I lead a team of cognitive behaviour therapists that specialise in Obsessive Compulsive and related disorders at the Centre for Anxiety Disorders and Trauma at the Maudsley Hospital (pictured above) and the Anxiety Disorders Residential Unit at the Bethlem Royal Hospital.

There are various referral routes to the service, which depend on your GP’s registered address. For local areas (Lambeth, Lewisham, Southwark) we can receive a referral from the IAPT - Increasing Access to Psychological Services service after they have screened you.

However, the majority of NHS referrals from the rest of the UK must come to us via your local Community Mental Health team (CMHT). This may be your consultant psychiatrist or psychologist. This enables us to obtain authorisation to offer you an assessment and treatment. In certain cases, once we have received the referral we have to approach your local primary care trust on an individual basis to request funding to offer you our service.

Once we have received the referral for an assessment, we will write to you and the referrer to advise you that you have been placed on our waiting list. We will write to you again in due course inviting you to contact the Centre so that we can offer you a choice of appointment dates. Specialist services such as ours may have a waiting list, but we do endeavour to offer you a choice of appointment within 13 weeks of the date of the authorised referral. You are likely to be assessed by a member of my team, who will discuss the outcome of the assessment with me and the rest of the team.

Assessment:

Once you have accepted an appointment you will be sent out some rather lengthy, but very important questionnaires covering different aspects of your problem. It is essential that you complete these prior to the assessment and bring them with you. You will also of course receive a map and directions to the Maudsley or the Bethlem Royal Hospital. We do expect that if for any reason you are unable to attend on the day you let us know, preferably in advance. If you miss the appointment, but require another, there may be a lengthy delay as you will go back to the end of the list.

When you come for the assessment appointment this is a rather tiring and lengthy process and usually takes about 2 hours. Sometimes it can take longer in which case we may need to ask you to come back. You will be asked very detailed questions about your problems. It is important that we get a very clear understanding of your problems in order to establish what kind of help you may need. We prefer to video or audiotape our assessments, which is good practice as it means we can be sure we all carry out our assessments to a high standard. It also means that other members of the team can be involved in discussion about your care. However a video or audiotape can only be done with your consent.

We will not make a decision about what is the best way to proceed on the day. We will consider your case and discuss it with the team, and aim to let you know within a couple of weeks.

We will write back to your referrer after we have completed the assessment and made decisions about your care. We have a policy whereby if you wish to be copied in on letters we are happy to do so with your signed consent.

Treatment

If we feel we are able to help you with your problems there is normally a wait of 1-3 months before we are able to start your therapy (either as an out-patient or at the residential unit). This is due to the high national demand for this service.

We would offer suggestions to your referrers about management of your care in the meantime, if this is appropriate.

If, at assessment, we do not feel we are able to help you then we tell you the reasons for this and make suggestions as to what would seem more helpful ways for you to proceed towards getting help with your problems.

Written referrals can be made to me: