Self Help
We strongly encourage you to talk to your local doctor or a mental health professional about your difficulties as the information provided in the resources are NOT a substitute for a proper diagnosis or treatment by an appropriate health professional. |
Self help guides
- The Northumberland and Tyne and Wear Self Help booklets cover a range of mental health conditions including depression, anxiety, panic, OCD and stress.
Access the guides here. - A BMA-award winning self-help booklet from Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust uses CBT principles to approach anxiety and highlights techniques such as relaxation and mindfulness.
- Moodjuice
NHS site offering self help guides and problem solving handouts and tools covering most aspects of mental health and signposting to useful organisations. Patient and healthcare professional-specific pages. - Get Self Help
This website provides CBT self help and therapy resources, including worksheets and information sheets and self help MP3s. - Foundation for Positive Mental Health
Dedicated to promoting skills training for positive mental health, to enhance everyday wellbeing, increase resilience to, and recovery from, mental health difficulties. We can all learn how to do this by using simple exercises such as breath control and sports mind training techniques.
Online CBT
- Living Life to the Full
Free online resource for managing mental health disorders including Beating the Blues: Eight online CBT-based sessions to manage low mood, depression, anxiety and stress - Tapping exercise
This is a useful resource from Bradford VTS. It is aimed at tackling exam anxiety but the technique is useful for all aspects of anxiety. - The Centre for Clinical Interventions in Western Australia has a number of excellent online CBT-based modules that include information, worksheets and suggested exercises or activities and are designed to allow you develop strategies for managing your mental health. We strongly encourage you to talk to your local doctor or a mental health professional about your difficulties as the information provided in the resources are NOT a substitute for proper diagnosis or treatment by an appropriate health professional. Please refer to the full disclaimer regarding the information on this website before making use of these resources.
Apps
- Anxiety BC
Free app to ‘help you learn how to relax, develop more helpful ways of thinking and identify active steps that will help you take charge of your anxiety. This app includes strategies to deal with everyday anxiety, as well as specific tools including making sleep count, test anxiety, worry, performance anxiety and much more. - Feeling Good
Free positive mental health training app from the Foundation for Positive Mental Health. - Mind Mood Tracker
Free from Mind – helps to spot patterns in mood and behaviour - Live Happy
Helps develop happiness-promoting activities into habit. It prompts to engage in mood boosting activities such as mindfulness, goal setting and promoting your best possible self. - Headspace
Daily mindfulness app – free for the first 10 weeks. Currently two months free access for BMA members. - Buddhify
Mindfulness on the go - Calm
Calm is a popular mindfulness app, free beginner programme with option to upgrade.
Discover the life-changing benefits of meditation and mindfulness. Calm has free guided meditations and sleep stories to help you relax, sleep and feel happier - What’s Up?
Free app based on CBT methods to help manage depression, anxiety, anger, stress or difficult times. Tackles common negative thinking patterns and simple methods to overcome them and a positive and negative habit tracker designed to promote good habits and conquer bad ones. Includes a ‘catastrophe scale,’ aimed to help gain perspective of problems and develop solutions to manage them. - Finding peace in a frantic world
Books
- Overcoming self-help books
Offer courses of CBT in book form, covering over 30 emotional and psychological problems such as ‘overcoming anxiety’ ‘overcoming low self esteem’ and ‘overcoming depression’ and are endorsed by the Royal College Psychiatrists. - Books on Prescription
NHS-endorsed books for common emotional and mental health problems. - Depressive Illness: The Curse of the Strong, by Dr. Tim Cantopher
Written by a consultant psychiatrist Depressive Illness looks at the nature of depression, its history, symptoms, causes and treatments. He covers the latest information on medications, new guidelines as to the management of depression, and stresses that no one should be to blame for succumbing to depression. - Managing Your Mind: The Mental Fitness Guide
Sets out the strategies that will stretch, strengthen, and tune your mind, to help you cope with the rigours of everyday life. - Ruby Wax: a mindfulness guide for the frazzled
- Mindfulness: A practical guide to finding peace in a frantic world, by Mark Williams and Danny Penman
Best selling book and eight-week mindfulness course. Website, free downloads and app also available.
Videos and Audio Guides
- Ruby Wax on mindfulness
- Audio guides on mood and anxiety from NHS Mood Zone
- Free mindfulness downloads from Mindfulness: finding peace in a frantic world
Exercise and hints and tips
Did you know….
Studies have consistently shown that exercise is beneficial in treating depression. Furthermore, exercising in the outdoors in nature’s ‘green gym’ has even more positive benefits for mental health.
You can experience benefits from just ten minutes a day! Can you set a timer on your phone and go for
a ten minute walk and see if it makes a difference to your mood?
Why not take a look at our Ways to Wellbeing section for more information, tools and tips on promoting positive mental health.