ONLINE COURSES & CE

It’s possible to learn about many psychological topics without booking a consultation. At Changeways Clinic and PsychologySalon we have been committed to the development of convenient and accessible resources - both for the public and for professionals. To go directly to our online training site, psychologysalon.teachable.com, click here.

Education Coordinators: Please note that we have a discount program for agencies, health regions, clinics, professional organizations, and provider companies wishing to pre-purchase 5 or more spaces for staff or members. We provide a 40% discount on these advance-purchase arrangements, and can add spaces quickly if you find that more people want to take the programs than you had anticipated. Contact us for details.

Programs for Healthcare Professionals

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Cognitive Behavioral Group Therapy for Depression
If you want to run a CBT-based group therapy program for depressed clients, how do you do it? This course provides you with the complete manual for clients, an extensive Clinician's Guide to help the mental health professional offering the program, and pdf masters of all ancillary materials. Versions of the client manual for providers in the USA (American spelling), Canada (Canadian spelling), and the NZ/Australia and UK (documents in the A4 paper format). Over 12 hours of content to help you assist clients in the group format. The concepts and materials can also be used effectively one to one. 12 CE hours.

Goal Setting That Works
Therapy is all about helping clients bring about change in their own lives. To this end, we have to understand our clients' goals and help them take the steps to reach them. Every therapist uses goal-setting or behavioural activation in one form or another - but often much of the impact of this powerful approach is lost. This course provides 30 specific, behavioural tips to help clinicians sharpen their technique and help clients create change more effectively. 5 CE hours.

How to Treat Failure to Launch
Whether you call it Failure to Launch, NEET (Not in Education Employment or Training), or hikikomori, increasing numbers of young adults are having difficulty managing the transition from dependent adolescence to independent adulthood. Many experience regression into an all-but-housebound state of profound withdrawal and social isolation. Unlike clients who strive to return to a premorbid level of functioning, these clients are attempting to build an adult self from the ground up, often in the face of profound challenges. What can a therapist do to help? This course provides a step-by-step approach to investigate the issues in clients' lives and construct an individualized treatment plan to help them move toward greater capacity, resiliency, and responsibility. Based in part on concepts from my book How to be Miserable in Your Twenties. 8 CE hours.

Private Practice in Canada
Based on my book Private Practice Made Simple, this course is designed for mental health practitioners wishing to pursue private practice - as well as those with existing practices who want to bring them to the next level. This course covers a vast array of subjects, from finding a location to furnishing your office to writing a business plan to practice insurance to coping with taxation issues to soundproofing your space to building a website to hiring an assistant to adding associates. All this within the context of the Canadian system - though practitioners in other jurisdictions will also find much that applies in their own situation. You can also combine this course with one-to-one zoom consultation sessions to help you tailor the ideas to your specific practice. Over 12 hours of content, with a course workbook to guide your efforts.

How to Teach Progressive Muscle Relaxation
Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR) is a psychotherapy staple - but one that is seldom taught to practitioners during their training. This three-hour course for healthcare practitioners (including mental health) provides guidance in orienting clients to the technique, training the exercise in a step-by-step manner, troubleshooting difficulties as they arise, and integrating PMR into the rest of therapy. You receive a series of scripts for both extended and short-form PMR, and for extended and short-form passive relaxation as well. You also receive pdf copies of monitoring and information sheets that you can provide to clients. 3 CE hours.

Train Your Clients in Diaphragmatic Breathing
Diaphragmatic breathing is one of the most useful of all stress and anxiety management tools, yet most clinicians get little to no training in how to cultivate the technique in clients. This course provides a review of respiratory anatomy, strategies for describing the technique to clients, and a 4-phase training strategy that can help clients identify breathing difficulties and re-engage the diaphragm as needed. You'll also learn the technique by practicing it yourself. You receive pdf copies of client monitoring forms and information sheets that you can provide to clients. 3 CE hours.

Diagnosing Depression and Related Mood Disorders
Mood disorders are among the most common difficulties seen in mental health practice. Skill in recognizing and understanding the various diagnoses is tremendously useful - whether or not formal diagnosis is a part of one's professional repertoire. This class provides a discussion of the diagnostic criteria for Major Depressive Disorder, Bipolar Disorder (I and II), Cyclothymia, Dysthymia, and related concerns. It also discusses symptoms that are not among the diagnostic criteria, and examines the usefulness and possible downsides of diagnosis. You receive a 30-page booklet of notes reviewing the content of all lectures. 2 CE hours.

Using Props in Psychotherapy
Therapy provides clients the opportunity to gain new insights into life and the mind - and therapists sometimes struggle with how best to convey or discover these ideas. One of the best strategies is to make use of knowledge and understanding that clients already have, by using metaphors that communicate important principles. This course discusses the use of physical props to aid in this process. From dice to toy cars to coins to magic wands to mirrors to puzzle boxes to timers, you'll learn how to increase the immediacy and potency of therapy using objects the client can hold and examine. You'll see how helpful it can be to use an actual set of scales when discussing decision-making, how a glass drinks coaster can provide an introduction to cognitive therapy, and how a set of glass beads can illustrate the passage of time. This quick course can suggest ways to furnish your office space that will turn it into what it already is: A change machine. 2 hours.

Psychology-Based Programs for Everyone

We have preview videos and discount coupons for every course. Click on titles to learn more, view the course syllabus, and receive discounted access to each course.

The Parent Trap
A course for the parents or caregivers of young adults having difficulty with the transition between dependent adolescence and independent adulthood. How can parents ramp down the seemingly inevitable family discord in these situations and provide support for their young adult's independence rather than their withdrawal from the world? The course provides 40 short videos on topics ranging from the causes of the problem, to the parental role in its maintenance or resolution, to strategies for handling rent, chores, internet, and job hunting. A 49-page workbook for family is also provided. 6.5 hours of content.

UnDoing Depression
Depression is tremendously challenging, but it can also be very responsive to alterations in lifestyle and self-care. While not in any way a substitute for care by a qualified healthcare professional, this course provides clear, step-by-step suggestions for the creation of a depression-resistant life. Please note that this course is not therapy - it is more of a talking self-help book. Comes with a 100-page guidebook to help students apply the principles. 4.5 hours of video.

What Is Clinical Depression?
We often talk about feeling depressed in everyday conversation. But what exactly is clinical depression? What distinguishes it from the garden-variety blues? This course discusses the symptoms and experience of actual depression, which is one of the most common of all psychological challenges. 2 hours of content.

What Causes Depression?
Depression is one of the most common of all psychological difficulties. But how does it get started? What brings it about? Is it, as some popular press suggests, simply a "biochemical imbalance"? Or is the picture somewhat more complicated, incorporating elements of lifestyle, past experience, activity level, ways of thinking, major life events, ongoing hassles, sleep problems, and a loss of meaning? Hint: For most people, it's the latter. Knowing the factors that may be operating in your own life can help you to make more effective decisions about your treatment by healthcare professionals and for your own self-care efforts. 2.5 hours of video, plus an extensive booklet of notes on the lecture content.

How to Buy Happiness
We are constantly told that money can't buy happiness, but is this really true? Turn the question around and ask yourself whether the way you handle money can produce the opposite: Misery. No one doubts that. Clearly the way we handle money has an impact on our life satisfaction. Effective financial literacy and financial management are central to our well-being. By examining the way we use money to predict and bring about future happiness we can discover challenges and shortcuts to a better life. This 3-hour course, split up into 28 bite-sized lectures, provides core insights into the ways to use money more effectively in our lives. A 58-page workbook is included as part of the course.

Breathing Made Easy
Stress and anxiety can make your life miserable, and coping with them can be complex. One of the most widely-useful skills can be learned quite quickly and applied in diverse situations: Diaphragmatic breathing. This course provides instruction in a diaphragmatic breathing procedure to aid in calming and focusing the mind and body. 12 brief lectures - over one hour of content in all, plus text documents to help in applying the course ideas.

How to Write Non-Fiction For those working on extended works of non-fiction (including theses, books, term papers, and related work), this course presents a strategy for organizing ideas into a coherent framework. The course covers topics ranging from getting your ideas to laying out chapters to scheduling the work to editing to finished product. 29 brief lectures, approximately 2 hours total.