Paediatric clinical psychology

What does a clinical psychologist do?

Clinical Psychologists work alongside the doctors, nurses and dietitians in the Paediatric Diabetes Team. The role of the psychologist is to listen to everyone’s experiences and help children and families cope with struggles and uncertainties that can come from having diabetes and receiving treatment. They are trained to understand each family’s situation and support them to make specific agreed positive changes.

 

Who might benefit from seeing a clinical psychologist?

Clinical Psychology appointments are available to the families of all children and young people aged 0 - 18 (until their 19th birthday) who have diabetes and are seen by the teams at Epsom and Queen Mary’s Hospital for Children (QMHC) at St Helier Hospital. The clinical psychologist will aim to meet all patients with diabetes and their families at the time of diagnosis or shortly afterwards to give you an idea of how psychologists can help you.

 

Why is there a clinical psychologist in the team?

So many different emotions like worry or fear, sadness, anger and dealing with lots of change can affect families when managing diabetes. This is in addition to all the challenges of any other young person like relationships with peers, exam stresses, not feeling understood by families, schools, colleges or work. Talking to a clinical psychologist can help you to understand what is going on and find new ways of coping.

 

What happens during the appointment?

An appointment with the clinical psychologist will usually last for about an hour. Patients are offered face to face appointments in the children’s outpatient departments at Epsom and Queen Mary's Hospital for Children (QMHC). Sometimes it might be more appropriate to arrange a video or telephone call and this is something that the clinical psychologist can arrange. The psychologist will want to ask about you, your family, school, the impact that diabetes is having on your life, how you are all feeling and ask about things that are going well and not so well. This information will be used to decide if further appointments will be helpful and who needs to be involved. The psychologist will only help if you and your child want them to and this will be discussed at the first appointment. You might be seen for just one session or you could be offered a series of weekly or fortnightly appointments depending on what you need.

 

What can the psychologist help with?

A clinical psychologist can help with a lot of different kinds of problems such as:

• Dealing with upsetting news.
• Managing strong emotions such as fear, sadness or anger.
• Supporting you to live with and manage your diabetes.
• Coping with treatments that you feel worried about such as fear of needles.
• Managing difficult behaviour.
• Dealing with feelings related to having diabetes like feeling different from your peers.
• Problems getting on with other people or worries about school.
• How diabetes affects family life and the impact on siblings.
• Difficulties sticking to your treatment plan and eating patterns.

 

What information is shared?

The psychologist will usually share important information with other members of the paediatric diabetes team as required. You may also be asked for permission to share the information with school or other people who might be able to support you and your family. Sometimes schools may ask for information on how you have worked with a clinical psychologist to help with coping better in school but any requests for information like this will be discussed with you and your parents initially.