Primary mental healthwork service (East Sussex)

The Primary Mental Health Work service (PMHW) offers brief, evidence-based support for young people and their families through group work, direct one to one work and psychoeducational sessions. 

We support young people with moderate mental health difficulties to access resources and skills to reduce the need for longer term, more intensive interventions.

We also provide training to professionals on a variety of topics around mental health and working with young people and families with mental health difficulties.

The Primary Mental Health Work service offers short term intervention to young people with persistent, moderate mental health issues such as:

  • Excessive worry that is affecting their daily functioning
  • Low mood with physical symptoms (changes in sleep, appetite, etc.) and cognitive symptoms (lowered self-esteem, feelings of guilt and worthlessness, etc.)
  • Hearing a 'voice' that is understood in terms of low-level anxiety or internal dialogue
  • Trauma symptoms occurring for more than three months after a recognised trauma event, such as; intrusive thoughts/memories, some difficulties sleeping, increased irritability, etc.

We offer support for groups of young people or their parents/carers using evidence-based techniques to help people share experiences and learn/develop new ways to cope with and overcome the difficulties they are experiencing.  The groups on offer will vary over the course of the year, so please check back regularly for updates on the current groups available.

PAI (Parent Accommodation Intervention)

A three-session workshop for parents looking at what youth anxiety is. The workshops will support you in developing personalised goals based on your child’s experience of anxiety. We will give you small talks in between sessions to help give you and your child the chance to experiment with change.

Our one-off wellbeing group sessions aim to increase awareness and knowledge of anxiety and low mood for parents/carers and young people.

We talk about what anxiety is, how it affects the body and how this can inform our responses to anxiety in the future.

In this session we will explore how mood affects what we do and how we do it, looking at topics like: motivation, socialising and physical health.

Prospective dates: To be arranged.