Episode Summary
After my recent frustration at not being able to get access to free resources provided by the NHS, they have now given me a password that works. In this episode I give a brief overview of what they’ve given me. There’s some good stuff here…but there’s also a few places where they are falling short. Listen and find out more.
Episode Transcript (Edited)
If you have listened to the recent episodes of this podcast, you’ll know my frustration at the NHS for password protecting resources to help people struggling with their mental wellbeing AND for giving me the wrong password for them!
Well today I got in touch with them and finally got the password. So this post is about what I discovered.
Here’s what I found when I finally accessed the password controlled area:
I know I keep going on about this, but I am shocked this information is not available to the public without having to jump through hoops. It does not make sense to me at all!
The first section of resources in the Self Help Library are a collection of educational course presentations.
There are two courses here, one on low mood and the other on dealing with stress and anxiety. The resources here are the powerpoint presentations for each week of the course (6 in all for each programme).
I downloaded them and had a look and I wasn’t that impressed with them as a stand alone resource. They appear to be the slides used as a trainer prompt for a live face to face session.
It seems the sessions are “psycho- educational” rather then therapeutic. Though why you’d want to educate psychos is beyond me [I have mental health issues so I am allowed to make poor jokes like that!!!]
Seriously though these are sessions designed for education rather than therapy.
I am not sure on the value of providing the slides, though they may serve as a good prompt for you if you have attended the programme. But if you are not used to using powerpoint then I suspect these are pretty much useless. It might have been better to share them as PDFs.
The next part of the resources is a series of self help guides across a range of topics.
These looked more promising. Each was about 20 pages long and appeared to be about applying CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) techniques to the specific wellbeing challenge.
They looked concise and relevant though appeared to be little more than word documents with a logo on the front page.
The next section was a series of Gain Control Of Your Life Workbooks.
I was very impressed with the one I looked at about Depression. It was about 68 pages long, was professionally produced, well laid out and interesting to read. A complete contrast to the CBT documents in the previous section
As I looked at these documents, I was still aghast they should be buried in a site and kept from public consumption.
And finally there was a link to 4 guided meditation audio tracks.
You could play these direct from the website, or you could download the mp3 tracks to play on your own device (though beware, it is nearly 0.5 GB!).
So overall, these resources look promising.
I still do not understand why they are password protected and I am tempted to share them any way… The Jury’s still out on that decision.
