Lisa Dando BSc Hons (Psych) PG Dip Couns, Psychodynamic Counsellor, MBACP

My background is in mental health having worked for Threshold Women's Mental Health Initiative in Brighton for over 8 years. I have experience of working therapeutically both face to face, over the phone and via email. This practice is backed up with continued training in all aspects of mental health, for example, self harm, eating distress and depression. I also receive regular supervision and facilitation for all my clinical work. My first degree is in psychology where cognition, memory and social factors are linked in an understanding of the mind.

Being involved with a women's mental health charity means that my understanding of mental health is very strongly linked to a socio-economic and psychological context. I do not adhere to a medical model of practice and believe that ill mental health is determined by our environment. This includes our experience of early relationships and the developmental effect they have on us.

As a result of this understanding, my therapeutic training as a counsellor is situated in the psychodynamic approach. This model very much locates present experience in the context of how we experienced our early life. By working psychodynamically in the present relationship with a counsellor, early thoughts and feelings compounded by later experiences can be understood and resolved. Counselling in this way can be empowering and a way to regain a sense of autonomy and control over ones life.

My counselling experience includes working with adults, young people and children. I have practised with the Psychological and Counselling Service at the University of Sussex and I also work with the Youth Advice Centre in Hove as a school's counsellor. As a fully qualified psychodynamic counsellor, I am a member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy and am therefore bound by their Ethical Framework. I am also a member of Sussex Counselling.