologists working with the older persons mental health service with patients referred from Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland. We make home visits and sometimes see patients at our bases. The nature of our therapeutic work and assessments means that our appointments are each usually at least an hour long, and we often see patients for therapy on a weekly or fortnightly basis for 10 – 20 sessions, sometimes longer.

We will write to offer an appointment. The first session is a conversation so that we can understand the problem from the patient’s point of view and decide what we can offer. It is an opportunity for us to answer any questions about therapy or about the assessment process if the problem is about memory. If agreed, we make a further appointment and assessment or therapy continues. A patient may also be seeing their psychiatrist or GP for medication, or be seeing another member of the community mental health team.

We provide services in: