About Us


Susthama Kim is the founder of Dharma Therapy. She follows a holistic approach with mindfulness, compassion and acceptance at its core. She is trained in Buddhist psychology and here to assist you in exploring your thoughts, feelings and challenges in your life.

She is the Head of the Order of Amida Buddha which is a western Pure Land Buddhist group (www.amidashu.org), psychotherapist, and supervisor from a Buddhist background. She specialises in spiritual and mental health and provides both short and long-term therapy to adults, young and old, no matter where you live as she is currently working on-line as well as face to face.

Her areas of experience include:

Anxiety

Depression

Stress

Bereavement and loss

other general mental health issues


She offers a compassionate and warm approach to reflect on the difficulties or problems you are experiencing in a safe and confidential environment. Counselling isn’t about giving you solutions or advice, but deeply appreciating your experiences in life and to give you a chance to see things from different perspectives.

She works with people from all walks of life and backgrounds, coming with a diverse range of problems. As a fully-qualified counsellor she is an accredited member of the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy, and abides by their code of ethics.

If you would like to go through your private healthcare insurance, she is an affiliate with AXA, AVIVA, BUPA, Nuffield, WPA and Vitality.





LOCAL HELP AND SUPPORT FOR TIMES OF EMERGENCY AND CRISIS

I do not offer crisis response.

If you need help or support

THE SAMARITANS
116 123 free from any phone
0330 094 5717 local call charges apply
SPA
T: 0300 777 0707
(Mental Health Crisis Team)
HOUSING SUPPORT TO ESCAPE FROM DOMESTIC ABUSE
T: 01923 776611
REFUGE
T: 0808 2000 247


Cancellation Policy

I understand that things come up, and choices need to be made which can change your schedules. 

I respectfully request 48 hours notice to cancel or reschedule your session. Charges apply to sessions cancelled within 48 hours.



Your privacy is important to us

Introduction

Your privacy is very important to us and you can be confident that your personal information will be kept safe and secure and will only be used for the purpose it was given to me. We adhere to current data protection legislation, including the General Data Protection Regulation (EU/2016/679) (the GDPR), the Data Protection Act 2018 and the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003.

This privacy notice tells you what we will do with your personal information from initial point of contact through to after your therapy has ended.

The registration number is: ZB269979.


How I use your information?

Initial contact

When you contact us with an enquiry about our counselling services we will collect information to register you as a client. This will include your name and address, telephone number, email address, as well as GP name and address. Alternatively, your GP or other health professional may send us your details when making a referral or a parent or trusted individual may give us your details when making an enquiry on your behalf. If you decide not to proceed we will ensure all your personal data is deleted within one week. If you would like us to delete this information sooner, just let us know.


While you are accessing counselling

Rest assured that everything you discuss with us is confidential. The following list are times when we will have to break confidentiality:

  1. When the client poses an imminent danger to themselves or others, and breaking confidentiality is necessary to resolve the danger.
  2. When we suspect child, elder, or dependent adult abuse.
  3. When the client has directed the therapist to share information about their case.
  4. When the therapist receives a qualifying court order.

In each case, we will always speak to you about this first, unless there are safeguarding issues that prevent this.


We will keep a record of your personal details to help the therapeutic process run smoothly. These details are kept securely in a password protected file and are not shared with any third party. We will keep written notes of each session, these are kept in a notebook. For security reasons I do not retain text messages for more

than six months. If there is relevant information contained in a text message we will report it in a secured document on a password protected computer. Likewise, any email correspondence will be deleted after 6 months if it is not important. If necessary we will report it in a secured document on a password protected computer.


After counselling has ended

Once counselling has ended, your records will be kept for seven years from the end of our contact with each other and

are then securely destroyed. If you want us to delete your information sooner than this, please tell us.


We are happy to chat through any questions you might have about our data protection policy and you can contact us via susthamatherapy@gmail.com

‘Data controller’ is the term used to describe the person/organisation that collects and stores and has responsibility for people’s personal data. In this instance, the data controller is Susthama Kim.