What We Do

Sanibel started as a small charity in 1998, providing bereavement counselling in East London. The organisation took its name from an island off the Florida coast that was the favoured holiday destination for its founders.

We now receive more than 3500 referrals every year for our free, NHS-based psychological therapies service in Redbridge.

We offer free NHS treatment for patients suffering symptoms of anxiety and depression who are under the care of a Redbridge GP. We can also help patients with more common problems such as bereavement and work-related stress.

Our service is provided as part of the Department of Health’s Improving Access to Psychological Therapy (IAPT) programme. You can find out more about the IAPT programme by visiting their website www.iapt.nhs.uk.

To demonstrate cost effectiveness, a central principle of IAPT is that treatments should be based on the best available evidence about what works. Generally, this means that treatments are easy to access, relatively brief and based on the principles of cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT).

CBT is considered to be useful for patients who can clearly identify a specific difficulty to work on and have the commitment to examine the relationship between their thinking, feeling and behaviour, testing out what they have learned by exposing themselves to situations that will challenge them to bring about effective change.