The Department of Neuropsychology at Salford Royal runs a Lifestyle Medicine Group, led by a Consultant Clinical Neuropsychologist and a Senior Assistant Psychologist.
What is Lifestyle Medicine?
Lifestyle Medicine is an evidence-based approach to clinical care that supports behaviour change through person-centred techniques to improve aspects of the six pillars. These pillars, or areas, are shown in this diagram:
The Lifestyle Medicine Group provides helpful, achievable ideas for habit-changes to build a healthy life. There is a focus on how these areas are relevant for people with neurological conditions and the group format has proven to be really helpful for those attending to share their experiences. The feedback from those attending has been that the discussions with others in the group and building peer support has been of great benefit to them.
Why are neuropsychology delivering lifestyle medicine?
The idea from the group was built from an awareness that much of the content of our therapeutic work involved discussion about mental health/stress, fatigue, sleep hygiene, nutrition, reducing risky behaviours and substances, increasing social engagement and bringing in more functional movement or physical activity. This may be before or after neurosurgery or learning to live with a long-term neurological condition and side effects of treatment. Therefore, there was a good fit with the areas of lifestyle medicine but with the added benefit of experts present in the group by way of those who live with neurological conditions. This has brought shared experiences and generated lots of ideas of how to bring in habit change by those who live this daily.
How does the group run?
The group runs throughout the year, following a format of six sessions fortnightly and then a review appointment six weeks later. We focus on each of the lifestyle medicine pillars in turn in our fortnightly sessions.
The group can be in-person at Salford Royal, or remote. We have a cap for the number attending to facilitate open and comfortable discussion. Each session lasts for two hours with a break and time to stretch and for a mindfulness activity. We present information and attendees have a workbook to take home and to make notes on during the appointment. There is time for discussion for those attending and there will always be a meaningful task to complete between each session to promote and maintain behaviour change.
How can I join a lifestyle medicine group?
If you are already being seen by neuropsychology then speak to your clinician about a referral to the group. If you are not, and you feel this would be of benefit to you, then please ask any medical professional involved in your care to send a referral to neuropsychology. You will need to be a patient within Salford Care Organisation to attend.
We try to run the group based on diagnoses and so there may be a wait for the next relevant group but we will let you know estimated times when we triage for suitability for the group.
Evaluations
We look at the outcomes from all of our groups to see if they are helpful for those who attend and to make sure we are delivering an intervention that effectively meets the needs of our patient group. We will be asking those who attend to complete questionnaires and may be invited to a short interview to talk about your experiences with the aim of continuous improvement and update of the group.
Contact Us
You can email the department on: reftoneuropsych@nca.nhs.uk or telephone: 0161 206 4694.