Annabel Battersby is the founder of Compass Psychology and leads it together with Hatty Francis-Ehnholm. To find out more about Annabel’s professional background and the services she provides, you can read her Compass Psychology profile here. In this post, she will be introducing herself on a more personal note.
“Compass Psychology has been my passion project since 2017 when I first got registered as a psychologist in Finland. I had studied in the University of Melbourne in my home country Australia, and worked in public health (in a psychiatric ward and community mental health) as well as in private practices there. But Compass has been the first psychology practice which I’ve worked full time to build and develop over many years. In 2017 I started this work with Dr Jane Tuomola, setting up the New Mother’s Group program and the practice together with her before she moved overseas. Since 2022 I’ve been working with my new business partner Dr Hatty Francis-Ehnholm to build Compass Psychology up as the best quality clinical psychology practice in Helsinki.
Our difference is that besides providing services in English, Swedish, German, Finnish, Spanish and Dutch, we aim to provide clinical psychology services based on the scientist-practitioner method. This means our psychologists attend weekly training in different topics (such as therapy methods; how to treat insomnia or stress; biological processes like the vagus nerve system) and then apply this knowledge to treatment of clients. We are continually learning and constantly applying this expertise to our work as therapists, so that our clients get the best possible and most relevant care and treatment.
I am really happy to be working with a lovely group of professionals and I’m so happy that our team is able to offer such a good service to the foreign language community in Finland.
One thing that bothers me still is that none of us yet have psychotherapy qualifications and we cannot give therapy subsidised by the public health system in Finland. However, I have spent about 3- 4 hours on volunteer work every week this year to fix this situation, advocating for a better situation for foreign trained professionals through work with an association called Psychological Practitioners Finland ry. You can read more about this work here in a recent blog post [https://compasspsychology.fi/2023/08/18/when-you-cant-afford-therapy-in-finland/]
When I am not working hard for these causes, I like to spend time outside in the Finnish nature, trying to get as much sunshine as I can! The climate has been a big adjustment for me coming from Australia, but there are lots of great things about Finland that help compensate for the cold and darkness.
And finally I’d like to say that I have had the most lovely, delightful and thoughtful clients over the years here in Helsinki and have really enjoyed my work with them. If any of them are reading this I would like to send them my warmest wishes!”
