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Understanding Anxiety and Depression

About this Online Workshop

Learn to understand and reduce anxiety to support yourself, your staff, and/or your clients as we continue to live in uncertain times. This interactive workshop will give you the understanding and skills you need to help yourself, staff and clients move forward with more focus and manage their anxious minds.

The second part of this workshop will teach you about the causes and types of depression, the signs and symptoms of depression, and the most up-to-date techniques currently used to intercept depression’s progression. The workshop will also highlight the approaches used to support individuals in coping with and overcoming their depression symptoms and prevent future depressive episodes.

NOTE: This is an interactive, virtual workshop, which is different from a webinar. Participants will be expected to participate through voice and video, and to engage with each other and the facilitator in large and small group discussions, to learn from each other and practice skill development.

Learning Objectives

  • Understanding the pathways of anxiety in the brain
  • The root of anxiety: understanding the amygdala
  • How the cortex creates anxiety
  • Taking control of your anxiety
  • Reaping the benefits of relaxation
  • Understanding anxiety triggers
  • The importance of exercise, nutrition, and sleep for anxiety reduction
  • Restructuring thought patterns that cause anxiety
  • Identifying and learning the signs, symptoms, causes and types of depression
  • Learning the cognitive and lifestyle changes necessary to combat depression
  • Breaking the procrastination-depression connection
  • Recognizing depressive thinking and overcoming depressive thoughts
  • Albert Ellis‘s ABCDE Method for overcoming depression
  • Overcoming hopelessness thinking
  • Coping with depressive symptoms
  • Attending to anxieties
  • Confronting negative emotions
  • Behavioural methods to feel good again
  • Putting an end to depression planning

Who Should Attend?

Any staff or manager in a human, social, or community services organization.

Duration

Four, three-hour workshops over the course of two weeks.

Registration

No session dates are currently offered.

Workshop Dates and Registration

All sessions in Eastern Standard Time.

Pricing

  • Members: $305 + HST
  • Non-Members: $320 + HST
  • Non-Member Education Level 1/2: $400 + HST

Bring This Workshop to Your Staff

OMSSA can work with you to deliver this workshop to you and your team in an in-person format at a time that works for you. We can also customize the content of each workshop to meet your specific needs. Contact OMSSA’s Director, Education Christie Herrington to learn more about bringing this workshop to your staff.

Dana Kamin

About the Facilitator

Dana Kamin is a Registered Social Worker (RSW), an experienced clinical counsellor specializing in anxiety, depression, trauma, and hoarding, and the owner of ThriveWell Counselling. Dana has over 25 years’ experience in the social service and mental health sector, as well as being a highly experienced workshop facilitator.

Dana has worked in a variety of settings, including drop-in, food bank, and shelter settings, as well as within client homes. Dana’s diverse experiences include providing crisis intervention, prevention and de-escalation, case management, and counselling, with diverse populations, including homeless, low-income, LGBTQ+ and hoarding populations.

Dana is well versed working with a variety of trauma-Informed, person-centred and integrated approaches, including Harm Reduction, Motivational Interviewing (MI), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (DBT), and Mindfulness, as well as a number of trauma healing approaches including EMDR and Internal Family Systems.

Dana creates an engaging and participatory workshop environment, where intersectionality and lived experience can be brought into the learning environment. Dana encourages participant sharing and exploration of experiences as a way of learning together. Using examples from participants, case studies and/or role plays, and interactive group work, Dana creates a safe and non-judgmental space, to learn and practice practical strategies to address a variety of challenging situations.

Technical Requirements

OMSSA will be hosting this virtual workshop on Zoom, an online, interactive platform that you can join straight from your web browser, or by downloading ‘Zoom Client for Meetings’ on your computer or tablet.

Participants will be expected to join the workshop via both video and audio. Participants should therefore have access to a desktop computer, laptop computer or tablet with:

  • a webcam or built-in camera
  • a built-in microphone or a headphone jack where you can plug in a headset or earphones

We strongly recommend that participants use a headset or earphones with a built-in microphone in order to limit background noise.

System requirements: Click here for more detailed information on system requirements from Zoom.