All of us at some stage in our lives may suffer from emotional or relationship difficulties and may benefit from therapeutic help, such as counselling, to overcome a temporary crisis.
Counselling is a positive process, which is often associated with times of personal crisis. It may involve talking about painful parts of your life. Counselling should help you to clarify the issues about which you are troubled. This will involve you in exploring those issues in private with someone who is trained to listen and has no other role in your life. Through this confidential process, your counsellor will be seeking to enable you to clarify your thoughts and feelings.
Counselling and psychotherapy can be helpful for a wide range of difficulties such as:
- depression
- relationship problems
- stress
- anxiety/panic attacks
- low self-esteem
- eating problems
- sexual problems
- bereavement and loss
- trauma resulting from accident, assault or abuse
Although we do not offer a counselling service directly, the links below will enable you to locate a wide range of agencies who can help. Many of these specialise in specific areas of support - for example, bereavement or support to family crisis or for particular minority groups.
Leeds Crisis Centre : 3, Spring Road, Leeds LS6 1AD Telephone : 0113 275 5898 Minicom : 0113 274 8880.
This is a free and confidential counselling support centre for people who are finding it difficult to cope at a stressful time in their life. Open every day of the year Mon-Fri 10:00 am - 9:30 pm, Sat-Sun 11:00 am - 7:00 pm. The service covers all of Leeds and is wheelchair accessible, British sign language, access to interpreters and there is a crèche. There is no age limit but it is not a specialist centre for children under 16. You can be referred through your GP or mental heath services or ring them up yourself.
You can find other agencies in the Leeds mental health directory which is available as an on-line database. Search for 'counselling' on the Leeds information for mental health web site linked from this page.