Psychiatrist
Dr Andrew McKensey
Psychiatrist and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist
Dr Andrew McKensey is a psychiatrist with specialist expertise in psychotherapy and the treatment of complex and longstanding psychological difficulties.
In addition to his medical and specialist training in psychiatry, Dr McKensey has completed a further six years of intensive training in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. This provides an additional way of understanding psychological difficulties, particularly when a person’s experience cannot be adequately understood through symptoms or diagnosis alone.
Dr McKensey has a particular interest in people whose difficulties are complex, longstanding, or difficult to make sense of. Often people know that something is wrong, but find that the diagnoses or explanations they have been given do not fully capture their experience.
His approach is relationship-based and begins with the understanding that our difficulties usually come from somewhere. Ways of thinking, feeling and relating that cause problems in the present may have developed for good reasons, sometimes as necessary ways of adapting to difficult experiences or relationships earlier in life. Understanding what these patterns have meant, the function they have served, and why they remain necessary can open up the possibility of doing things differently.
Medication and diagnosis can be valuable and remain part of his psychiatric practice. However, they sit within a broader understanding of the person, their history, relationships and inner life.
Dr McKensey provides both specialist psychiatric assessment and longer-term, in-depth psychotherapy. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy offers an opportunity to gradually understand recurring emotional and relationship patterns, including those that may operate outside our immediate awareness. The aim is not simply to reduce symptoms, but to create the possibility of deeper and more enduring change.
Dr McKensey also provides individual and group supervision for mental health practitioners and facilitates Balint groups.
