Persistent low mood
Support for ongoing sadness and emotional heaviness.
Online Depression Counselling · Portsmouth
Online depression counselling for Portsmouth, by secure video. From a base in Hove I work with people across Portsmouth, from across Portsea Island, Southsea and Old Portsmouth to the streets around the Spinnaker Tower, with the same BACP-registered, confidential support as an in-person session, and no journey.

In and around Portsmouth
Life in Portsmouth
Low mood in Portsmouth is easy to miss underneath all the movement. The city is busy and tightly packed, the Historic Dockyard keeps its own hours, and there is always something to be getting on with. Depression works away underneath that. It shows up as a flatness that arrives after a partner sails, or when a posting ends and the structure goes with it, or across a long winter of shifts at Queen Alexandra Hospital. Southsea in February is a different place from Southsea in July. People keep going to work, replying, cooking, and feel steadily less present in any of it, which makes the whole thing very hard to name out loud.
Areas covered
Wherever you are in Portsmouth, the work is the same, a calm, confidential space shaped around you.
The local picture
Official figures for Portsmouth, for context rather than as a description of you.
recorded depression on GP registers stood at 14% of patients aged 18+ in 2024/25, below the England average of 14.3%. Source: OHID Fingertips – Depression: QOF prevalence (2024/25).
Reviewed June 2026.
Depression counselling here is steady and structured: we focus on the low mood, lost motivation and disconnection affecting you now, and on rebuilding the energy, routine and self-worth that hold a day together.
Because the work itself is the same wherever you live, the detail sits in one place rather than all of them: the full depression counselling page sets out the methods, session lengths and fees covers the practicalities, and my credentials and registration covers accountability.
Sessions run over a secure, encrypted video link, held to the same BACP confidentiality as meeting in person. After a free fifteen-minute call, you join from any private space on a phone, tablet or laptop.
There is no room here; Bradley is in Hove and the work happens online by secure video. Depression makes journeys expensive in a way that is hard to explain to anybody who has not had it, so removing the journey removes the main reason people stop attending. The session goes ahead on a bad morning, from wherever you already are, and that continuity is exactly what low mood erodes if it is left to.
Book a free 15-minute callWhat I help with
Support for ongoing sadness and emotional heaviness.
Help with drive, focus and finishing tasks.
Support for withdrawal and feeling numb.
Rebuilding the rhythms that hold a day together.
Gently challenging a harsh inner voice.
Finding your way back to the parts of life that feel distant.
Depression Counselling in Portsmouth
Depression often surfaces here after a long run of being the steady one. People describe waking already flat, losing interest in what used to matter, letting messages sit unanswered for days on end. The work is structured and unhurried. We begin by looking at what a week actually holds now, then rebuild it in pieces small enough to be achievable, since action reliably comes before appetite where low mood is concerned. After that we take apart the thinking that reads all of this as weakness. Recorded depression on GP registers stood at 14% of patients aged 18 and over in 2024/25, a little under the England average of 14.3%, which makes nobody's individual experience any smaller. NHS Talking Therapies Hampshire, or italk, accepts self-referrals for depression, and Solent Mind runs groups and wellbeing support locally.
Not sure if it is right for you? A free fifteen-minute call is a no-obligation way to talk it through.
Book a free 15-minute callMy online counselling sits alongside the help available locally. In Portsmouth, you can refer yourself directly to NHS Talking Therapies Hampshire (italk) for free NHS talking therapy, with no GP referral needed.
Private sessions with me usually mean you can start sooner and stay with the same counsellor throughout; I am glad to work alongside any NHS or GP support you already have.
Other local and national support verified for this area includes:
This is not a crisis service. If anyone is in immediate danger call 999. For urgent mental health support, call NHS 111 and choose the mental health option. The Samaritans are free, day or night, on 116 123, or text SHOUT to 85258.
Portsmouth questions
With one short message. We then arrange a free 15-minute call at a time you choose, and the call asks nothing of you beyond turning up to it. No forms, no assessment, no waiting list. If you miss it, another can be arranged just as easily.
Sixty minutes is £80, ninety minutes is £100 and two hours is £120, with most depression work running weekly at the hourly rate. The initial 15-minute call is free of charge. Sessions are paid for individually, so there is nothing to commit to up front.
Yes. Self-referral is open to anyone registered with a GP in England, and depression is one of the things the service is set up for. Waits move around through the year, so starting privately while you hold that place is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
It can, and the aim is always to widen things beyond the screen. A held hour gives the week one dependable edge, and much of the work is about rebuilding contact with people around you slowly enough that it does not become another thing you have failed at.
It might well be. Flatness, rather than obvious sadness, is one of the commonest shapes low mood takes during a long separation. We would look at what has quietly dropped out of your weeks and put some of it back before anything heavier gets attempted.
Long separations and carrying a household alone can absolutely contribute to depression, and the isolation makes it harder to spot. Counselling offers a private space to take it seriously, held online from home and fitted around childcare and the rhythm of a service routine.
Often within a few days of your free consultation. Seeing Bradley online means no journey across the city to a clinic when motivation is low, whether you are in Old Portsmouth, Cosham or near the naval base. That ease matters with depression.
Fees are £80 for sixty minutes, £100 for ninety and £120 for two hours, after a free fifteen-minute consultation. NHS Talking Therapies Hampshire is free to self-refer to, but waits can build, so private sessions let Portsmouth residents begin without delay.
When low mood makes leaving home hard, online removes that step for Portsmouth clients. Bradley keeps some evening appointments around naval and shift schedules, and the Hove room is a coastal train ride away if in-person work would suit you.
A free fifteen-minute call is the simplest place to start, no obligation, just a chance to see if we are the right fit.
Also available online across London & South East: Southampton, Chichester. See all of London & South East.
Close to this in Portsmouth, there is anxiety counselling, counselling and therapy and psychotherapy.
You may also find it useful to read about a solution-focused exercise and small repeated steps.
Closer to the Sussex coast? The same depression counselling is available in person, in Brighton, or see every area I cover.