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Even in our enlightened society there is still a stigma about psychiatry. Suffering the symptoms of a psychiatric illness is difficult enough. Taking your first steps to making an appointment with a psychiatrist can be tough.

Well, you’ve got this far and one thing is certain: you are not alone.

We live such fast paced lives these days; pressure and stress are all around us. Everyone reacts to situations, problems and challenges differently. Some people cope better than others. Each of my patients is a unique individual, so treatment type and length depends on you and your circumstances.

I’m not here to judge or pigeon-hole you. My role is to support and help you back to a healthy life.

However, there are things that are common to all psychiatric disorders. Here is a list of conditions. Take a look and see if any of the definitions describe how you are feeling.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
PTSD can occur if you have experienced or witnessed life-threatening events.

These might be military combat, natural disasters, terrorist incidents, serious accidents or violent personal assaults like rape.

Most survivors of trauma tend to improve during the first six to nine months after the incident, however after that time there is a tendency for the symptoms to persist and although the sufferers make strenuous efforts to return to normal, the symptoms do not improve and indeed in some cases, the symptoms actually become more pronounced and interfere to a greater extent with day to day life.

Do you relive your experience through nightmares and flashbacks? Do you have difficulty sleeping? Do you feel detached? If you do, you could be suffering from PTSD. Untreated these symptoms can become debilitating.

Treatment both with medication and psychotherapy, particularly using EMDR, Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing can achieve considerable improvement in symptoms.

Alcoholism
Drinking can be a short term fix that creates a long term problem.

Once you have reached the dependency stage, stopping suddenly will create severe withdrawal symptoms.

Alcoholism doesn’t just affect the sufferer. The effects of living with an alcoholic can have catastrophic effects. If you are the partner, relative or friend of an alcoholic, I can help you to develop ways to cope. You don’t need to be referred by a GP either.

Stress in the workplace
Whether it’s caused by a bullying boss, difficult colleagues or an impossible workload, the result is the same. Going into work each day becomes a real struggle.

Panic Attacks
A panic attack is a sudden rush of overwhelming fear. It happens often without warning and for no obvious reason.

A sense of unreality, an urge to escape, feelings of impending doom or fear of dying are common symptoms.

Without treatment panic attacks often result in depression or the use of substances, for example, alcohol to relieve symptoms.

Depression
Clinical depression often has as many physical symptoms as mental. These are caused by the feelings or emotions that are the symptoms of depression.

Do any of the following sound familiar to you?

You feel:
• miserable and sad;
• exhausted a lot of the time and have no energy;
• like a failure and/or feel guilty a lot of the time;
• very anxious sometimes;
• a burden to others;
• irritable or angry more than usual;
• you have no confidence
• that life is unfair;
• that life has/is 'passing you by; and
• even the smallest tasks are often impossible.

• You don't enjoy things like you used to. This could be sex or food. Alternatively you might 'comfort eat' to excess.
• You don't want to see people or are scared to be left alone. Social activity may feel hard or impossible.
• Thinking clearly is difficult.
• You sometimes feel that life isn't worth living.
• You can see no future. There is a loss of hope. You feel all you've ever done is make mistakes and that's all that you ever will do.
• You spend a lot of time thinking about what has gone wrong, what will go wrong.
• You are very self-critical. You may also feel guilty sometimes about being critical of others.
• You have difficulty sleeping or wake up very early in the morning and can't sleep again. You seem to dream all night long and sometimes have disturbing dreams.
• You may have physical aches and pains which appear to have no physical cause, such as back pain.