A warm welcome to Elpitha Support Groups. We are passionate about increasing support for mothers struggling with post natal depression, and the Elpitha Handbook and Course represent a practical, hands-on approach to sharing our experience of providing a highly effective local support group for mums. We aim to make it easier for health care workers and volunteers to access the skills and materials needed to help mums and their families. 

We believe all of us, at some time in our times, struggle with low mood and depression and, although Elpitha focuses on mothers with young children, it contains within it lifelines to help lift any one of us out of the black hole of depression. The development of Elpitha has been supervised by Noel Sawyer, a BABCP accredited therapist, clinical supervisor and trainer, who was formely head of CBT Diploma and Masters at Anglia Ruskin University and has worked as an NHS therapist for 29 years.

If you are a health care professional or volunteer looking for information and materials to set up a support group in your own area, then the Elpitha Handbook provides all the practical and theoretical information required for running a group, plus the evaluative procedure used. The complete 110 page Elpitha Handbook can be downloaded in PDF format using the link on the right. If you would be interested in attending an Elpitha Course, which includes the Elpitha Handbook as well as 2 days training in setting up and delivering a support group, then please register your interest here. Whether you attend a course with us, or use the Epitha Handbook to guide you in setting up a support group, we cannot emphasise enough how important it is that the support group programme is delivered in it's entirety. If the detailed process, as explained within the Elpitha Handbook, is not adhered to in relation to the running of the course pre, during and post delivery, then the benefits to those attending will be significantly reduced.

In addition to the Elpitha Handbook we also provide access to:

• The latest evaluations from our most recent 2016 group, the first to be run independently by Home-Start facilitators trained by Elpitha. These qualitative and quantitative results demonstrate just how effective the Elpitha approach is at helping mothers through depression
• A 2011 dissertation which analysed the the benefits of Elpitha (at that time known as the Stepping Stones support group)
• A Nursing Times article on the benefits of CBT-based support groups for postnatal depression

In the 'For mums' area of our site you can find some examples of the principals and self-help resources we use in working with mums.

If you would like to talk to someone to find out more we would love to hear from you, please use the Contact us link below to get in touch. We hope you find the resources on this site useful.