Our New Forest Wellbeing Service is made up of two wellbeing centres - Marcella House in Hythe and The Hollies in New Milton. We'll work with you to set goals for your time with us and find the right activities to help you work towards them. 

Our support is always specific and personalised to you, but might include a combination of creative arts, active groups, mindfulness and useful specific short courses for anxiety, self-esteem or life skills. As we're located in the New Forest National Park, we like to make use of our stunning surroundings where we can through gardening, walking and even boat trips.

Our support is not counselling. Instead, we give you the tools to take action, learn how to manage your wellbeing and widen your network of support. Whatever challenges you may be facing in your life, we can help you build the confidence to manage and understand your symptoms.

What support do we offer?

• A short-term programme of recovery based courses
• Assistance to learn skills/self-help techniques to manage mental health
• Signposting to other relevant local services, including to counselling s
• A keyworker who will assist you through your recovery journey whilst you are with us
• Wellbeing and emotional support, face to face, via telephone, text, email or video call
• Peer support

Groups for wellbeing:

• Coda creative wellbeing: A relaxed, drop-in art group led by local facilitators, offering weekly creative sessions to support adults with diverse mental health needs. No prior experience or artistic talent is required. It's a relaxed and friendly safe-space where you can either let the experienced facilitator guide you, or you can bring in your own arts and crafts to work on.
• Creative writing: Creative Writing for Wellbeing sessions offer a safe space and friendly environment for people to try their hand at creative writing, working with topical prompts and a generous helping of group conversation to help the creativity flow.
• Keep Well groups: Weekend and weekday mixed social groups, allow social connection, build confidence and allows access to creative activities.
• Young person’s group: 18-25 mixed groups providing a mix of coping skills for anxiety and low mood and social connection.

Please note, all groups except creative wellbeing and writing for wellbeing require a referral. Referrals can be completed here.

Courses for wellbeing:

• Anxiety management: This 6-week course explores the symptoms of anxiety, how it impacts your emotions and practical skills to help break the cycle.
• Lifting low mood: We will look at what the distinction between low mood and depression is. Look at how this can impact our behaviour and our world, and then learn practical skills to manage these feelings over 6 weeks.
• Self-esteem: Learn about the causes of low self-esteem and how it can impact your mood as well as learning practical skills to manage these feelings This course is 6 weeks.
• Decider skills: You will learn Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) based techniques to help you manage your emotional wellbeing. 

We also work with partner organisations who run various courses from our centres.