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FUNDING from the Sure Community Foundation will help people with mental health problems better understand their condition. The organisation has donated £1,500 to cover the cost of specialist training in the UK for a Guernsey mental health nurse working at the Castel Hospital.
FUNDING from the Sure Community Foundation will help people with mental health problems better understand their condition.
The organisation has donated £1,500 to cover the cost of specialist training in the UK for a Guernsey mental health nurse working at the Castel Hospital.
Lucy Fleming is on a 15-week course in cognitive behaviour therapy, which helps patients learn better coping methods and can, in some cases, help a person get back to work more quickly.
Joyce Gaskin, voluntary coordinator for GSF Mental Health Fellowship, which provides bursaries to mental health workers, said donations such as Sure’s were extremely important in providing the mental health service with the correct tools.
‘Mental health is everyone’s business and it can strike at any time with devastating consequences for families and sufferers. Staff at the Castel Hospital work incredibly hard and are very dedicated to improving the lives of people struck by this awful illness. I know it gives them a boost when they hear that charities such as the Sure Community Foundation are getting involved,’ said Ms Gaskin.
‘Cognitive behavior therapy is proven to help the person understand their condition better and manage it. Our philosophy at the GSF Mental Health Fellowship is to help people towards recovery and not rely on medication alone.’
Miss Fleming, 25, whose mother Sue was a senior mental health nurse at the Castel Hospital and is now matron St John’s Residential Home, is completing her training at the Salford Cognitive Therapy Training Centre in Manchester. She is the fourth nurse to be funded by the GSF for cognitive behavior therapy training; the other three all use the CBT approach in their day-to-day work and offer supervision and training to others as well as running therapy groups.
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) guidelines recommend CBT as best practice for many mental health difficulties.
Ms Gaskin said that CBT could be used alongside conventional drug therapy.
‘The continued use of drugs erodes a person’s control over their lives. Cognitive behaviour therapy enables the user to better understand their condition, to learn better methods of coping with issues such as panic attacks and phobias. Therefore it gives back a measure of control over their lives which is empowering and leads to better outcomes,’ she said.
Karen Jagger from the Sure Community Foundation said that funding training such as this would help a cross-section of the community.
‘Mental health problems can affect so many people in terrible ways and we at the foundation hope that by funding this vital training it will help a number of people on the road to recovery,’ she said.
