What therapies are recommended for anxiety?

As with other common mental health conditions, anxiety symptoms can be mild, moderate or severe.  How bad your symptoms are, how often you have them, and how much they affect your life, all contribute to how severe your anxiety might be.

If you have mild anxiety, cognitive-behavioural therapy-based self-help resources can help to ease your symptoms.

If you have anxiety, guided self-help may be useful. If your anxiety does not improve within 2 weeks, you and your healthcare professional could consider referring you to a therapist for a talking therapy, such as cognitive behavioural therapy.

If you have social anxiety disorder, talking therapy is the recommended treatment.

There is some research that shows that directive counselling can improve your symptoms of anxiety.

Talking therapy involves talking one-to-one with a trained therapist. This kind of therapy may be used on its own or alongside medication. 

Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) can help you manage your symptoms by helping you understand the way your condition can affect how you think and behave. It involves working with a trained therapist who will help you challenge unhelpful thoughts and behaviour, and try different, more helpful ways of coping. CBT can be face to face or online. If you think online would suit you better, you can choose to do the online CBT  by yourself or with online support from a therapist.

In directive counselling, a professional counsellor uses supportive listening to understand your experience.  They will work with you to define the problems you want to address, agree goals and find the best way forward. This may be done in one-to-one sessions or, if you agree, with your partner present, or in a group format.