Psychological Service
The Team
- Dr Adam Saradjian, Team Lead Clinical Psychologist
- Dr Becky Green, Clinical Psychologist
- Dr Sarah Wallis, Clinical Psychologist
- We also have Trainee Clinical Psychologists and Assistant Psychologists working within the service
How can psychology help?
We work with people whose difficulties are related to their HIV status.
Types of difficulties that we can help with include:
- adjusting to your diagnosis and treatment
- feeling low in mood
- worrying a lot of the time
- concerns about how HIV is affecting your relationships
- finding it difficult to take medication
- concerns about your memory and concentration
These are just examples. You may have other concerns.
We use a range of talking therapies to help people understand their current difficulties and find ways to makes changes in their day to day lives. We can also carry out tests to assess difficulties or concerns about memory or concentration. We treat every person as an individual, so the type of support we offer will vary from person to person.
How can I arrange an appointment with a psychologist?
Any doctor or nurse within the HIV service can refer you to the psychology service. We will then contact you as soon as possible to offer you an appointment. If the gender of the psychologist is important to you then please let us know and we will do our best to accommodate you.
Where do appointments take place?
Appointments will normally be offered at the Stonegrove Centre
What happens at the first appointment and what then?
The aim of the first meeting is to gain an understanding of what your current concerns and difficulties are and to consider the impact that HIV is having on your life. As part of this we will ask you to complete some questionnaires about how you are feeling. We will decide together what kind of support would be most useful for you. It may be that another service would be more suitable for your needs. If so, we can help to arrange this for you. The first appointment can last up to an hour and a half.
If we decide together that the HIV Psychology service is the most appropriate one for you, you will be placed on the waiting list for therapy. We will contact you as soon as an appointment becomes available. Some people find that they feel better after one or two sessions. Other people find it helpful to meet regularly for a longer time. We will discuss this with you at the beginning of our work together and review how it is going on a regular basis.