Diabetes Psychologist Service – Diabetes in Grampian

Living with a lifelong condition like diabetes can be difficult. At times, people can feel overwhelmed by the demands of trying to look after themselves and the demands of life in general. To make things more complicated, people with diabetes are often trying to change the way they have lived their lives for a long time. That’s not easy for anyone.

Children and Families and Young People

Diabetes can be difficult to manage for children at any age, and sometimes it can be challenging for parents to balance having a child with diabetes alongside family life.

Kerstin Hunter, Health Psychologist, provides support to both children and their parents who are struggling with managing diabetes, or the emotional and behavioural difficulties that can occur as a result. Link to Children’s Service Page

Dr Ashley Allan provides input to young adults (from 16 to 21 years of age). Link to Young Adult’s Service Page. To meet with the children and families or young person’s psychologist you can speak to anyone within the diabetes team who will be able to make a referral. Alternatively, you can request an appointment by contacting (01224) 552234 or emailing gram.paediatric-psychology@nhs.scot.

Adults

The Adult Psychology Service provides relatively short‑term assistance for people who are struggling with one or more aspects of diabetes. The service is problem‑focused which means that we are interested in how things are for you right now, and in helping you find ways to make your life better.

To refer yourself please email gram.psychologydiabetes@nhs.scot or contact reception at the David Anderson Building on (01224) 555700 and ask for Psychology.

To find out more, please watch the video here.

We offer support for a range of difficulties that can occur alongside diabetes. Please take a look at the YouTube videos below for more information about what we can offer support with and some of the things that we do:

Struggling with longstanding eating patterns – Emotional eating and Diabetes
The impact of stress on managing diabetes – Diabetes and Stress: some information
Some additional information on stress/ worry – The role of stress and anxiety and their impact on diabetes
How low mood can effect your diabetes – Low Mood and Diabetes
Worrying about having a hypo – Diabetes and Fear of Hypos
Worrying about injecting – Diabetes and Fear of Injecting
Worrying about diabetes-related complications – Diabetes and Fear of Complications
Mindfulness: a tool that can be helpful – Mindfulness and its role in diabetes
Signs that Diabetes is taking up too much of your time – Signs that diabetes is taking over

Diabetes UK have also created a range of videos and guides about emotional wellbeing and diabetes. Their guides that cover topics such as coping with diagnosis to emotional eating can be found by clicking here.

To find out more click on the links to our leaflets below:

There are a number of psychologists working across the adult diabetes psychology service and the below gives a little overview of the types of things we do.