Dr David Fong

Looking for mental health support – for ourselves or a loved one – can be a baffling process; who's to say that this highly qualified and smiley person will suit you better than that one?  

One thing that can help is to look for someone's professional experience and professional accreditation with reputable and verifiable bodies to help guide you. I hope you'll be reassured by my professional experience of more than 25 years working in mental health. I have worked in the NHS for a total of 17 years and have been  the Principal Clinical Psychologist in a Community CAMHS team, clinical team leader, DBT lead and outcomes lead; but I've also worked in inpatient units, prisons, primary and secondary schools, Child and Family Courts as an expert witness in hundreds of court cases, as a counsellor for 13-25 year olds in the voluntary sector and as a writer of mental health articles and books. 

I started my career in mental health being curious about people and wanting to help – and both of these things still drive my practice today.  I'm drawn to the cognitive behavioural approaches, including features of dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) because I like the fact they're very collaborative and share their model of working; I'm drawn to attachment based therapies because they make such good intuitive sense (namely that our relationships have enormous power, from our earliest ones with our carers in infancy, right through to your relationship with me in therapy). I often use techniques from Brief Solution Focussed therapy because they highlight strengths, context and solutions (rather than problems and areas of weakness) and I do like a healthy dose of pragmatism in my work to try and provide as bespoke an intervention as possible. 

My approach to clinical work is fairly straightforward. It's important for us to have a goal or direction of travel to head towards – otherwise, there's a risk of the work drifting. I'll always check with you that your sessions are going the way you want them to go and that you're getting the results you wanted. If there's a clear evidence base for a particular difficulty – I'll follow that! Often such evidence bases are in the realm of my CBT practice; and following an evidence base can mean that therapy is relatively brief (12-16 sessions). 

Other problem types or difficulties might not have a great evidence base; in which case, our work together will depend on the formulation or problem map that we come up with. I like my work to be as collaborative as possible  – solutions to difficulties have more power when they come from you. 

Fees: £115