Organisation Name: Positive Therapy Company Contact name: Nicky Forsythe Job title: Trainer and
therapist email: nicky@positive-therapy.co.uk Telephone contact: 07899 816222
www.positive-therapy.co.uk/phdi/p1.nsf/supppages/4499?opendocument∂=4
Talk for Health is a ‘trained peer support' model for psychological well-being which was developed and trialled by Nicky Forsythe with colleagues, with sponsorship from BT, in 2008. Its purpose is to enable effective empathic encounters between networks of people - reducing stress, building well-being and protecting against mental illness. It is viewed as ‘therapy for the people by the people'. It provides many of the benefits of therapy but without the need for the ongoing expense and dependency relationships of therapy. Please see the above web link for more details. The results of the pilot sponsored by BT in 2008 and a detailed explanation of the rationale are also available on request.
At the moment the programme is run privately and there are no other stakeholders. The trainers works under supervision from a UKCP accredited psychotherapist. Peers who use the principles and learnings of Talk for Health with other programme graduates do so on the basis of mutual benefit.
What have been the benefits for individual service users (and others) accessing your project?
The pilot programme in 2008 demonstrated increases in well-being, amongst all participants, across a variety of measures - using the ORS (Outcome Rating Scale) developed by Scott Miller PhD.
Are you considering any future developments in response to the ‘Personalisation' agenda?
Offering this programme to Local Authorities and PCTs as a psychological well-being initiative which meets many of the preferences that service users themselves have (i.e. peer support rather than professional intervention). It enables people to move from being a ‘receiver' of help to a giver, and therefore is supports recovery and feelings of self efficacy.
Key words - peer support, outcome, well-being, psychological