Professional Roles
The roles of mental health professionals
What is a CAMHS General Manager?
A CAMHS general manager is responsible, with the Lead Clinician, for maintaining the standard of the service, for implementing the Trust’s policies and procedures, for performance management, for planning and developing new services and for managing budgets.
What is a Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist?
A child and adolescent psychiatrist is a medically qualified doctor who specialises in understanding and working with mental health difficulties that children and young people experience. A large part of their work involves identifying what the difficulties are, understanding what may have caused them to develop, and giving advice about what may help. Psychiatrists are also able to recommend and prescribe medication.
What is a Clinical Psychologist?
Psychologists are trained to understand behaviour, relationships and emotions and assess these using psychometric tests if they feel this would be useful. Psychologists are able to offer a range of therapies for difficulties such as phobias, eating disorders, depression, anxieties and relationship difficulties. They can also offer parenting advice and family therapy.
What is a Clinical Nurse Specialist?
A clinical nurse specialist in CAMHS is a senior nurse (RGN or RMM qualified) who has specialised in the area of child/young person/family psychiatry. They have been trained in identifying any signs which may be connected with mental health difficulties. They are able to offer a wide range of therapies/ interventions to families whose child(ren) are experiencing emotional or behavioural difficulties. Some may further specialise in particular therapies such as cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), or have particular interests such as childhood bereavement, eating disorders or children who are ‘looked after’.
What is a Family Therapist?
Family therapists help family members find constructive ways to help each other. They work in ways that acknowledge the contexts of people’s families and other relationships, sharing and respecting individuals’ different perspectives, beliefs, views and stories, and exploring possible ways forward.
What is a Primary Mental Health Worker?
Primary Mental Health Workers may come from a variety of backgrounds e.g. social work, nursing, counselling. They work with children and young people who are experiencing emotional, behavioural or mental health difficulties. The idea being that these workers will work with children and young people at the early stages of their difficulties. A large part of their work is providing consultation to professionals who are already working with a child e.g. a teacher.
What is a Child & Adolescent Psychotherapist?
Child and Adolescent Psychotherapists spend a large part of their training understanding infant behaviour and early relationships, and recognising the impact of early experiences on later life and relationships. They work mainly with children and teenagers in 1:1 therapy, and see parents/ carers to support the individual therapy the young person is having. Psychotherapists usually provide once-weekly, long-term work with young people, and in addition, liase with schools, do detailed assessments, case reviews and some joint work with social services. In therapy, the psychotherapist aims to provide an environment in which the child or young person can play and enquire, and through the therapist-young person relationship, the young person can begin to make sense of their experiences.
What is a Community Psychiatric Nurse?
These nurses are specially trained to support people with mental health difficulties both in the community and in hospital. They often have both medical and therapeutic skills, which they use to support the people with whom they work.
They may make regular visits to a person’s home or hospital ward, to check their well-being, the efficacy and impact of any medication they may be taking to alleviate the more distressing aspects of their mental health problems, and look out for any changes to a person’s mental health status. They also liaise with family members and carers, to inform them of the issues that may arise, as a result of the person for whom they care experiencing mental health difficulties.
What is a Counsellor?
Counselling is basically a chance for you to talk through your problems/ anxieties/ emotions with a trained counsellor, who plays a supportive role, and may sometimes provide practical advice on problem solving.
This way of working may be useful for Low self-esteem issues, bereavement, relationship issues, work and study worries, anger, stress, and mild to moderate depression and anxiety.