Tag Archives: e-counselling

Would you go Mobile?

Posted by: Priya Senroy on February 29, 2016 4:29 pm

CaronmapI cannot imagine not having a physical location for my counselling practice. That was, to me, an essential building block to set up my practice. Whether it was private or in an organization, I have been fortunate enough to always have a space to operate from. But I sometimes find it to be restricting either geographically or in terms of the hours of operation. E-counselling has more flexibility when it comes to space as the barriers to accessing services are reduced.

I read about a counsellor who has a mobile office-an RV that goes into the community and acts a safe space that has all the necessary amenities and prerequisites to make it and actual ‘office’.

If there are any counsellors out there who are mobile, it would be interesting to get their view point on this and their pros and cons of operating from and office vs. doing e-counselling and vice-versa. We often talk of meeting the clients where they are at, so why not making ourselves mobile, accessible and transportable? We tell ourselves to be creative and think out of the box, so why not work out of a restrictive boxy immobile space?




*The views expressed by our authors are personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CCPA

Healthy Minds AKA Yet Another App

Posted by: Dawn Schell on March 25, 2015 12:00 pm

I know, I know. Yet another app.   This is no ordinary app though. The Royal[1], “one of Canada’s foremost mental health care and academic health sciences centres”, developed the Healthy Minds app[2]. Aimed at post-secondary students, Healthy Minds is “a problem-solving tool to help deal with emotions and cope with the stresses you encounter both on and off campus.”

healthy mindWhen you download Healthy Minds it opens with a short explanatory video showing you how to make best use of the app. The authors of the app ask that you do three things – think about one problem you want to focus on, write what led to the problem, what thoughts, feelings and behaviours this problem caused and what happened after the problem. Why? As Dr. Simon Hatcher says in the video, “So you can change how you react in the future”.

In the Mood section you are prompted with a “how are you feeling?” and you can choose from nine moods. When you click on the submit button you are then sent to a text box where you can write about “what happened before you felt this way”. You can even add a photo if you wish. Once you submit this text, depending on the emotion you chose, you there are helpful suggestions. For example, if you choose “angry” you will be asked if you want to take a moment to try the Breathe activity.

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*The views expressed by our authors are personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CCPA