WHEN Anne Paton mixes socially, there is one subject which is strictly off limits.

The subject in question is work. For the genial Glaswegian spends her days counselling people with mental health problems.

A strict code of confidentiality means she's unable to discuss what goes on behind her closed door at The Bridge in Old Trafford.

Anne is no stranger to trauma herself, having suffered two family bereavements within the space of 14 months.

However, she believes the loss of loved ones has made the bond between her and the surviving Patons even stronger.

"We did have a lot to go through but that double blow to a very happy family helped me to appreciate just what anguish of mind really means," she says.

Counsellors are trained to put people at their ease but this big hearted 61 year old seems to have a natural gift for that. She confesses to having the sort of manner which makes people want to 'spill' the contents of their troubled mind.

The glasses and shawl make her look like an agony aunt. Walking through her place of work she commands a certain respect and yet remains eminently approachable.

Anne, a former teacher, came to Manchester in the late '60's after four and a half years living in Jamacia. A woman who'd spent some of her childhood in Scotland in a house with no running water, suddenly found herself with a servant at her beck and call. She didn't like it.

"I didn't like inventing a dog for the maid so she could take the scraps home for the dog and I really knew they weren't for the dog at all. It was very difficult to marry that with my political beliefs and I couldn't possibly have given her more money because that would've rocked the boat," says Anne, who eventually replaced her employee with a washing machine, after securing her a better job.

Anne waxes lyrical about her time in the Caribbean. She went there to be with her husband Fred, who had been posted to Jamaica as part of his post graduate physics course.

Her late husband found it difficult to re-adjust to life in the UK after spending ten years working in the sun. Anne, on the other hand, found it easier to leave because she'd always felt uneasy about the class distinction which existed on the island.

She was attracted to working in mental health because of personal reasons.

Her first step was to get involved with the charity MIND, as it prepared to open a drop in centre in Sale, where she now lives. She then became secretary of Trafford Mental Health Forum.

A mother of two, she was also present at the birth of The Bridge, which spent its formative years in an end terraced house in Old Trafford. She agreed to take on the running of the drop in centre, which now operates from Broome House.

For Anne, one of the best things about working as a counsellor is the friendship she's able to build up with her clients.

"I've got hundreds of people with whom I've had a very special, close relationship. For counselling to work you have to get to the stage where you're allowing the person to open up to his or her deepest thoughts and blackest imaginings," she says.

While building friendship is an important part of Anne's work, she's acutely aware that there are certain professional boundaries she mustn't cross. The people who seek her help have varying degrees of mental illness.

She's never been disturbed by what somebody has told her in a counselling session but admits to the occasional churning of the tummy when clients are unleashing their anger or upset. However, she does have a strategy for coping with that.

"Your head is coping with the situation - you try to calm that person down, you call the person by their first name and tell them everything's going to be all right," says Anne, who trained in psychotherapy before doing a general counselling course at Manchester University.

Anne has two daughters, Erica and Jill and a grandson called Andrew. In her spare time she enjoys painting, classical music and the theatre. Anne is currently working on a children's story based on the family history for her grandson.