To celebrate LGBT History Month in February 2018, Touchstone will profile an LGBT person each week. We are choosing to profile Harvey Milk once again as 2018 is the 40th anniversary of his murder and his remarkable life is being commemorated this year by the LGBT History Month organisers http://lgbthistorymonth.org.uk/ Harvey Bernard Milk was an American politician who became the first openly gay person to be elected to public office
In the IAPT service, where I work, we talk to a range of people about their mental health and we are privileged to hear about other people’s life changing events including trauma and abuse. This is a difficult subject to write about as it is connected to so much pain and distress and it touches all of our lives – maybe through our personal lives, our work, or how we
Very often in my work as a psychological therapist, I talk to people about being along a continuum of their mental health difficulty. We all fall somewhere along a continuum of depression, worry, anxiety and stress and we can all move up and down these continua at different times in our lives. I am no exception to this. So, on Time to Talk Day I would like to be open
Mindy Goose Creativity has always been my outlet to keep myself well. My preferred medium is photography, which works perfectly with my other pursuit, walking and exploring our great county – Yorkshire. Being outdoors is living. Whatever the weather, a walk in the country, or by the seaside, is sure to make me feel so much better within myself. Visiting new places, learning the history, finding views that are transient
As part of part of Touchstone’s BME Dementia Service’s on-going partnership with Pavilion, artist Simon Warner delivered a workshop with the Cha Da Cup group who regularly attend Touchstone on Mondays to exercise, share food, meet with friends and get involved in lots of different activities. Simon’s workshop was centred on creating silhouettes, an age-old art form which first became popular in the mid 1700’s due to the work of
Hamari Yaadain - Touchstone's monthly dementia cafe for people from the South Asian community - was recently featured on the Alzheimer's Society website and in their Living With Dementia magazine. The articles author quotes Ripaljeet Kaur (Touchstone's lead worker on dementia): "Groups like this one are really important for people from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds. It's run in their mother tongue, so people feel comfortable. It's the only group
Coming into therapy for the first time can be daunting and it can be difficult to know what to expect. Some of our past clients have kindly answered some questions or written about their experiences of Touchstone IAPT to give an insight into what therapy is like and how it may help. So if you are wondering if Touchstone IAPT can help you, we hope these stories will inspire you
As part of the Leeds Crisis Care Concordat Action Plan for 2016/17, John Halsall of the Touchstone Community Development Service and Caroline Bamford of Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust compiled some evidence about the experiences and patterns of use of the Leeds crisis care pathways by black and minority ethnic (BME) communities. To do this, John and Caroline reviewed data recorded by the statutory crisis services, and data
As part of the Interwoven Histories Art workshops, Pavilion held a film workshop with members of Touchstone’s BME Dementia Service’s Hamari Yaadain Dementia Café. Will from Pavilion brought along a projector to the group and showed Nathaniel Dorsky’s 16mm silent film Autumn (2016). Towards the end of 2015, Dorsky captured footage of the seasonal changes we see in the world around us and created this film, which explores the changing