Looking after your own mental health
Tracks
4
| Saturday, August 3, 2024 |
| 2:50 PM - 3:30 PM |
| C2.5 + C2.6 |
Details
Mental health disorders, including depression and anxiety, continue to rise quickly despite increased investment and access to mental health services internationally. Individuals are not receiving the mental health care that they need and the disparity between those that need mental health care and those that are appropriately accessing care is increasingly evident.
As pharmacists we allocate so much time to the care and well-being of others, often overlooking our own needs. Long working hours, increased workloads, inadequate resources, limited support and inadequate incentives/rewards are some of the many challenges pharmacists are faced with. Unsurprisingly, pharmacists experience high levels of depressive symptoms, stress and burnout.
In order to care for others, we need to ensure that we are optimising our own health and wellbeing. During this session, we will discuss common signs and symptoms of mental health disorders and how you can support yourself better. We will talk about strategies that you can use to ensure your own and your colleagues mental health is well looked after.
Learning objectives
At the end of this session, participants will be able to:
1. Discuss signs and symptoms of some common mental health disorders.
2. Identify strategies to support your own mental health and well-being.
3. Outline how pharmacists can support colleagues to improve and maintain their mental health.
Competency standards: 1.5, 2.1, 3.1, 3.6
Speakers
Dr Sarira El-Den
Senior Lecturer
The University of Sydney
Looking after your own mental health
Biography
Dr Sarira El-Den is a Senior Lecturer, Pharmacist and Master Mental Health First Aid Instructor at The University of Sydney School of Pharmacy. Sarira is a Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy and has led and contributed to projects that have received $6.7 million AUD in funding, primarily focusing on mental health education, psychometric testing of measurement instruments and primary care services, and often involving collaboration and co-design with people with lived experience of mental illness. Sarira was the Education Representative of the Australasian Pharmaceutical Science Association from 2018-2023 and has since become Secretary of the organization. Sarira has been recognized by the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia as the NSW Early Career Pharmacist of Year (2022), and by the International Pharmaceutical Federation as a FIPWISE (Women in Science and Education) Rising Star (2022) and as a co-recipient of The Mental Health Services of Australia and New Zealand Award for Education, Training or Workforce Development (2023).
