Experts join forces to offer free mental health talks
Mental-health professionals in Edmonton are offering a free counselling service for those experiencing anxiety, depression and other conditions during COVID-19.
The online service provides science-based therapies for people feeling overwhelmed by stressors including job loss, schooling children at home, and floods in Fort Mcmurray.
“The need for mental-health help right now is just huge,” said organizer Dr. Peter Silverstone, a physician and professor of psychiatry at the University of Alberta.
Silverstone, along with mental-health workers from Edmonton’s south side Primary Care Network and the University of Alberta, has developed a series of half-hour therapeutic talks available for free to anyone who registers.
The sessions are livestreamed and interactive.
Participants can use a chat box and respond to surveys to express how they are feeling about a range of issues.
There is no one-on-one support or counselling.
The program is run through the Centre for Online Mental Health Support (COMHS), which is working with a local mental health charity called Blankets of Love. Silverstone (who is on the board of Blankets of Love) and the other counsellors are donating their time to the effort, while applying for grants to cover future costs.
The sessions, delivered over two days for a half-hour each day, are geared toward health care and essential workers, parents, seniors, people who live alone, and teenagers, among others.
There is a session on mindfulness and another on brain science.
“The problem of high need and low solutions has been around for a long time and people have been talking about electronic solutions for at least 10 years,” Silverstone said.
“But no one has done this kind of comprehensive, continuum of care in an electronic space ...
COVID-19 has made us say, ‘We have to do it.’”
Counselling for essential workers talks about dealing with fears of getting sick, and what to do with people who are not respectful.
A session for parents helps strategize taking time for yourself. In a session for Fort Mcmurray citizens, Silverstone showed participants photos of the 2016 Fort Mcmurray wildfire, and of the recent floods.
In a brief live survey, all the participants said seeing the slides made them feel anxious. Silverstone then talked about ways to ease those feelings.
The sessions introduce evidence-based techniques, such as cognitive behaviour therapy, meditation, breathing exercises, and animal therapy.
“The goal is to help you manage some of the particularly difficult situations that you are in today,” Silverstone told his digital audience.
There is no panacea for mental health challenges, no pill that will make it all better. But the tools taught in the sessions are “realistic and practical,” Silverstone said.
He hopes that the new program is just the beginning, and eventually wants to see COMHS offer small group sessions online, and one-onone sessions, too.
“The impact of COVID-19 and the economic catastrophe will be so profound on long-term mental health that we need to start planning for that now,” Silverstone said.