Sharon Clernon

I am a mammy of 4 young boys and I have over 20 years experience working with people who experience Mental health problems. I qualified with a degree in Psychiatric nursing in 2005 at Napier University in Edinburgh. I moved home to Cork in 2005 and commenced working as a Psychiatric nurse.

I have been very lucky to have been given great opportunities and gained vast experience in my nursing career to work in different areas of mental health such as Psychiatric intensive care settings, acute in-patient units, long stay units and residential care. In 2010 I completed my masters in nursing and commenced working as a  Clinical Nurse Specialist and since then I have practiced as a clinical nurse specialist  in a variety of Mental health areas such as a Crisis nurse in an A&E dept,  Liaison psychiatry, home based crisis team and early intervention in psychosis. I have also completed training in behavioural family therapy and have worked as a behavioural family therapist as part of my role as a clinical nurse specialist.

Throughout the years I have had experience developing modules on mental health and I have spent time tutoring and delivering workshops on mental health programmes and teaching coping strategies to help manage mental health problems to both 3rd level students and professionals. I really enjoy teaching people about mental health as it is a complex area that can be difficult to understand at times when we may be feeling low in mood, stressed and anxious. Knowing skills of how to manage our mental health can be invaluable as it can prevent escalation of our mental health deteriorating and also relapse prevention.

I also provide clinical supervision services to CBT therapists and CBT trainees. I continue to upskill for  my own professional development. I have done some training in compassionate focused therapy (CFT) which can be a very effective additional therapy approach with CBT as it is used to treat problems associated with shame and self criticism which can be hard for people to address with just CBT. I often integrate CFT with CBT as these 2 therapies combined together can have very effective treatment outcomes for my clients.

I am a fully accredited CBT therapist with BABCP and IABCP. I am the proud owner of my own CBT private practice with the past 7 years. I now work full time at Mindview clinic where I provide services such as one to one Cognitive Behavioural Therapy both face to face and online, corporate speaking, webinars, seminars and workshops.  I am very passionate about raising mental health awareness and educating people of all ages about mental health and coping skills to manage the tough days. I have facilitated a number of workshops both in person and online to corporate companies, voluntary organisations and local enterprise organsiations. I have also has facilitated a number of mental health training and teaching of coping skills to young people through secondary school mental health workshops both locally and nationally.