Doctor Divergent accepts clients through self-referral, through an online system. Once you fill out the form and click on submit, you are confirming that you agree to the Doctor Divergent Privacy Policy, and are happy to continue with your booking. Full details of our Privacy Policy are published here.

The initial appointment will usually last around 15 minutes. The main purpose of this session is for us to make sure that our service is an appropriate option for you. We will talk to you about the kinds of problems you are currently having which prompted you to approach Doctor Divergent, which may include your current relationships and employment details, problems you have had in the past, and/or your personal and family history. This is to make sure that we can help you and to ensure we are the most appropriate service for your needs. We will also ask for the contact details of your GP. You must be living in the UK and registered with a GP to access our services.

We will tell you at the end of the initial appointment whether we feel Doctor Divergent would be right for you and if it is not, will offer some thoughts about what other services may be available that are more suitable.

If you are accepted for Individual Therapy, the assessor will let you know if there is currently a waiting list for the service and if so, how long you might need to wait.

We will need to refer you to another service if you are going through current severe substance misuse, suffering from an active psychotic condition, have very strong suicidal ideation or are currently living within an abusive family environment. In these cases, Doctor Divergent would not be appropriate for your needs.

We do understand that, occasionally, things happen, and it may not be possible to attend the session you arranged. If you cannot attend a therapy session, we ask that you give us 48-hours’ notice by emailing Doctor Divergent at [email protected] or responding to one of the reminder emails you have received in order to let your therapist know. Provided the session is cancelled with more than 48-hours’ notice, the session fee will be refunded.

If you are unable to give 48-hours’ notice, a half-session fee will be charged. Doctor Divergent policy is that if you have two cancellations with less than 24 hours’ notice, we will review your Individual Therapy. Sometimes late cancellations are a sign that an individual is not ready for counselling and, if this seems to be the case, we may suggest that you self-refer into our service when life is a little quieter for you. If you have three or more cancellations, we will usually suggest stopping the therapy.

If you do not attend a session and you do not let us know, the full session fee will be charged.

There are some situations that can arise during therapy sessions in which we may have to take action to protect yourself or others from harm. An example may be where information is revealed that a child is being abused by someone. In such cases we may need to disclose some aspects of what you have said to a third party, such as your GP. If such a situation arises, we would limit the disclosure to what is necessary. We would also make every effort to fully discuss it with you before disclosing information to the relevant authority.  There are also some specific legal requirements where we are obliged to breach confidentiality, for example, in cases of terrorism or money laundering.

All therapists working at Doctor Divergent are bound by the ethics codes of their professional bodies, including the General Medical Council (GMC) and British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP), and are therefore required to disclose information in the type of situation described above. If you would like a copy of the relevant ethics code, please speak to your therapist.

All therapists will also keep very brief session notes alongside any assessment form data. These are stored in a secure, password protected IT system and are only accessed by the therapist.

All registered therapists require supervision with an external supervisor. These discussions are anonymous and supervisors have no links to Doctor Divergent and therefore cannot access your personal information.

Occasionally clients will ask us to disclose elements of their therapy to third parties for the purposes of court appearances. We can provide a letter to indicate how many sessions have been attended, provided you ask formally for the information in writing (for example by email) and give permission to the therapist to release the information. This information can be provided free of charge for the first letter, but we reserve the right to charge for second or subsequent letters. 

Your contact with Doctor Divergent is confidential, unless your employer is paying for you to attend. In this case, we will advise the employer of your name and the number of sessions you have attended as part of the invoicing process. No other information about your therapy will be revealed and your employer will not have access to any of the data we collect during your process of therapy.