Mental Health Awareness Week - Building confidence and coping skills

15 May 25

Community is the focus of this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week.

Some scraps of paper with different words representing coping strategies such as I am capable, paced breathing and intense exercise

Community can mean different things to different people – it may be your family, friends and neighbours, or perhaps it’s work colleagues or health professionals who look after you. Your community is often those people around you who can offer support when times are tough.

Colleagues from HPFT’s Essex Learning Disability Specialist Health Service found that creating a community of service users to support each other with their emotions, has had a really positive impact on their wellbeing.

The team identified how people with learning disabilities don’t always have easy access to Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT), a type of therapy that helps individuals with understanding and accepting difficult feelings, learning skills to manage these feelings and becoming able to make positive changes.

With an increase in referrals to the service for individuals requiring support to cope with complex emotions, the team set up a Coping Skills Group to try and bridge the gap.

The group ran for 10 weeks and although some service users were a little anxious at first and relied on staff for support during the sessions, the group developed a real sense of mutual support. This feeling of community within the group helped to achieve really positive results.

Service users who attended not only gained a foundation in DBT skills but also grew in confidence. As the weeks progressed, group members developed their interpersonal skills and were cheering each other on.

Beth Roberts, Assistant Psychologist, in the Essex Learning Disability Specialist Health Services, said:

“One of the most rewarding sessions focused on positive self-talk and affirmations. Group members shared kind words with each other, and it was really powerful to see what the participants noticed in one another. One service user kept his affirmation, written by another group member, and carried it with him as a reminder to stay calm and positive and remember the nice things people thought about him.”

To reinforce the learning, each service user decorated a personal “coping box,” adding something helpful to it every week. These types of creative activities made the therapy more engaging and helped individuals better understand and apply the skills they were learning.

Beth continued:

“The group has been a great example of what’s possible when people are given access to the right support, in a way that’s right for them. Creating this little community has had such a positive impact and it has been wonderful to see their progress.”

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Mental Health Awareness Week - Building confidence and coping skills