Mental Health

The theme for Mental Health Awareness Week this year was ‘movement’, with the message that we should all be moving more in order to improve our physical and mental wellbeing. We worked with  County Durham Sport to support NHS Durham & Darlington Talking Therapies with this work, so that patients accessing their service are able to take advantage of the compelling benefits of physical activity, alongside their existing menu of high quality, evidence-based psychological therapies.

This theme of moving more for your mental health ties in perfectly with their Physical Activity Scheme (PAS), which launched in July 2023. As they approach the 1 year anniversary of this innovative scheme, they want to celebrate some of the achievements of the PAS over the past year; as well as renewing their focus and commitment to integrating the assessment (of baseline levels), championing of and signposting to physical activity opportunities into their daily psychotherapeutic practice. Some of these achievements include:

• Opting hundreds of patients into their PAS, providing them with automated access to the NHS’ Online Fitness Studio following their initial assessment with the service, so that they can start their journey to improved physical and mental wellbeing, whilst waiting for their formal psychological therapy to start.
• Establishing strong working partnerships with County Durham Sport and Tees Valley Sport to ensure that we are reducing health and wealth inequalities in accessing physical activity, county-wide.
• Developing a live ‘Physical Activity Scheme – Directory of Resources’ that enable them to provide bespoke signposting to online and local/in-person physical activity opportunities, that are no-to-nominal cost.
• Providing workforce-wide CPD opportunities for clinicians via ‘Physical Activity Clinical Champion’ training, in partnership with Sheffield Hallam University’s Advanced Wellbeing Research Centre.
• Building a team of almost 40 PAS Champions across the service, from various localities and modalities of therapy.
• Receiving acclaim from several other NHS Talking Therapies services, who have expressed an interest in replicating their PAS.
• TEWV’s Communications Team running a feature on our PAS across their social media and online platforms, as an area of outstanding practice, to coincide with Mental Health Awareness Week

Senior Psychological Therapist & Physical Activity Scheme Lead, Dominic Mossa, said: “We’re really proud of what we’ve managed to achieve over the past year since the launch of our PAS, including the way in which all of our clinicians have embraced this new way of working. Patients accessing our service are now able to take advantage of the compelling benefits of physical activity, alongside our existing menu of high quality, evidence-based psychological therapies. We’re grateful to our partners County Durham Sport and Tees Valley Sport for supporting us with this work. Mental Health Awareness week, and it’s theme of ‘Movement’, provides us with the perfect opportunity to renew our commitment to promoting physical activity to all of our patients, as one of the most clinically effective, and accessible, antidepressant and anxiolytic interventions going”.

Find out more about Mental Health Awareness Week here.