MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES
CAREER AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Choosing the right career can be challenging. Whether individuals are fresh into the job market, facing a forced layoff or retirement, finding a job that fits your interests, experience, education, lifestyle and personality is important to your feelings of self-esteem and personal success.
At Forest Hill Centre we are able to help you find what’s best and most realistic for you. Through assessments, coaching and counseling we guide you to discover your best career fit.
And if you’re looking to grow professionally, our assessments, online professional development training courses, offered by business professionals, can give you some tools and tips to improve your career effectiveness.
STRESS MANAGEMENT
Today there are many sources of stress that are difficult for people to manage. Some we create, through the expectations we place on ourselves and others, by how we think about and respond to the world and the people around us, by trauma or difficulties we may have experienced in our past. Other stress is external: job demands, relationship challenges, our communication style, time management, health concerns to name just a few.
No two people handle stress the same way. Our therapists are trained to help you understand your unique internal and external sources of stress and find the most effective ways to navigate your challenges. Our multi-disciplinary approach can include CBT, mindfulness, psychodynamic and relational psychology.
PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS
Creating and sustaining successful personal relationships with significant others, family members and friends is typically an area of life that presents many challenges over a lifetime. Individuals often do not understand how their choices, behaviors, attitudes, expectations, and personalities are impacting their relational world. People too often blame others for the relationship difficulties they encounter and are somewhat resistant or unaware of their own role in their relationship struggles. We assist individuals in building self-awareness around their impact on others and encourage them to take personal responsibility for their contribution to their interpersonal problems.
This is the most powerful way to influence change in relationships since we cannot change other people but often by transforming ourselves we find that in turn our relationships improve as well and that others in turn respond to us differently. We offer individual, couple and family therapy and often work with other dyads including siblings, parents, and other extended family members as required.
LIFE TRANSITIONS AND LIFE CYCLE ISSUES
All stages of life present different challenges that can create stress and adjustment issues. Whether it be marriage, divorce, having children, fertility, dealing with loss or an ailing family member, health issues or job loss and retirement, there are often instances throughout life where some guidance, insight and support can be helpful in working through the transition. Our services can be very helpful to individuals facing life crises and obstacles encountered at different stages of the life cycle.
Young adults often struggle negotiating their transition from dependence to autonomy with some clarity around who they want to be and how they want their future to look. Picking a career or educational path, building romantic relationships, working and supporting themselves can all be overwhelming and sometimes psychotherapy and certain types of assessments can be very beneficial in creating a vision for their lives along with an action plan and strategies for how to achieve their goals once they have identified them. We enjoy working with young adults to support them and inspire them to find their ambition and desire as well as ways to realize their possibilities.
FERTILITY SERVICES
We offer an array of services focused specifically on supporting your fertility journey. We work with individuals, couples and families who are experiencing primary or secondary infertility. Providing counselling to both intended parents as well as surrogates. We work with egg and sperm donors as well as recipients. We have first hand experience in alternative family building options. We can support you every step along your journey.
If you are working with a fertility clinic and using donor conception, we can help you through this process with your implication counselling. We provide assessments geared specifically for egg donors, sperm donors as well as gestational surrogates.
PROFESSIONAL AND EXECUTIVE SERVICES
Professionals and Executives experience unique pressures and challenges in their professional and personal lives. Stress and demands from work often negatively impact personal relationships and it is important to develop skills to effectively navigate the complexities of challenges at work and at home.
Often these individuals have extensive responsibilities that affect work life balance and in some instances they develop maladaptive coping strategies including addictions, anger management issues, sleep disorders to name a few. In their professional worlds, managing power, dealing with employee relations and leadership pressures can become overwhelming. While professionals often posses the talent to perform their “jobs” well the capacity to communicate effectively and handle emotions while under stress can be complicated.
Our therapists understand the many layers of issues encountered by professionals and executives. They are skilled and experienced in providing sophisticated and solution focused problem solving strategies, communication techniques, stress management as well as the psychotherapeutic background to address any addictions, anxieties, depression or other mental health concerns and interpersonal and intimate relationship issues. We also offer couple counseling and other resources for families to support an improved home and work life.
WORKPLACE HARASSMENT AND BULLYING
Over the last decade, more and more patients have been coming for treatment to discuss the challenges they are facing with harassment and bullying in their workplaces. In 2009, Dr. Stephanie Bot and Donna Marshall M.A., developed the HEART (Harassment Education Advisory Response Team) program to prevent, manage and address these issues in workplaces across North America. The program has been presented to the senior team at the Ontario Ministry of Labour and has been endorsed by the Ontario Psychological Association as the only psychologically sound approach to workplace harassment. But, even when companies implement programs like HEART, there are still many individuals who have been psychologically harmed and can benefit from working with therapists who are uniquely skilled and experienced to help them.
Our therapists are educated in harassment legislation and understand the unique psychological impact of workplace trauma. We offer psycho-legal reports for lawyers of harassment victims and we assist individuals suffering from workplace trauma in rebuilding self-esteem, confidence and an ability to advocate for themselves. In additions to our various programs supporting victims of harassment, we have also developed programs that rehabilitate individuals who communicate with overly aggressive, sexual and/or manipulative attitudes and behaviours. Oftentimes, individuals labeled as bullies do not recognize the negative impact of their communication style but through building self-awareness and encouraging a more empathic approach we can usually facilitate a more effective communication pattern moving forward.
E-LEARNING
We want to support individuals in having access to information, insight, skills and strategies from top level professionals in areas that support wellness, mental health, communication as well as personal and professional development. Workright, conceived and developed by Dr. Stephanie Bot and Donna Marshall, M.A. with the contribution of many valued professionals, provides a learning portal for individuals interested in attending online courses that offer exceptional resources to support physical and psychological self-improvement. All courses are available 24/7 and can be taken at your convenience. We have received amazing feedback regarding the impact and usefulness of these seminars. We hope that you enjoy them too!