Dr Andrew Charalambous

I am a clinical psychologist offering personalised, time-limited psychological therapy. I am currently a senior clinical psychologist within adult secondary care mental health services with the NHS. I specialise in adult mental health, with a focus on trauma, depression, interpersonal and relational difficulties, as well as anxiety-related difficulties including social anxiety, phobias, OCD, panic and hypervigilance. My aim is to use your goals to anchor the therapy, as well as help reduce psychological distress and promote a greater sense of well-being. 

What I offer

My aim is to provide you with psychological therapy in line with the most recent and robust research, but to make sure this is tailored to suit your individual needs. The type of therapy I offer is time-limited, which means that I aim for us to work together within a fixed number of sessions in order to reach your goals. This may mean I will typically only offer somewhere between 16 and 24 sessions, however this can be flexible depending on your own individual needs. For example, some people may just be looking for very short-term approaches to difficulties, and some people may require additional support. This can be discussed in the assessment so that this can be advised in line with current evidence-based recommendations so that treatment can be as effective as possible. Typical approaches I offer include Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Cognitive Analytic Therapy (CAT), Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing therapy (EMDR) and Compassion Focussed Therapy (CFT), amongst others.

First steps

Embarking on therapy can be scary. It can often feel overwhelming choosing what 'type' of therapy to go with, or which therapist. The most important thing is that you feel safe and as comfortable as possible in the therapy room. I always offer a free initial telephone consultation for 15 minutes to help both of us decide whether it would be suitable for us to work together. Feel free to drop me an email and we can arrange a time to call!

After an initial phone call, I typically recommend having an initial assessment (for up to 90 minutes) at the beginning of therapy, in order to assess your needs and devise a treatment plan for what therapy would look like. Therapy can also be reviewed on a regular basis, in which we can assess what is going well, and if any modifications to the therapeutic approach would be appropriate.

I offer a free 15 minute telephone call to get to know each other a little and answer any questions you may have about the service that I offer. If you send me an email we can arrange a convenient time that suits both of us to have this initial conversation.

I typically offer an initial assessment, for up to 90 minutes, in order to attempt to conceptualise the difficulties that you are experiencing and form a preliminary plan. During the assessment we can decide together how many sessions would be appropriate, and we can review this during the course of therapy. This may typically be 16-24 sessions, but this can be flexible depending on your needs. 

I currently work full-time within the NHS, so at present I only offer in-person therapy on Tuesday evenings and Saturdays at a local clinic in Brentwood, Essex.