NHS Bury Talking Therapies support groups and therapy

This type of talking therapy can help with current symptoms of mild to moderate anxiety, depression, and stress. It focuses on practical tools and techniques to help you manage your thoughts, feelings, and behaviours in day-to-day life.

This includes:

• Generalised anxiety disorder (GAD)
• Panic disorder
• Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)
• Mild or moderate depression
• A mild or moderate specific phobia

Low-intensity CBT is usually delivered over a shorter number of sessions by trained psychological wellbeing practitioners. Support may be offered via our workshops, digital therapy or individually, and often includes guided self-help resources. This approach helps you build confidence and develop lasting strategies to support your mental wellbeing.

High-intensity cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) can help you to get an understanding of your current problems and what keeps them going, learn new ways of looking at them and gain new skills to change and overcome them.

It works by helping you to identify and change the patterns of thinking and unhelpful behaviours behind your difficulties, in order to change how you feel. This may involve some discussion over past events that have influenced the way you think about your problems.

Progress requires your commitment, as it involves working on your difficulties together with your therapist.

CBT isn’t just about talking things through; you will also be asked to test out ideas, try out new skills and make changes to progress towards your therapy goals. A vital part of therapy is putting what you have learnt into practice between sessions.

The sessions are tailored to you and your problem and will be agreed with your therapist.

In counselling, depression is primarily considered as an emotional problem. Being overly critical of ourselves, feeling we are worthless and being left with unresolved feelings from difficult relationships can make us feel low and depressed.

Counselling aims to help you get in touch with the feelings underlying your depression, to express these, make sense of them, and develop new ways of looking at yourself and the world around you.

Your counsellor will focus on how you feel and understanding your situation from your point of view.

Sessions will often involve you taking the lead, with help from your counsellor to keep you focused on the therapy goals you have identified at the start of the therapy.

While counselling with our service is a short term treatment, sessions are tailored to you and your problem and will be agreed with your therapist.

Couple therapy for depression is a talking therapy where you and/or your partner is experiencing mild to moderate symptoms of depression.

We can help if you are in a committed relationship, whether or not you live together.

The therapy can be helpful if the relationship is making depression harder to cope with or if involving your partner in treatment might support your recovery.

Many couples face challenges that can affect your mental health, such as:

• problems with communication or feeling emotionally distant
• frequent arguments or conflict
• parenting struggles
• change in circumstances (for example health, employment)
• change in roles within the relationship (for example providing/needing more care)
• alcohol or substance use
• grief or loss
• stress related to money or work

Couple therapy offers a safe and supportive space to explore how these issues may be affecting both your relationship and your mental health. It helps you understand how they influence each other and how you can work together to make things better.

The therapy uses your relationship as a key part of the healing process. By learning new ways to talk and listen to each other, you can build a stronger emotional connection and reduce the impact of depression.

You can refer through our online referral service. You both need to complete a referral, and you will each be assessed individually. To be considered for the therapy, both referrals must be submitted within four weeks of each other.

Receiving a long-term diagnosis and living with persistent symptoms is life changing. It’s normal to experience a range of difficult thoughts and feelings along the way.

We can offer some additional support to help you adjust to your life changes, and live a full, meaningful life.

This includes group and individual therapies to help with:

• Adjusting to life after a diagnosis or treatment
• Feeling sad, hopeless, or anxious
• Worrying about health, the problem progressing, or returning
• Coping with changes to the body after treatment, or if no adequate treatments are not currently available
• Living with or caring for someone with physical health difficulties
• Difficult memories or trauma related to the difficult physical health experience

The first 1001 days, from pregnancy to age two, are important for shaping your baby’s future. Your love, care, and attention help their brain grow and build strong bonds.

How you feel during this time is important too. When we’re struggling with feeling anxious or low a lot of the time, it can be harder to respond to our baby in the way we want to.

It’s okay to ask for help.

Becoming a parent can be overwhelming and may lead to symptoms of anxiety or depression. If you are feeling this way and you are pregnant or have a baby under one, you will be prioritised for treatment. We call this time during pregnancy and until baby is one the ‘perinatal period’ and being ‘prioritised’ means that we will do our best to offer you support as soon as possible.

Having therapy can help you to feel heard and understood. You can start to feel more like yourself again, which will help both you and your baby.

The treatment we offer depends on the severity of your symptoms and the impact those symptoms are having on your life.

Coming to therapy can feel scary, but we will adapt sessions as best as we can to make you feel at ease and to suit your needs. This might mean focusing on your experience of becoming a parent. Or it may mean being more flexible with the location and time of your appointments.

One of the things we offer as a part of low intensity cognitive behavioural therapy, is the wellbeing workshop.

This involves six online workshops held over Microsoft teams, where a range of low-intensity cognitive behavioural therapy strategies are taught to a group by our psychological wellbeing practitioners.

These 90-minute sessions are a fantastic way to learn a variety of coping strategies and how to apply them to your life.

This is a 10-session course, based on acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) which is a type of therapy in the family of cognitive behavioural therapy.

This therapy aims to help you develop the ability to stay open to your throughts and feelings, and still take action towards your goals. It’s about adapting to the challenges of your long-term health condition without getting stuck in rigid thinking or emotional avoidance.

In each session, there will be different ways and approaches to the problem of illness and pain. You will look at the same problem from different angles to gain fresh perspectives.

The group focuses on support for motivation difficulties, activity pacing, worry management, relaxation and sleep, and negative thoughts.

The group has six sessions held online over Microsoft Teams, usually on a Thursday afternoon.

Sessions are one hour each, with an extra 15 minutes at the end for guest speakers from a range of services that you may find beneficial to support your wellbeing further.

This is a six-session group held at Bury United Reformed Church (Tuesday), or Radcliffe United Reformed Church (Monday), from 9am-12:30pm.

This group is run by a physiotherapist and a psychological wellbeing practitioner. It is open to anyone who has struggles with persistent pain and aims to help you build a rewarding life alongside your pain.

Topics covered include education on persistent pain, interventions for worries and negative thoughts, pacing, medication and sleep.

The menopause wellbeing workshop will focus on low-intensity cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) techniques that explores the relationship between our thoughts, emotions, and behaviours.

By employing these techniques, you will learn to effectively manage menopausal symptoms, alleviate anxiety and low mood, and develop resilience during this transitional phase.

The workshop is once a week for 90 minutes, over six weeks, and is run by two psychological wellbeing practitioners.

This six-week course is for parents with babies up to two years old, if you are struggling with mild to moderate anxiety and/or depression. 

It is run by psychological wellbeing practitioners and a health visitor in a local children’s centre.

The group covers topics such as managing stress, anxiety and challenging negative thinking styles. Alongside this, each week our health visitors will discuss the parent and infant relationship and bonding with baby.

Babies are welcome to come along to the group.