Picture Founding Trustee Catherine Davies and Arc Service Manager Craig Billington

Celebrating Mental Health Awareness Week

13 to 19 May 2024

The Axminster charity, founded by clinical lead psychotherapist Catherine Davies and GP Dr Barry McKenna, is proud of its achievements in supporting our community through overwhelmingly life changing traumatic events. The impressive statistics speak for themselves. Since opening in 2007, Arc has had over 3,100 referrals, delivering 30,000 hours of counselling patients, training over 50 future therapists, and contributing published research in the specialist trauma care field.

As Catherine Davies explains, As far as I am aware, we are the only UK charity, fully integrated to the medical practice and community it serves, that offers highly specialised trauma treatment, including EMDR. EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing) is often recommended as the best psychological treatment for trauma. Behind these statistics though, there are individual stories of extraordinary courage and often, simple, sheer, stubborn persistence. Through Arc, it is not just the individuals in therapy who benefit, but also their families, friends, employers and employees, as well as the wider Axminster community that Arc strives to make happier and healthier.

Arc operates solely through voluntary contributions as they receive no direct NHS funding. To continue to operate a free therapeutic service to our community, Arc needs funding from donations and charitable events. To learn more about this charity visit arcaxminster.org.