Resources
Helpful mental health resources
If you, a family member or friend have concerns about mental ill-health, questions about medications, or need emergency support, there are a number of helpful mental health resources that we recommend.
General information
The NHS
The NHS website provides useful resources including information about common feelings, symptoms and behaviours, specific mental health conditions, advice for life-situations, self-help, types of therapy and how to get urgent help.
The Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCPsych)
The Royal College of Psychiatrists provides reliable evidence-based information relating to support, care and treatment of mental health conditions for patients, carers, family and friends, written by doctors in collaboration with patients and carers.
Mind
Mind is a charity that provides support and information ‘to empower people to understand their condition and the choices available to them’. Mind campaigns to improve services, raise awareness and promote understanding of mental health.
Medication information
If you would like patient information on medications that have been recommended for you, Choice and Medication Leaflets are designed to help patients, carers and family members understand their medicines better.
The Maternal Mental Health Alliance (MMHA)
The MMHA is a UK-wide charity and network of over 100 organisations, dedicated to ensuring women and families affected by perinatal mental problems have access to high-quality comprehensive care and support.
Bumps
Bumps is the ‘Best Use of Medicines in Pregnancy’ website, which provides reliable, evidence-based and accurate information about the use of medicines in pregnancy, in the form of freely available patient information leaflets.
Dr L M Hayward Consultant Psychiatry Services is not an urgent or emergency mental health care provider. If you or someone you care for is in a life-threatening situation or you feel at immediate risk of acting on thoughts of self-harm or suicide and cannot keep yourself safe, you are advised to access NHS out-of-hours/urgent care via GP/NHS Direct on 111/Crisis-teams. If needed, attend your local A&E. If you cannot get there safely call 999.
If you are currently under the care of the crisis team, you are advised to make contact with them in the first instance. If you need to speak to someone urgently, please consider using one of the following emergency contact services:
The Samaritans
Call The Samaritans (24hr): 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org
Shout
Text SHOUT to 85258 (UK-Wide)
Mind
Visit Mind’s ‘Get Help Now’ page
Calm
Call CALM: 0800 58 58 58 (Daily, 5pm – midnight)
SANEline
Call SANEline: 0300 304 7000 (Daily, 4:30pm – 10:30pm)
Rethink
Visit Rethink’s ‘Getting help in a crisis’ page.