What to expect

Find out what happens after you refer

Before your appointment

Once we receive your referral, we’ll contact you within five working days to arrange an assessment.

We’ll send you an appointment confirmation, and a couple of questionnaires to complete before we talk. These questionnaires will help us get a clearer understanding of your difficulties.

Before your appointment, you will also need to read the Terms & Conditions as well as the Guidance Booklet. Find them below:

Terms & Conditions

Guidance Booklet

Assessment

During the assessment, we’ll ask you how you’re feeling and how you’ve been coping up to now. We’ll listen to you and we won’t judge what you say.

It’s ok if you don’t know where to start. Sometimes it’s difficult to describe our thoughts or feelings. We’ll help you make sense of things.

We’ll ask a series of standard questions to help us understand the type of support that would be best for you.

Read more about the common mental health difficulties we treat.

Tailored support

At the end of the assessment, we’ll develop a tailored care plan for you and suggest the best options.

Therapy can be provided one-to-one, in a group, over the phone, via video call or online. For certain difficulties, a particular type of therapy may be better suited than another. In most cases, we offer our wellbeing courses first.

If a different service would be better suited to support you, we’ll advise you how to access the care you need in the local area.

In either scenario, we’ll make sure we clearly explain everything and give you all the information you need so you feel encouraged about your choice of therapy.

Read more about the talking therapies we offer.

Working together

Whichever therapy you begin, we’ll work together towards your goals and regularly check that we’re on the right track.

If you requested support from our Employment Team, your advisor will contact you to make additional appointments alongside your therapy.

We will ask you to complete questionnaires before each appointment to help us understand how you’re feeling, and to track your progress over time. You may prefer to receive them by email and complete them online to save time.

If you’re not satisfied at any point during therapy, please say so and we’ll do our best to make things better.

If you could benefit from further support at the end therapy, we’ll go through the options with you.

Feedback and encouragements

You may like to read some feedback and encouragements by those who received therapy with us, including advice on how to get the most from therapy.

Self-help resources

Be sure to check out our useful section of self-help resources for wellbeing.

Make the first step

We know the courage it takes to ask for help, and we hope you’ll consider therapy with us. Read more about what to expect if you refer.

Talking Therapies Portsmouth is for everyone aged sixteen or over, who live in Portsmouth and are registered with a GP in the city.

You can self-refer by calling us on 0300 123 3934 or by completing this secure form online.

Urgent help

Talking Therapies Portsmouth is not an emergency mental health service for people in crisis. Support is available from specialist services if urgent help is needed.