Destress your life and reap benefits

Psychologist Clare Gormley: "We need to reach people to help them deal with stress and to learn new skills," she says. Photo: Joe O'Shaughnessy.

placeholder image — Psychologist Clare Gormley: "We need to reach people to help them deal with stress and to learn new skills," she says. Photo: Joe O'Shaughnessy.

Lifestyle - Judy Murphy meets Clinical Psychologist Clare Gormley and finds out how stress related problems affect one-in-five people

We all suffer from stress at different stages in our lives. Big events such as bereavement, divorce, illness, unemployment, even moving house or job are normal triggers. Sometimes, though, stress can threaten to overwhelm us, leading to ongoing anxiety, depression and physical illness. Statistics from health professionals indicate that at any time, one in five of us is suffering from stress.

A free six-week Stress Control programme being offered by HSE West is geared to help people learn new ways to cope with common stress-related problems, including anxiety, panic, depression, poor sleep, and low self-esteem. It starts on Tuesday, February 3, and will run weekly until March 10.

Clare Gormley, the HSE Clinical Psychologist, who is running this course points out that these weekly gatherings are not therapy sessions. Instead they are classes, designed to help individuals to become ‘their own therapist’ by giving them skills to help them deal with stress.

The programme is for people with mild to moderate stress levels, she explains.

“We are all going to face stress in our lives, but it’s about learning how to deal better with it so it doesn’t impact on our lives so much.

“The classes are about helping people at an early stage, because small stresses accumulate and people feel overwhelmed. If you help people to build resilience, that resilience will carry them through the stormy weather.”

This course is not for those who are very stressed and suffering from depression.

“We would say to people, if they are feeling really depressed to go to their GP or to A&E.”

The Stress Control programme was created in Glasgow in 1986 by Dr Jim White a clinical psychologist with Britain’s National Health Service and it’s the most widely used course of its type by the NHS, and by the HSE in Ireland. There are other courses, says Clare, but this one has been well researched and studies have shown its effectiveness.

The HSE has been running Stress Control courses in Galway since November 2013; the first one attracted a couple of hundred people and interest has been growing steadily since.

The latest course has again been advertised in the local media and via GPS. It can cater for 260 people and is almost full already.

“We want a rolling programme of this in the city and the county,” says Clare, who is responsible for the HSE psychology service in Galway and Roscommon. How that’s done will depend on public demand, she adds.

This Stress Control programme centres on early intervention, she explains, so that people “can look after and maintain their wellbeing”.

While the HSE does offer a one-to-one counselling service to people with medical cards, the fact that one out of five people will suffer from stress at any one time means it cannot cater for everybody, hence this course.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.