Helen Bailey
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This professional is available for new clients.
This professional is available for new clients.
About me
I am a UKCP registered Psychodynamic Psychotherapist and am experienced working with adults and young people over 18 with a wide range of difficulties including depression, anxiety, relationship difficulties, bereavement and other significant life changes.
You can make contact by phone or email. From that starting point we may agree to set up initial exploratory sessions. Our initial exploration will usually take place over one or two 50 minutes meetings: After obtaining brief contact information I will ask for details about your current difficulties and also for background regarding your present family, relationship, and work situations. I may also ask you for memories and impressions of your life growing up and seek some overall understanding of the life events that have brought you to this point in your life.
These initial meetings are about our sharing an understanding of your difficulties so that we may consider together whether and in what way I can help; or whether some other kind of treatment might seem more appropriate. If you are seeking counselling we may agree an expected duration for our work; alternatively a more open-ended arrangement is possible. Psychotherapy in particular is crucially a relationship between therapist and client and these meetings are an important opportunity for you to decide if you feel ours could be a therapeutic relationship that might work for you.
Training, qualifications & experience
Some years ago, working with the Citizens Advice Bureau and subsequently as an Independent Mental Health Advocate, I developed a deep interest in people and the struggles that they face. In particular I was struck by how profoundly emotional and psychological distress and confusion could influence the lives people lead. I became increasingly interested in working with people not just on their practical outer world ‘symptoms’ but on possible underlying inner world foundations; foundations that seemed to destine some individuals to repeating patterns of difficulties in their lives. I decided to train as a psychotherapist.
Following successful completion of a Certificate in Psychodynamic Counselling I decided to seek further training and joined the Analytical Psychotherapy training run by the West Midlands Institute of Psychotherapy (WMIP). My choice of Analytical Psychotherapy as the direction in which I wished to develop my practice was influenced by my interest in its emphasis on creativity; the implicit belief that even within the most troubled of individuals there lays the potential and capacity for psychic health and growth.
I left the WMIP training having benefitted from the breadth and depth of its four year seminar programme and from supervision of my clinical work. My training and clinical experience have been assessed by the Forum of Independent Psychotherapists who have awarded me accreditation as a psychodynamic psychotherapist.
In addition to my private practice I have worked for a number of years within an NHS Mental Health Trust working with a variety of patients in long term psychodynamic therapy.
Member organisations
Being registered/accredited with a professional body means an individual must have achieved a substantial level of training and experience approved by their member organisation.
The UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP) is a leading professional body for the education, training and regulation of psychotherapists and psychotherapeutic counsellors. Its register is accredited by the government's Professional Standards Authority.
As part of its commitment to protect the public, it works to improve access to psychotherapy, to support and disseminate research, to improve standards and to respond effectively to complaints against its members.
UKCP standards cover the range of different psychotherapies. Registration is obtained by training or accrediting with one of its member organisations, or by holding a European Certificate in Psychotherapy. Accredited by the Professional Standards Authority.
Accredited register membership
The Accredited Register Scheme was set up in 2013 by the Department of Health (DoH) as a way to recognise organisations that hold voluntary registers which meet certain standards. These standards are set by the Professional Standards Authority (PSA).
This therapist has indicated that they belong to an Accredited Register.
Areas of counselling I deal with
Fees
Additional information
My standard fee is £50 per session; some reduction in fees may be possible depending on individual circumstances.
When I work
I offer weekday session times from 8am to early evening. Sessions are of 50 minutes duration. Typically I see people once a week but this can be altered if we agree it is appropriate.
