Andy, 52, Ferryhill

Andy is a 52 year old male living in Ferryhill. He lives with his wife and daughter and is the main carer for his wife. His social worker felt that he could benefit from the service.
This case study is written by Andy’s Health Trainer:

Andy suffers from a number of conditions such as Depression, Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and Attention deficit disorder (ADD). His IBS condition flares up quite regularly and he sometimes has frequent bouts of depression, where he does not like to leave the home environment and as a result Andy suffers with low confidence and low self-esteem.

Andy was initially reluctant to leave the home environment to attend a local venue to see me (health trainer), however through advice from me (Health Trainer), He used a local community transport scheme to get him to and from the appointments and arranged this around his wife’s care.

Furthermore, after going through the lifestyle information based around smoking and drinking, Andy consciously made an effort to reduce both the amount of alcohol he drank and reduce the total number of cigarettes he smoked on a daily basis, even though this was not what Andy initially came to the service for support with.

In terms of controlling his diet, Andy was given the opportunity to make adjustments and changes that suited him rather than me (health trainer) giving instruction all the time. Andy made a lot of healthy lifestyle changes to his diet by applying self-changes with a reduced focus on health trainer input (The non-judgemental approach).

Encouragement and support was given at each session to promote self-esteem and to increase confidence.

The client has gained the information and the knowledge about healthy lifestyle change and behavioural change to now continue and maintain the great progress he has made in such a short period of time. (He has now become his own Health Trainer)

Andy said “I have found the sessions to be helpful, informative and educational, delivered in a manner that I would more expect from a well-intentioned friend than a health trainer. I find the support material to be very helpful and also welcome the ability to customise and tweak things to my own personal style.”