Chryssa Chalkidou

Chryssa is a qualified Systemic and Family Psychotherapist and has been a member of the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP) since 2010. She has worked in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) in the NHS for the last 15 years and as a qualified family therapist since 2010. Chryssa previously worked for the Anna Freud Centre and is currently the Senior Family Therapist in a Tier 4 Children’s inpatient mental health unit in Central London. In addition, between 2021-2023 Chryssa was employed as a contractor by Tavistock Relationships offering short term therapeutic interventions for couples in conflict or under stress.

Over the years Chryssa has gained expertise in working with children, adolescents, families and couples with social, emotional and relationship difficulties in various contexts, from different cultural backgrounds. She has also been involved in work supporting non-mental health professionals working with children with mental health difficulties to make use of their relationship with them to promote emotional well-being.

Her work encompasses development, presentation, prognosis and prevention of different mental health disorders and she has studied in depth and implemented systemic, mentalization based and emotion focused therapeutic interventions. As well as direct therapeutic work with young people, families and couples, she has wide experience in offering mental health consultation, training and supervision.

Chryssa’s work is informed by systemic ideas, such as circular thinking, the notion of both-and and the infinite possibilities opened up by the process of reframing. She regards the notion of emotional containment as fundamental in her work with families and individuals – providing a framework for clinical interventions, but also team operation and culture. Through her practice, Chryssa aims to create a secure base for the people she works with to explore ideas and meanings and achieve preferred outcomes. She uses an attachment informed approach and is particularly passionate about using internal and family resources to deal with stresses and relationship difficulties. Her work is informed by additional training on Mentalization Based Therapy, Attachment based Family Therapy and Emotion Focused Family therapy. She places a lot of emphasis on the interactions between family members or the different systems individuals participate in, as well as the various contexts within which emotional or communication difficulties occur.