Who does Brenchley Unit Maidstone treat?

Answer 1

The West Kent and Medway Personality Disorder Service provides for patients with a diagnosis of severe personality disorder. It is a tertiary service, taking referrals through the CPA process from within adult mental health services.

At the hub is the Brenchley Unit Therapeutic Community. This is a day therapeutic community situated in Maidstone town centre. It provides 24 patients at any one time with an intensive 3 days a week group therapy programme for one year. Referrals are patients who have severe longstanding problems and who have been in adult mental health services for one year or more. Prior to entering the therapeutic community, patients attend a prep group for four consecutive weeks to prepare them for membership of the community. Members who complete the full year programme are invited to join a leavers group to consolidate their gains.

The Brenchley Therapeutic Community is made up of a group of people, a maximum of 24 members and five therapists, attempting to help themselves and each other towards improving their ability to form safe, satisfying and caring relationships with others.

Their work is to offer and receive support and understanding. In order to achieve this, members are encouraged to talk freely about their difficulties, not just in the past and in their outside lives, but also between each other as relationships develop within the Community.

Within this developing communication, patients can come to trust and be trusted; to learn more about themselves and about others. Members need to have a degree of insight into their problems and have some motivation to change themselves and their lives. The therapists' task is to assist members to benefit as much as possible from the treatment programme.

We believe that members of the community are as important as the therapists in helping each other to make changes in their lives.

The service offers advice, supervision, consultation and support to other mental health workers.

The Community depends upon members to co-operate in performing tasks such as the daily shopping, washing up, and chairing meetings. Much importance is placed on keeping boundaries in order to create a safe space where people can start to trust one another, begin work on their painful internal conflicts and relationship difficulties, and develop responsibility for themselves and others.

Unhelpful and destructive patterns of thinking and feeling can begin to be replaced with more trusting and mutually respectful relationships.

Although everything which goes on within the community is part of the "living-learning" experience, there are organised meetings of the whole community, and regular small group therapy sessions (of up to eight members). There is no individual therapy within the community and people are not allocated key workers. This is to encourage openness and sharing in the groups.