Station 7

Instructions for candidate

You have been asked to talk to a patient about CBT after she was interviewed by the consultant, who thinks she would benefit from it for her severe anxiety. The patient would like to know more about what the therapy involves.

Instructions for actor

You are a patient on a psychiatric ward. You were admitted with thoughts of ending your life after it felt your life had got on top you and you felt very anxious with no chance of getting away from it. You had not being sleeping for several days and had a poor appetite. You were worrying about a lot of things. For a long time you have spent most of your day worrying about things and as a result have been unable to get on with life.

You have had panic attacks in the past and these have been getting more frequent. You feel your heart racing in your chest and you feel breathless. You also feel sweaty. You think you are going to die when this happens. You have to sit down in a quiet place for at least an hour. You have been to hospital twice after such attacks. You have started avoiding the places where you have had panic attacks in the past.

You have thoughts that pop into your head all the time about bad things that might happen. At times you do little rituals, such as tapping your feet five times; this helps you feel less anxious.

You have been on treatment with antidepressants, but would like to find out about CBT as the consultant thinks it will benefit you.

You have concerns that it might make you worse but cannot say why. You want to know what the treatment involves. You want to know whether it will work and if it does, can you stop taking the antidepressants?

Your speech is a little fast and you tend to talk about irrelevant details.

Station 8

This scenario is written for a male actor but can easily be changed if the actor is female.