Wellbeing Service Drayton High Road, Norwich NR6 5SJ

"I’ve been using this service for months now, and it has been great! Easy to refer yourself and everyone I’ve spoken to is super supportive. I was offered an assessment call with a woman who then explained possible treatments, letting me decide which was best for me. I attended a few webinars, and later joined a waiting list for CBT. Within a week I was offered a place with a psychologist. I’ve attend more than a few sessions now, and have already seen a slight improvement! They put a lot of effort into your personalised treatment. I was under the impression that my problems weren’t ‘big enough’ to be treated, but they’ve really made me feel supported and helped me the best they can. I’ve never been turned away or made to feel not important."

"Absolutely awful - I was told that they only deal with issues that are affecting you now and will not look into the past - a lot of mental health issues stem from problems in the past so surely they are completely missing the point. I have been cut from the service in the past with no warning. They should lose their funding. Useless."

"I had an appointment for a telephone assessment recently. I have suffered from depression, anxiety and excessive stress for almost 60 years as a result of childhood neglect and abuse. On top of that I also suffer from severe, chronic pain. The assessment took an hour and was based on a series of scripted questions. The person I spoke to was not interested in any experiences that weren't part of the script and I felt it was just a box-ticking exercise. At the end I was offered a place on a webinar based on CBT, where you are completely anonymous but are not allowed to ask questions and all you can do is listen to the person leading the session. If the treatment hadn't been "successful" after that, I would be offered a place on the next webinar. If that still didn't work, I would be offered three sessions of CBT. I am not a big believer in short-term CBT treatment; this is usually very ineffective. My other concern is that CBT only addresses current problems and focuses on specific issues. It does nothing to address the possible underlying causes of mental health conditions, such as (in my case) an unhappy childhood. I certainly wasn't taken seriously and treated as if my history wasn't very relevant. No attention was paid to my childhood abuse or my chronic pain and how these affected my life, both physically and psychologically. Finally I was told that if I found myself in a crisis, I should call 111 as they were experts in dealing with this. I think we all know how poor the 111 service is, even when it comes to physical emergencies, so I have no intention of ever putting my trust in them. I'd rather stick pins in my eyes! Instead of getting help, I feel I am being fobbed off. It seems that the medical profession in this country have become very good at making patients' problems even worse than they already are! To add insult to injury, we just had a letter from our MP Duncan Baker to let us know how much he has done to improve mental health services in his and our constituency. I despair!"

"Although I never been to the hospital to use their services but I have used a few times either by self referral or by my general practitioner, the self referral online form is very easy to use and once completed it took only a couple of days for someone to call me back and have care plan set to support me with one of the support staff and if necessary to be referred to the NSFT mental health team. They have been very helpful during the covid-19 crisis, they even once support me looking for work with their job advisers. You can fill out the self-referral form anytime of day or night also their website contains details of different services like workshops, if you prefer you can call them instead of filling out a form duringofficialofficehours, doing this is quicker than going through your own general practitioner. I don't know what I would do without their support, it's only been a couple months ago that I have used their services."

"One-size-fits-all cheap and useless rubbish is all they provide. Basically a huddle of "nice" middle-class people furiously angry at any mentally ill person who dares to question the idea that 5 weeks group CBT will cure everything. Terrible terrible service. Hang your head in shame if you work there. ALL of you. UPDATE: I was supposed to have a phone consultation today but they cancelled by email and I only saw it about 10 minutes before the phone call was supposed to be. Looking at the other reviews this is their usual practice."