As mental health practitioners, we dedicate our lives to helping others. Do we make a difference? Are our clients completing the activities we set? Do they practice our strategies? Educate themselves about their mental health?
21% of Australians experience mental illness every year, and almost half of us (42.9%) are affected by mental illness at some stage in our lives (ABS 2023). Statistics show us that 3.4 million Aussies seek help, and there are times when we are close to burn-out.
We know that we need a better work-life balance. However, we worry about our clients and how they are managing from one session to the next. We don't have the time to remind them daily to complete their tasks, and when we see them, it's often hard to sort through what has happened in that time apart. And how many of us find our clients say a "door-knob disclosure" right at the end of the session because they couldn't get to the crux of their issues in a straight-forward way?