Provider Spotlight: Worry less, reduce stress and get better rest with Skills for Life.
August 11, 2024
Skills for Life, led by clinical psychologist Dr. Lillian Nejad, offers evidence-based programs, tools and resources to help busy professionals improve and maintain their mental health and well-being.
Skills for Life programs go beyond the basics with psychological strategies underpinned by gold standard psychological therapies and theories including Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and positive psychology principles.
Her signature program, Coping with Anxiety in Challenging Times, is a comprehensive series of 10 lessons designed to provide a deep understanding of anxiety. The lessons include behavioural, cognitive and social interventions to calm the mind and body, and reduce vulnerability to anxiety overload. Additionally, the program focuses on building resilience, making value-aligned decisions, and navigating the change process successfully.
Healthcare professionals will gain practical, science-backed skills to effectively cope with distressing feelings and thoughts and respond in more helpful and healthy ways. These skills will not only help them gain confidence to manage their anxiety but also equip them with information and resources that can assist their patients and clients.
Mental Health courses tailored to healthcare professionals
Skills for Life aims to address the most prevalent problems affecting healthcare professionals. According to the National Healthcare Professionals Survey commissioned by Mental Health Australia (2022), healthcare workers in Australia face significant mental health challenges, with high rates of burnout, stress, anxiety, and depression exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2022, 84% of healthcare workers reported increased stress and pressure in the workplace, and 68% attributed staff shortages to burnout, stress, and other mental health conditions. The top three negative personal impacts of working during the pandemic, which have remained consistent over the last three years, include tiredness and fatigue (72%), feeling overwhelmed, anxious, or fearful (56%), and problems getting to sleep or staying asleep (54%).
As a healthcare worker herself, Dr. Lillian Nejad understands the stress, pressure and responsibility that comes with being in a helping profession. With over 25 years as a clinical psychologist in multiple settings including public mental health, community health, university, corporate and private practice, she brings personal experience, evidence-based research and best practice principles to her self-guided online programs.
She also understands the demands on your time, so she has designed Skills for Life programs to be delivered in short, digestible segments in audio or video formats. To enhance your learning, she also includes helpful downloadable worksheets and additional audio exercises so you can practice and progress between sessions at your own pace. “As healthcare professionals, we can’t avoid the tough times at work and the distress it may bring, but we can learn to deal with our professional and personal challenges skillfully and effectively.”
Course content and structure
In addition to Coping with Anxiety in Challenging Times, Dr. Lillian’s Skills for Life programs include:
- Overcoming Insomnia, a 10 lesson audio program to help you improve your ability to fall asleep and stay asleep informed by CBT-I.
- Quick Tips to Reduce Stress, a 9 lesson video program that introduces you to evidence-based strategies to help you calm your body and mind effectively and efficiently.
- Practical Mindfulness, a one session video program that demystifies mindfulness and helps you integrate these practices easily into your life.
Future education will continue to address the most prevalent issues affecting healthcare workers and include Preventing Burnout, Managing Worry, Maintaining Healthy Habits and Building Resilience. All programs are for the purpose of skills training and not a replacement for therapy. If you are experiencing significant or severe psychological symptoms, Dr. Nejad recommends seeking assistance from a mental health professional.
More about Dr Nejad.
In addition to her Skills for Life programs, Dr. Nejad has created a variety of offerings to improve people’s access to high quality mental health information, tools and resources. In her clinical practice, Omnipsych, she offers psychological treatment to adults for a variety of problems and disorders including burnout, anxiety, and depression.
She co-founded Contain Your Brain in 2022, an app that helps you worry less and solve your problems effectively. Worry is a transdiagnostic symptom, not only a major aspect of Generalised Anxiety Disorder, but also other anxiety disorders, mood disorders, and insomnia. Contain Your Brain helps people gain control of their worries by using the psychological strategy, ‘worry time’ and then assisting users to address their worries effectively in worry time with evidence-based tips. Contain Your Brian is one of the only mental health apps that does not collect data from its users, giving people a safe way to store and process their worries. The app is available for the general public via the app stores and also for healthcare organisations via our enterprise version so that providers can offer their patients and clients this resource free of charge.
Dr. Nejad has also authored two books on stress, anxiety and sleep aimed at both clinicians and the general public, recorded three albums of relaxation and mindfulness exercises available for free on Spotify and Insight Timer and hosted a limited series podcast addressing mental health issues for business owners and employees in the corporate sector.
For more information or access to these resources, check out:
Websites:
Skills for Life on Med CPD
https://app.medcpd.com/providers/173
Skills for Life Website:
Contain Your Brain Website:
Omnipsych Website:
Publications:
Books:
Lifeblockers: the Sleep Edition (2018)
Treating Stress & Anxiety: A Practitioner’s Guide to Evidence-Based Approaches (2008)
CD:
Relaxation CD: Relaxation Techniques: Reduce Stress & Anxiety (2008)
White Paper (2022)
Mental Health in Hospitality: The need for industry-specific solutions
Research Publications:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Lillian-Nejad
Spotify Albums:
Practical Mindfulness: Come to Your Senses: Brief exercises focussed on your senses
Find Your Calm: Relaxation & Mindfulness Techniques: Variety of techniques to reduce stress
Podcast:
Life Skills for Leaders
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3y0vZEx41zugMxTRp225p8
Socials:
Personal https://www.linkedin.com/in/lilliannejad/
Contain Your Brain: https://www.linkedin.com/company/contain-your-brain/?viewAsMember=true
@drlilliannejad
@containyourbrain
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