EPP (Expert Patients Programme)
The Expert Patients Programme (EPP) is a free course for anyone living with one, or more, long-term health condition in Croydon. The six-week course is designed to boost your health and wellbeing, find solutions to common problems and help you feel more confident to manage your condition.
The Expert Patients Programme complements the care and support you already receive from healthcare professionals and will make you aware of other services and resources available in your area.
Weekly sessions cover a range of topics including:
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Managing symptoms
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Dealing with pain and tiredness
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Coping with feelings of depression and anxiety
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Healthy eating
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Exercise
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Managing stress
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Planning for the future
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Communicating with family, friends and health care
professionals -
Finding other health services in the community
Mental Health - Hear to Talk
‘Hear to Talk’ aims to raise awareness of Mental health within the Croydon community, acknowledging that it is still a taboo topic. The project aims to increase people's awareness of mental health risk factors and to support people to seek help without feeling isolated and to reduce the stigma attached to Mental Health.
Our aims and objectives:-
1. Targeted out-reach work to raise awareness of mental health issues and risk factors amongst the Asian community, and to encourage and enable patients to recognise and present to existing interventions i.e. SLaM, Talking Therapies, Befriending Services.
2. Supporting individuals to consider lifestyle changes to reduce their risk of further or increasing mental health issues.
3. Asian residents with mental health, their families and carers may feel more comfortable speaking to our health champions in their own community setting and language, rather than presenting to their GP.
Links to resources
Croydon Talking Therapies Information:-
Croydon Talking Therapies service is an NHS service providing confidential short-term psychological therapies (or talking therapies) to those that are registered with a Croydon GP and that are over the age of 17. Croydon Talking Therapies service offers support for common mental health difficulties such as stress, excessive worry, feeling down or depressed, trouble sleeping, lacking motivation or coping with difficult life events. The service also offers specialist support if you’re finding it hard to cope with the impact of a long-term health conditions or wanting to get back to work. Croydon Talking Therapies service encourages those in the borough of Croydon to make contact via self-referral when they first notice they are starting to struggle. By accessing support early, the service can support you to develop the strategies you need to improve your wellbeing. Contact Croydon Talking Therapies service for more information.
Languages: The Croydon Talking Therapies website and online referral can be viewed in several languages which includes Bengali, Gujarati, Tamil and Urdu.
