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Information for Patients
This page is for individuals looking for self-help resources or professionals looking to recommend information to their patients. We’re building a library of publications we have found especially useful or interesting. We’re always interested to hear what you think but unfortunately cannot offer individual advice or comment on specific cases.
Urgent help
If you are looking for urgent help, please remember there is always someone available to help. You can contact your GP, or out of hours service, call 111 (NHS Direct) or 999 or attend the urgent care or Emergency Department.
Other useful organisations in an emergency:
The Samaritans
Available 24 hours per day, 365 days per year. Call them on 116 123 (UK) and 116 123 (Republic of Ireland) they are also available via e-mail but the telephone is best if you require immediate help.
ChildLine
Call Childline on 0800 1111, you can also email or log in for a 1-2-1 chat but again the telephone is better for immediate help. The number is free and does not show up on telephone bills.
CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably)
CALM campaign against male suicide and have a helpline available every evening from 5pm – midnight, call 0800 58 58 58. They also offer support via a webchat.
Mind: 0300 123 3393
Women’s Aid: 0808 2000 247
SANEline: 0300 304 7000
Rape Crisis: 0808 802 9999
Alcoholics Anonymous: 0800 800 7650
Galop – LGBT Domestic Abuse: 0800 999 5428
Cruse Bereavement Care: 0808 808 1677
Beat (eating disorders): 0808 801 0677
Age UK: 0800 055 6112
Citizens Advice: 03444 111 444
Publications
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Panic Away, by Barry McDonagh, published BMD Publishing in 2012
For me this is an excellent book on treating your panic disorder. Self-published, strangely, it is probably the best I've come across. Panic disorder is such a terrifying and disabling condition and hopelessly misunderstood by most people who don't suffer from it, of whom I am one, I am relieved to say. In this book the author describes several phases for treatment. The first is the paradoxical approach described by, amongst others, Viktor Frankl in Man's search for meaning whereby the more you try, for example to go to sleep, the less likely you are to go to sleep. So here McDonagh suggests that when you are in a potentially panic-inducing situation, you deliberately try to panic. This may, in paradoxical fashion, prevent the panic attack arriving, but even if not it gives you a greater feeling of control than when you fight against it arriving … and lose.
In the second phase he suggests that instead of fighting – and losing – the battle with your increasing panic, you invite it in, in a non-judgemental way. So, reminiscent of mindfulness techniques, you simply observe the effects, secure in the knowledge that "a panic attack never killed anybody". This, in my terms at least, prevents the 'second arrow' of the feelings of helplessness and enfeeblement associated with having 'yet another' panic attack.
In the third phase you challenge ‘panic' to do its worst to achieve whatever it is you are most frightened of it achieving: stopping your heart, making you go mad, making you scream out in public, making you cry, making you lose control of your bodily functions, or whatever. But, in the spirit of what we now call hypothesis testing or a behavioural experiment, you give it a fixed time to achieve this. He suggests 21 seconds but invites you to count as slowly as you like, rather like when warning a miscreant child.
McDonagh writes with empathy, encouragement and conviction, with the result that the whole package adds up to an empowering and energising book for anybody who wants to tackle their panic disorder constructively.
Dr William Davies, Consultant Psychologist
Useful Resources
Mental Health at Work: Our Pledge.
APT’s own pledge to support mental health and wellbeing in the workplace; this is what we aspire to and believe we achieve. We hope that you too may wish to aspire to it.
