Therapy, counselling and talking about mental health

If there’s one good thing that’s come out of the past few years, it’s that as a society we’re far more open to talking about our mental health.

Talking about your problems can help you understand, address, and get them off your chest, so it’s no coincidence that many professional mental health services centre around talking. Different talking therapies will suit different people, but they all involve talking to a trained therapist to try and resolve or improve any issues you might be going through.

Anxiety, depression and stress are just some of the mental health issues that therapy can help with. It might sound scary or intimidating at first, but talking to someone can really help. And remember, if you’re not comfortable meeting face to face you’ll often have the option of doing it over the phone or a web call.

Let’s take a look at some of the talking therapies out there, all of which are covered under Aviva health insurance.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)

CBT is a common form of therapy that combines two things. Cognitive therapy looks at what you think, while behaviour therapy looks at what you do.  

The aim of CBT is to help you explore and change how you think about your life. This can help you understand and tackle negative thoughts and feelings, and free yourself from unhelpful patterns of behaviour ^{Footnote [1]}. CBT deals with current problems, it doesn’t delve into issues from your past.

It can be used to treat many things, including:

• depression
• anxiety 
• obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)
• post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)

The length of CBT treatment can vary, but you’ll usually meet your therapist for 30 to 60 minutes, once every 1 to 2 weeks. The number of sessions you have will depend on how you and your therapist feel the treatment’s going.

Sessions are collaborative with your therapist and can involve:

• breaking down your thoughts, feelings and actions into small, manageable parts.
• exploring these parts and working out how to change the negative ones.
• practicing these changes in real life or keeping a record of how they’re working for you, sort of like ‘homework’ between sessions.

Psychodynamic therapy

When therapy comes to mind you might picture a leather couch, a wood-panelled room, and questions about your ‘childhood’ – the sort of therapy you see in the movies. If that is the case, chances are you’re thinking of psychodynamic therapy.

Psychodynamic therapy looks at how childhood experiences and unconscious thoughts affect your thinking, feelings, relationships, and behaviour today ^{Footnote [2]}. You could call it ‘getting to the root of the problem’, though that root may not be obvious until you open up and talk about yourself.

The sessions can be useful for things like anxiety and depression, and will usually be up to an hour one-on-one with a trained therapist ^{Footnote [3]}. You’ll need to talk freely and openly about subjects that could be uncomfortable, such as your relationship with your parents, so it’s important to be open-minded and trusting with your therapist.  The length of treatment will likely depend on how you respond to it.

Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy

With mental health and wellbeing increasingly under the spotlight in recent years, it’s highly likely you’ll have heard of mindfulness, a technique that uses meditation and breathing exercises to ground you in the present moment and take your mind away from other thoughts.

However, mindfulness is far from a health fad. Studies have shown that mindfulness can help to manage things like depression, anxiety, and stress ^{Footnote [4]}. As a result, mindfulness combined with CBT can now be recommended as a treatment, and one that is covered by Aviva’s health insurance.

Counselling

Sometimes “counselling” is used as a general term for talking therapies, but counselling is actually a specific type of therapy that helps people deal with emotional issues.

Paul Murray, Mental Health Nurse at Aviva says: "Counselling is a supportive treatment. It’s almost like having a best friend sat with you, somebody who can bring the best out of you. It’s far less ‘invasive’ than therapy, which looks more closely at understanding your thoughts. Counselling is far more focused on supporting you through whatever troubles you’re going through”.

Counselling can help with lots of things, but usually deals with more specific problems such as:

• stress
• bereavement
• difficult life events

Sessions usually last up to an hour and the length of treatment will depend on how you respond to it.