Publish date: 1 November 2023
This National Stress Awareness Day, 2nd November 2023, Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust is sharing advice on workplace stress.
Too much stress can affect our mood, our body and our relationships, especially when it feels out of our control. It can make us feel anxious and irritable, and affect our self-esteem.
Mental health professionals often help people reduce and manage their stress. They can also help people work through other mental health issues that have developed while coping with high levels of stress over a period of time.
AWP Talking Therapies service provide therapies to adults aged 16 and over living in Bath and North East Somerset (BaNES), Swindon and the wider county of Wiltshire (BSW). The service aims to help you manage a range of common mental health problems including anxiety, stress, depression and low mood.
Ways to access Talking Therapy services
For people with depression and anxiety difficulties, there is a range of therapies available. Referrals can be made via health professionals or via self-referral. You can refer yourself directly to an NHS talking therapies service without a referral from a GP.
What does it involve?
All talking therapies involve the patient and therapist, or practitioner, working as a team to understand problems and overcome current difficulties. It offers short term interventions to help achieve identified goals. Therapy involves talking through the current problem and deciding together on practical exercises that might take part inside and outside of sessions. It is an active process, and the therapist or practitioner will regularly check in with the patient to ensure progress.
Talking therapies are provided in different ways, including:
• Using a self-help workbook or guided self-help with a practitioner
• One-to-one video, telephone or in person sessions
• Via a course
Talking with a trusted therapist or doctor about your stress can help you learn how to manage it.
Facts about stress*
• 914,000 workers suffering from work related stress, anxiety and depression.
• Millions around the UK experience stress and it is damaging to our health and wellbeing. For example, at some point in the last year, 74% of us have felt so stressed that we have felt unable to cope.
• 51% of adults who felt stressed reported feeling depressed, and 61% reported feeling anxious.
*figures from MHFA England.
