Suicide Prevention

Did you know that suicide is the second leading cause of death for youths between the ages of 15 and 29? According to the World Health Organization (WHO) there are 800,000 suicides yearly. That’s one person taking his/her life every 40 seconds. Furthermore, for every one of those, there are 20 other suicide attempts.

I became passionate about the subject early in my career, as I was once a troubled teen myself. I committed myself to saving at least one person from making a desperate decision after I experienced the suicide of one of my Grade 11 students when I was teaching Social Science and Psychology.

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World Day Against Trafficking

When I first returned to my homeland of Canada two and a half years ago, I was hired as frontline staff in a privately-run group home and was assigned to “Amy”. I was eager to get back to one-on-one work with young women in the hope of guiding them toward empowerment and personal growth.

                              

I had no idea that I would be facing a seventeen-year-old’s trauma of being trafficked for sex within the GTA — and worse still, that she had been a victim of that lucrative industry since she was thirteen years old. Read More Here…

Self-Care

A person can benefit from being cognizant of their self-care at any time throughout the day. The multitude of stress factors that come with everyday life, no matter how trivial they made seem, can easily pile up and take a toll on your wellbeing.

                              

Luckily, there is an easy exercise that you can do to help alleviate stress and tension. It only takes a few minutes and it involves steady, rhythmic breathing that can be done anyway. In fact, you can try the following activity in the middle of your workday if you start to feel overwhelmed by your tasks, or even if you just need to recentre yourself. Read more here…

Resistance is Not Futile! It’s Survival: Fear Me Not, For My Armour is But My Defence

As a chaplain and psychotherapist serving in a correctional setting I am challenged to provide a consistently supportive response to individual presentations involving concurrent mental health and addiction disorders, as well as complex trauma exacerbated by the effects of incarceration and its antecedents. Problem management represents the primary focus of my work as every client, without exception, is in a heightened state of disorientation or transitional crisis and has limited access to supportive resources to help themselves.

                             

Responding to Reluctance
As a responder to those who are experiencing personal problems, I find that most are motivated to be collaborative and engage in the solution-seeking process. However, some clients do exhibit a lack of incentive or assume an antagonistic posture in the initial stages of the helping dialogue, which affects not only the helping process but also the development of a therapeutic relationship. I must admit that I tend to feel more engaged with (and subconsciously committed to)clients who exhibit positive interpersonal cooperation than those who don’t. In a correctional context, it is common to encounter disgruntled individuals who attract negative rather than supportive attention. Though I am careful not to withhold support from those who display reluctance or resistance behavior, it can be a challenge to invest therapeutic time and resources in them when so many eager and contemplative candidates are impatiently waiting in the queue. Read more here....

1 In 5 Canadians Struggle With Chronic Pain. Many Have Not Considered One Of The Best Options To Treat It.

Fibromyalgia does not have a physical cause. Psychotherapy can help.

Having worked in a chronic pain clinic for many years offering both physical therapy and mental health counselling, I sympathize with all those affected by it. Many patients move from one doctor to the next looking for a diagnosis, sample every treatment available to them in a trial and error approach, and even consider surgery only to come across a truth that is difficult to comprehend:chronic pain is often not a result of anything physical.

The frustration is only made worse as so many patients are often told their pain is imaginary or not real because there is no diagnosable physical cause.Consequently, it is oven discounted or dismissed completely.

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