Cambridgeshire and Peterborough support exercise app for mental health
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust’s official charity is supporting the use of a new exercise app to help patients struggling with their mental health.
Head to Toe, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough’s charity, has purchased the My PT Hub app software, which will be piloted by Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Assessing, Managing and Enhancing Outcomes (CAMEO). The app is intended to encourage patients using the mental health service to engage with exercise to help self-manage their wellbeing.
As well as encouraging exercise activities, it also sends nutrition alerts and sets tasks that will help practitioners at CAMEO to monitor patients’ moods.
Richard de Rosa, CAMEO practitioner, said: “We know that people suffering mental health illness often suffer with their physical health as well, so we also encourage exercise and provide nutritional advice.”
He continued: “The early results are very promising, so I’m hoping we can roll it out further so more patients can benefit.”
CAMEO works with people aged between 14 and 35 years, providing county-wide services with psychological therapies, medical consultation, emotional support, practical help with housing and finances, education and employment support and physical health assessment with targeted interventions. Funding for the new app was provided by the trust’s charity Head to Toe.
Alex Gordon, interim manager of Head to Toe, added: “Thanks to our donors and fundraisers we’re able to support great projects like these. We’re so pleased that Richard got in touch to see if Head to Toe could help fund this creative solution to providing remote exercises sessions.”
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough is joining many other trusts, for whom mental health support is being increasingly a focus. Patients at Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust are undergoing a trial with an AI therapy chatbot to see if it can improve depression and anxiety levels. While a collaboration earlier this year between Kooth and myGP has enabled NHS patients using iPlato’s myGP app easier access to digital mental health services.
