Work Ethic Archives - Kate Anthony

#wmhd15 – How Post-War Countries are Meeting MH Challenges

October 10, 2015 by Kate Anthony

We all get used to our own government’s attitudes to poor mental health, and with apologies for a fairly sweeping statement, those attitudes generally fall short of the ideal. A common theme is that if you have a broken leg, you get treatment – but if you have a broken mind, you are sidelined, often feared, and usually facing an uphill struggle to gain the treatment you need.
But what if you live in a country where the concept of mental health and the attention it deserves is so new that finding the route to satisfactory help is something of a mystery to you?

My company, the Online Therapy Institute, is proud to work with a small organisation in Kosovo – and will soon be working with a similar organisation in Albania – in bringing safe mental health assistance to those people living in these post-war countries. Many places in Eastern Europe simply don’t have the infrastructure that countries such as the UK and USA have in place for treating mental health issues – however seemingly broken those infrastructures may be.

But what such countries in Eastern Europe DO have is a strong will to make things better for their young populations, and they also have the Internet. The issues these young populations face are many and diverse, particularly in the years after the war ended and as the countries rebuild.

Foundation Together Kosova is a small non-profit organisation with the cheering slogan “Nuk de Vet!” (You Are Not Alone!). To reach out to their citizens suffering with mental health problems, they run a forum-based website and chat service. They ensure their volunteer mental health professionals are trained to work in the online environment, and are about to hold a second conference day in Pristina (the capital of Kosova) to spread awareness of mental health issues, particularly those faced by young people.

I’m telling you all this because as part of World Mental Health Day, this small charity deserves attention for quietly getting on with mental health assistance in their part of the world. In my often daily interactions with the volunteers as they work through my training programme, I hear their dedication and their commitment to “getting it right” in a country where there are few ground rules for counselling and therapeutic services – let alone online services.

The Internet has transformed mental health services – most counselling and psychotherapy organisations (among those in other helping professions) have an online presence, and we are now very used to Googling our symptoms of distress before we visit our medical practitioner. That a small charity in an often overlooked country is there at the forefront of online mental health – not only to make a difference to the people but also to help shape the mental health services of the future – is something we as a world can be proud of.

Cautionary Tales in Using Social Media

April 29, 2015 by Kate Anthony

I saw this story from my news source Naked Security this morning, and it set me thinking about just how important our social media presence is as professionals who have a client base.

In brief, a judge (yes, an actual County Judge) overseeing a troubling case about a man who allegedly imprisoned his 9-year old son as a punishment took to Facebook to comment on what was going on inside the courtroom. Her status updates included comments on items of evidence being submitted and links to news stories about the case. By doing so, she cast “reasonable doubt” on her own impartiality, and the defence team moved to have her struck from the case (successfully).

Now, without getting into a discussion about what her rights are under the USA First Amendment itself (which I don’t think any of us have time for at the moment), this story does give us an important reminder about the responsibilities we have to preserve the confidentiality of our clients, whatever our profession.

When you, as a professional, see something on the internet go viral, consider what the impact would be on your client if the same thing happened to your post, however well intentioned it was and however much you had thought you had disguised the client information. The nature of social media is in the title! It’s designed to be “social”. Therefore, what you post on social media isn’t meant to be a private observation about something – and if it can be shared, it runs the risk of being shared to people who know your client and can identify them. That’s the first consideration of confidentiality gone out of the window straight away.

I’ve seen colleagues on Facebook express relief in a status post when a “difficult” client cancels, and I’ve seen them note being late hitting the road to a client appointment the “morning after the night before!” These posts may be done flippantly, or even intended not to be taken entirely seriously (the second example included a winky, btw). But before you post anything to the unforgiving (and permanent) internet, remember what it will look like out of context and before a client complaints panel by your professional organisation. If you are in any doubt at all about the implications of what you are about to post – just don’t post it.

All our trainees taking our Certified Cyber Facilitator or Certified Cyber Therapist course get training in using social media as a mental health professional. If the story about the Texas Judge makes alarm bells ring about what you are putting out there on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIN or any of the other social networks, please do consider joining them!

🙂

Mindfulness at Work

April 15, 2015 by Kate Anthony

I wrote recently about my regular column for the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy’s Counselling at Work Journal, and I’m pleased to share the Winter 2014 column on being mindful in the workplace.

We can learn lessons from the huge companies that surround us on a daily basis, and I was particularly taken with how Google appointed their own Head of Mindfulness to ensure employees pay attention to their emotional wellbeing. While we can’t all afford such luxurious appointments in our team of employees, we can take heed that being mindful is as important as our physical fitness, and intentionally seek to counter the continual bombardment of information that the technologically enhanced world gives us through our devices. These counter-measures need not be huge – we don’t have to find time in our days to ponder vast seas or climb huge mountains – we can find small ways of ensuring that at least part of our day includes fresh air, a nice view, and a physically healthy pursuit.

Some days I feel tied to my laptop! It’s true I am here at the Lenovo-face pretty much all day and the vast majority of the evening, and if I didn’t feel strongly about ensuring I include some form of screen break intentionally I probably would have developed those square eyes our parents warned us about. So my own way of connecting to the world outside is to ignore online news sources and walk to the local newsagents each day for a paper (dead-tree!) copy of my newspaper, and weather permitting, sit in the garden to read it. I’m lucky to live near Linlithgow Palace and Loch, so each day I can admire the beautiful historical building and nod to the swans and other wildlife. My main news sources may be 24 hours out of date, but at least I can feel connected to life without a modem for a while!

Read my article on the importance of mindfulness in the workplace by downloading it from the BACP Workplace Journal website, and remember to look up from your device during your work day when you can!

First Steps to Training!

January 2, 2015 by Kate Anthony

OK, the decorations are down, the fireworks are burnt out, and the new year resolutions are under way for the forseeable future at least. But have you thought of your Continuing Professional Development (CPD) needs as we charge into 2015? Do those needs include a feeling of how you really (really) ought to take your skills into the digital world that your clients inhabit but that you just haven’t been able to get around to yet? Would you like some guidance as to how easy this is even at an introductory level?

We’ve revisited our small courses about the world of Cyberspace and Online Therapy, and now offer them at a two-tier price level depending on just how much mentoring you desire from the experts in the field! We don’t pretend these are full trainings (see our wealth of that sort of thing here!), but they are there in case you want to know more about a specific technology, more about an area of Cyberspace you are unsure of, or even in case you want to dip your toes into our teaching methods and see how we roll!

These short courses can be taken with full lesson-by-lesson mentoring for just £150, or with no mentoring at all for just £75! You get full access to our resources and your CPD Certificate either way – we just want to be sure we meet all needs and all budgets!

And if you are ready to take your learning a step further at some point down the line, you can deduct the cost of these courses from our full CCF or PGCert trainings once completed if paying in full!

Start by checking out the list of small courses here, give Kate a shout if you have any questions at kate@onlinetherapyinstitute.com, and start 2015 by taking that first step into the world of online therapy!