“Our relationships define us: asked to describe yourself in four words you will probably use one that defines your relationship status. If our relationship is going well we feel fantastic but as soon as it goes badly we can start to question everything.” (Dr Lucy Atcheson’s Guide to Perfect Relationships, Dr Lucy Atcheson, PsychD, Member British Psychological Society)

In today’s world, one subject dominates the discussion in therapy rooms: relationships. Radio, TV and print media continually focus on relationships because they know it’s a difficult area for most people - and a subject of constant fascination. That’s why Dr Lucy Atcheson has written Dr Lucy Atcheson’s Guide to Perfect Relationships, a practical four-week course that can help you sort out your relationship issues.

Based in her private Harley Street practice Dr Lucy Atcheson is a counselling psychologists for relationship and addiction issues. Aged 32, she has been with her partner for 16 years and happily married for eight - so, clearly, she practices what she preaches! But Dr Lucy is not just a therapist who cares for the urban unhappy. In 1998 she spent a year living in a Romania orphanage where she slept in the dormitory with her female patients to protect them from the regular ‘pimping out’ they suffered at the hands of the nurses - their supposed carers. Dr Lucy has also conducted research into Victims of Torture and worked with many patients in custody. As well as her day-to-day work helping people forge happier lives, Lucy is happy to discuss these more unusual and intense experiences.

Dr Lucy is a regular contributor on the radio and has also made several television appearances including ITV’s Make Me Perfect, Tonight with Trevor MacDonald, Turn Back Your Body Clock, and I Smack and I am Proud, a programme in which she took on the challenge of persuading parents not to smack their children and Panic Room, a BBC3 series about curing phobias.