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Valerie is a Recreation Therapist in the Mental Health and Addictions program at Etobicoke General. A key part of her role is finding ways to use cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) to help inpatient mental health patients manage better.
We learn more about her role and how she uses recreation therapy to teach patients valuable skills and strategies to live happy, healthy lives.
Tell us about your role and how you use CBT.
My programs are all CBT-informed. CBT helps individuals identify negative core beliefs (for example, nobody likes me, I’m not good enough) and learn how to cope and produce healthy thoughts rooted in facts, not feelings. When negative core beliefs are triggered, it affects your mood, which affects your behaviour and decision-making.
I teach emotional regulation skills to help them cope with distress and regulate negative thoughts and feelings. Through recreation therapy, I use a number of different science-backed activities to help our patients on their road to recovery and enhance their mental wellness.
How are mental health and recreation therapy connected?
My sessions are always done in groups. This allows patients to interact and learn from others who are going through similar situations. In these group settings we do physical activities like Qi Gong, walking and stretching. Full body exercise helps you feel more grounded, more connected to yourself rather than the increasingly negative thoughts and emotions that you're experiencing.
We also do some exercises for the mind like mindfulness meditation, gratitude journalling and doodling. These activities can help us focus on the present and learn to cope with overwhelming and difficult feelings.
Do you use any of these practices in your own life?
Definitely. I find if I am stressed, aerobics and movement work for me. The endorphin release helps me feel much less stressed and back to my normal self.
I also doodle, which is an easy activity to do anywhere when you need to calm your thoughts or emotions. I teach the Zentangles Method which is a more elaborate form of doodling. It helps you stay focused on the activity rather than heightened thoughts or emotions that are distressful.
Tell us about an initiative you are particularly proud of.
For New Years Eve this year, I put together emotional regulation kits for patients on the inpatient mental health unit. They included a number of different items including a journal for recording their thoughts, play dough and a stress ball, as well as a few snack items with
encouraging words pasted on them.
The goal of these kits is to help patients learn to manage their emotions by providing them
with tools to continue their healing during and after they leave the program. I plan to put together these kits every year to signify a positive start to the new year for our patients.
This year’s theme for Mental Health Week is empathy. Why do you think empathy is an important practice within this realm?
Overall, I think we should all try to be less judgmental about others. We never know what other people are going through. Stigma still exists around mental health and when there is a lack of judgement of those going through it, I think it helps people cope better. When you’re judged or stigmatized it can be difficult to reach out for help. I think having empathy in general can make the healing process run a little bit smoother.
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