Types of Mental Health Concerns

Anxiety

Anxiety is a normal part of daily life and is the body and mind becoming alert to the possibility of danger, however it may become problematic when excessive and can be experienced in other forms such as phobias, social anxiety, panic attacks and other symptoms.

Symptoms

In general, anxiety manifests as fear, worry, or a sense of unease, and is often accompanied by physical sensations, such as nausea, racing heart, dizziness, muscle tension, and sweating. While it is normal to experience anxiety when dealing with difficult situations, it can become constant and overwhelming. Moreover, anxious thoughts and feelings can lead to behaviours that are maladaptive in the long-term, including avoidance or excessive preparation, that may maintain or increase your anxiety.

When You Should Consider Treatment for Anxiety

If you find it difficult to dismiss or cope with your anxious thoughts or feelings or have noticed that your anxiety is distressing and/or interfering with work, school, social situations, or daily functioning, it may be helpful to see a professional.

Need Treatment for Your Anxiety?

If you feel you need help to manage your anxiety, please get in touch with us to start the conversation, learn more or book an appointment.

Depression

Occasionally feeling “sad”, “down”, or “blue” is normal. However, when these emotions continue for an extended period of time (e.g., greater than 2 weeks), and become debilitating or unbearable, it may be a sign that you are suffering from a depressive disorder.

Symptoms

Most people experience depression as a loss of joy or lack of motivation in their daily lives, and often report that it interferes with their ability to function in several areas, such as work, school, or social events. Depression can even make it difficult to get through the day. These feelings may also be accompanied by physical symptoms, including a change in appetite or weight, low energy, fatigue, and sleep disturbances.

When You Should Consider Treatment for Depression

While depressive feelings may occur as a result of significant life experiences/changes, such as the loss of a job, the death of a loved one, beginning university, or moving to a new country, this is not always the case. In fact, sometimes we cannot identify the cause of these feelings. We are here to help you recognize the symptoms and effects of depression, and are committed to helping you find strategies to overcome this painful experience.

Need Treatment for Depression?

If you feel you need help to manage your depression, please get in touch with us to start the conversation, learn more or book an appointment.

Trauma and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Experiencing any form of trauma throughout the various stages of life can result in a lasting, negative effect on your mental health and well-being.

Symptoms

Amongst other symptoms, individuals who have lived through traumatic situation(s) may experience emotional distress, panic or anger, disruptions in thoughts and feelings, insomnia, sensitivity to certain senses (e.g., touch or sound), nightmares, and/or flashbacks. If these distressing effects do not decrease over time, they may be an indication of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

When You Should Consider Treatment for Trauma and/or PTSD

Our staff are trained to provide trauma and pain coping strategies and have a history of dealing with a variety of sensitive, traumatic events that have occurred in the lives of our clients. If you are struggling with the effects of trauma, we are committed to helping you successfully complete treatment and move forward with your life.

Need Treatment for Trauma or PTSD?

If you feel you need help to manage your trauma or PTSD, please get in touch with us to start the conversation, learn more or book an appointment.

Eating Disorders

An eating disorder is characterized by abnormal or disturbed eating habits where there are often persistent behaviours that impact healthy eating patterns. Disordered eating is widespread in our culture, and can range from mild to severe.

Symptoms

Disordered eating can include many different types of behaviours such as intentionally skipping meals, “yo-yo dieting”, and can be a formal medical or psychological diagnoses. These disorders can impact your mental, emotional, and physical health, and often require a multidisciplinary approach to treatment.

When You Should Consider Treatment for Eating Disorders

If you find yourself constantly thinking about body image concerns, eating, or food, and these thoughts are distressing or significantly impair your physical health and/or psychosocial functioning, it may be time to reach out.

The InnerQore Health Eating Disorder Clinical Team

In addition to our trained psychologists and therapists, Dawn Amber, MPH, RD is our in-house Registered Dietitian. Under the direction of Dr. Frank, our eating disorder clinical team is positioned to offer a multidisciplinary treatment approach. Our team will work together to normalize your eating behaviours, enhance your health, and help you improve both psychologically and physically.

Do You Need Help for an Eating Disorder?

If you feel you need help to manage your eating disorder, please get in touch with us to start the conversation, learn more or book an appointment.

Relationships and Family Concerns

While relationships are often rewarding and can enrich our lives, they also require ongoing attention and work to ensure that the lines of communication remain open and that issues and concerns are addressed when they arise. As a result, it is beneficial for couples and families to work with a mental health professional to ensure general wellness and satisfaction in their interpersonal relationships and help mend common mental health concerns that can arise in relationships.

Our goal is to facilitate open conversations regarding relationship concerns and to provide an effective discussion and environment where you can address your concerns before they become irreparable.

When to Consider Getting Help for Your Relationship & Family Issues

If you are dealing with significant issues in your relationships and are uncertain about how to proceed, or you are interested in strengthening your current connection(s), we can provide guidance and support to all couples, families, and individuals.

Do You Need Help with Relationship or Family Issues?

If you feel you need help to manage your relationship or family issues, please get in touch with us to start the conversation, learn more or book an appointment.

Life Dissatisfaction

At times, we end up feeling “off” or are overall unhappy with our lives, longing for things to be different. Sometimes, we can’t even pinpoint exactly what we’d like to change, which can lead to even more frustration and worsened mood. This is called life dissatisfaction.

Symptoms

Often described as a feeling of yearning, or wishing, for something more sometimes without knowing what that “something more” may be. This can adversely affect your relationships, social life, and occupational functioning, and is associated with lower mood, decreased self-esteem/confidence, and difficulty coping with challenges.

When to Seek Help

Even if you are not outright distressed, it is important to discuss these feelings of discontent in order to address the thoughts and behaviours that maintain the negative feelings.

Do You Need Help with Life Dissatisfaction?

If you feel you need help to manage your life dissatisfaction, please get in touch with us to start the conversation, learn more or book an appointment.

Struggles with Dating

Dating can be a struggle; from the now more common and sometimes fruitless dating apps to the challenges faced when meeting people organically, it can be incredibly frustrating to find, and maintain, the relationship you want.

Symptoms

Issues with dating may result in negative feelings towards self, dating in general such as fears of “settling”, never having a healthy relationship, or when dating, having difficulty trusting your partner. Often, your thoughts about dating, combined with past negative dating experiences result in impacting relationships and may even serve exacerbate your dating struggles further. Some people bring maladaptive patterns and interpersonal dynamics to their dating lives that they are not aware of and that get in their way of success. For example, anxiety-driven neediness, a tendency to over- or under-share information in the first few dates, and extreme pickiness are all examples of patterns that could get in the way of a relationship moving forward.

How Therapy Can Help

To get out of this vicious cycle, our skilled therapists will help you gain insight into how you think and feel about dating, how to promote self-love, and can provide you with the tools necessary to create long-lasting, healthy connections.

Do You Need Help with Dating Struggles?

If you feel you need help to manage your dating struggles, please get in touch with us to start the conversation, learn more or book an appointment.

Grief and Bereavement

Grief is a normal and natural reaction to any loss, such as the loss of a loved one, a relationship, or the loss of a job. Bereavement is a specific type of grief after the death of a loved one.

Symptoms

Symptoms of bereavement vary and may include emotional symptoms (e.g., sadness, emptiness, anxiety, guilt, anger) as well as physical symptoms (e.g., loss of appetite, trouble sleeping, increased physical ailments). Both grief and bereavement are very emotionally painful, and often interfere with our ability to continue with our day-to-day lives. They can cause mental health concerns in existing relationships, and may result in feelings of extreme sadness, guilt, or anger.

How We Can Help

If you find that these feelings are significantly affecting your everyday life, talking to one of our therapists can help. We can help you move forward by adapting to your “new” normal, and helping you find meaning in life after loss. Any loss, no matter the size, warrants support and validation.

Need Help with Your Grief and Bereavement?

If you feel you need help to manage your grief or bereavement, please get in touch with us to start the conversation, learn more or book an appointment.

Stress

While the experience of stress is normal and can motivate us to create solutions or achieve our goals, chronic stress can significantly hinder our quality of life.

Symptoms

Symptoms of stress can be emotional (e.g., low mood, irritability), mental (e.g., negative thinking patterns, trouble concentrating), or physical (e.g., aches/pains, exhaustion, headaches). Thus, stress impacts our mental and physical health, and can negatively impact many areas of day-to-day function.

How We Can Help

Fortunately, stress management is possible through therapy. We can work together to address life stressors, including divorce, loss of a job, chronic illness/injury, emotional concerns, and more by creating an individualized plan to address and reduce your life stressors.

Need Help to Manage Your Stress?

If you feel you need help to manage your stress, please get in touch with us to start the conversation, learn more or book an appointment.

Adjusting to Life Changes and Transitions

Change is an inevitable, albeit sometimes uncomfortable, part of life. While some changes are expected and predictable, such as adjustment to attending college or retiring from work, other changes are more abrupt and difficult to navigate, such as the sudden loss of a job.

Symptoms

Even though change can be positive, some transitions can cause significant stress and can leave us feeling uncertain or fearful about the future, especially after we’ve been displaced from what we find familiar.

How We Can Help

If you find yourself struggling to cope with change or transition, speaking with a mental health professional can help you gain insight into why you are struggling with the change, help you come to terms with what you cannot control and work collaboratively towards improving your experience and coping style during this tumultuous time.

Need Help Adjusting to Life Changes and Transitions?

If you feel you need help to manage adjusting to life changes or transitions, please get in touch with us to start the conversation, learn more or book an appointment.

Chronic Pain and Pain Coping

Although people often think of pain as a physical phenomenon, pain also has biological, psychological, and emotional components impacting various spheres of function.

Symptoms

Pain

Research has shown that your attitude and thoughts towards pain can impact your pain experience. For example, those who have a negative and anxious thinking style about pain have been shown to experience worsened pain severity and increased disability related to pain compared to those who do not think in this way.

Chronic Pain

Chronic pain, which is pain that lasts longer than 6 months, can result in feelings of hopelessness, anxiety, fear, or anger, which can negatively impact your thoughts and attitudes towards pain, therefore worsening your pain experience in a negatively reinforced cyclical manner. Furthermore, chronic pain may result in significant life changes such as withdrawal from physical, occupational and social activities, depression, and disability.

How We Can Help

Psychological treatments are very important when managing pain and its consequences, as our thoughts about pain have direct connections to our physical experience of pain. We are proud to provide treatments targeted at improving your physical and emotional health and helping you cope with your current reality. We will work together with you to optimize pain coping strategies, help manage your pain, and provide you with the tools to return to the everyday activities you love.

Do You Suffer from Pain or Chronic Pain?

If you feel you need help to manage your pain or chronic pain, please get in touch with us to start the conversation, learn more or book an appointment.

Work-related Issues

As a good portion of one’s life is spent at work it is vital to learn how to pinpoint, address and deal with occupational stressors when they arise. Occupational stress can result in different types of mood disturbance, sleep difficulties, interpersonal conflict in the workplace or at home, absenteeism, and poor work performance. Feelings of anxiety, guilt, anger, resentment are also common.

How We Can Help

At InnerQore, our therapists are here to help you deal with any work-related issues, including job stress, difficulty maintaining a work-life balance, interpersonal workplace issues, perfectionism, harassment, work dissatisfaction, and more. Together, we can help you manage stress and anxiety regarding work and provide you with the tools necessary to overcome the cause of these issues to improve your work performance and happiness.

Are You Having Work-Related Issues?

If you feel you need help to manage your work-related issues, please get in touch with us to start the conversation, learn more or book an appointment.

Motor Vehicle Accidents & Slip and Fall Accidents

Motor Vehicle Accidents (MVAs) and Slip and Fall Accidents are often complex situations that result in significant injury(ies) and a number of life changes, often leading to significant psychological and emotional challenges.

Symptoms

Following an injury, an individual may develop pains, which can be debilitating and chronic. We may also find ourselves unable to engage in a number of our regular day-to-day activities, such as going to work, spending time with friends/family, or completing household chores and home maintenance tasks. As a result of being limited in daily life participation, we often feel significant anxiety around when we, or the situation, will “get better”. In addition, we may find ourselves thinking uncontrollably about our pain, worrying about worst-case scenarios, or avoiding activities due to a fear that the pain may worsen.

Trauma & Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Moreover, MVAs and Slip and Fall Accidents can be highly traumatic. This can result in ongoing posttraumatic stress symptoms (e.g., nightmares, distressing memories about the accident, negative beliefs about the world, persistent negative emotions, irritability, hypervigilance, sleep disturbances). We may also develop certain fears of specific situations or activities related to the accident that result in rigid avoidance; for example, fear of vehicle travel following an MVA. These fears can further restrict normal routine, resulting in a loss of sense of self, independence and freedom.

Other Symptoms

Taken together, the profound changes in daily routine and functioning resulting from involvement in an MVA or Slip and Fall Accident may result in feelings of loss, which can lead to depression and other forms of psychological disturbance. This may lead to a number of other stressors, such as financial strain and relationship issues.

How We Can Help

We can help you cope with your pain, anxiety, depression, posttraumatic stress symptoms and fears, with the goal of reducing avoidance of activities in order to minimize the restrictions to your daily routine. While some of these restrictions may be unavoidable, we can help you manage this “new” lifestyle, and adjust to a new routine. A psychological assessment will enable us to diagnose impairments, provide you with feedback regarding your current emotional suffering, and devise and recommend a treatment plan for recovery.

Have You Suffered Injury due to a Motor Vehicle Accident or a Slip & Fall Accident?

Get in touch with us to arrange for a psychological assessment as a first step to recovery.

Veterans Affairs

Service to our country can be very rewarding, however it can also expose an individual to experiences and trauma that affect their life.

How We Can Help You

If you are experiencing difficulties following military service we can support you and your family. At InnerQore Health, we empathize with the series of challenges that veterans experience upon returning home.

A Team Approach

Our team of expertly trained psychologists can address a variety of issues, including depression, anxiety, relationship problems, PTSD, anger management difficulties, challenges transitioning back into civilian life, and more.

We want you to know that you are not alone – our team is here to provide you with the care and information you need. Our focus is on empowering veterans and their loved ones on their road to recovery. We would be honoured to help you start your journey.

Are You Having Difficulties Following Your Military Service?

Get in touch with us to arrange for a psychological assessment as a first step to recovery.

Other Emotional Difficulties

There are many other types of emotional and mental difficulties that people may experience over their lives, and thus require support in the form of therapy, to overcome. Examples of these include:

• Crisis management
• Anger management
• Self-esteem
• Emotional difficulties associated with illness, pain, or disability
• Mid-life crises
• Intimacy issues
• Intimacy and emotional difficulties experienced by survivors of abuse (sexual, emotional or physical)