Psychological therapies working in physical health

We support people who have physical health conditions. For example:

• Diabetes
• Cancer
• Lung conditions (e.g. Asthma, COPD)
• Heart conditions 
• Chronic Pain (e.g. Fibromyalgia, Arthritis)
• Stomach conditions (e.g. Crohn’s, IBD, IBS).

Physical health conditions can affect people in different ways. You may:

• find you feel fed up since you started to feel unwell.
• be struggling to come to terms with changes in your health.
• have symptoms that doctors have not been able to help.
• feel worried, panicky, or have lots of thoughts about the illness
• have lost energy and get up and go
• find it hard to attend appointments
• find it hard to follow advice from doctors

We offer one to one psychological assessment and therapy. Psychology can help you get best out of life with your health problem. It can begin to help you improve your mood and the ways you cope.
 

Our team has 

• Clinical psychologists
• Health psychologists
• Cognitive behavioural therapists
• Admin staff
• Trainee psychologists

We work with your health care team to help you improve your wellbeing. Our service offers psychological therapies such as:

• Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
• Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
• Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT)
• Eye Movement Desensitisation Reprocessing (EMDR)
• And more

We try to match the best type of therapy to you. We base this on your goals and research.  
 

We will offer you an assessment appointment. You can choose whether the appointment is:

• over the phone
• or in person at Birch Hill Hospital. 

We will ask about your health problems. We will ask about the effects they have on you and your life. 

We can offer you more appointments if we need extra time.  

We will then decide together if therapy in our service would be helpful. Our service focuses on supporting people with physical health problems. Sometimes other services might be better able to help you. We will help to refer you to the right team for you.

If therapy with our service is the right option for you there will be a wait before you start therapy.
 

We support people:

• aged over 16 years
• who live with a physical health condition. 

Only medical consultants can refer to our service. These consultants must work at: 

• Fairfield General Hospital (Northern Care Alliance)
• Rochdale Infirmary (Northern Care Alliance)
• Royal Oldham Hospital (Northern Care Alliance),
• North Manchester General Hospital (Manchester Foundation Trust).

We do not accept self-referrals or referrals from GPs or other professionals.

We are not a crisis service. We cannot accept referrals for people who may need urgent mental health support. These referrals should be directed to the correct crisis services.
 

Directions for car

• Type in Birch Hill Hospital (Post Code OL12 9QB) into your Sat Nav or Google Maps. 
• Once you have arrived at Birch Hill Hospital, follow the signs for Psychological Therapies Services.

Car parking is free, but can be busy. There is local on street parking a short walk away if no parking is available. 

• We have e-vehicle chargers. To use these, download the Mer Connect UK app. You can either register or pay-as-you-go.