For employers, unions, and member-assistance programs
Workplace Mental Health Support
Workplace mental health programs, self-guided tools, and counselling for the organizations of Vancouver Island; co-developed with you, and already delivered to a nurses' union, a school district, and a city.
Worldwide, depression and anxiety are estimated to cost 12 billion working days a year in lost productivity (WHO, 2022). Poor mental health is one of the largest hidden costs an organization carries.
The other side is just as real. When people feel genuinely supported, they stay longer and do better work; research links workplace mental health support to lower turnover and stronger productivity.
Sources: World Health Organization (2022); Harter, Schmidt & Hayes (2002), Journal of Applied Psychology; Bellet, De Neve & Ward (2024), Management Science.
What does this look like?
A short, interactive walk through the offer; it covers the same ground as the sections below, in a quicker form.
You have probably watched it happen. Someone steady, someone who always showed up, quietly starts to slip. The sick days that cluster together. The shorter answers in meetings. The person who used to volunteer for everything and now keeps their door closed. By the time it reaches a formal conversation, it is often already a crisis.
Keep reading
You want your people to have somewhere to set it down long before that. You likely have supports in place, an assistance line, maybe a wellness email or a lunch session someone ran once. But you have a nagging sense that it is not landing. The material sounds generic. The counsellor on the other end of the line has never stood in your workplace or met the people in it.
That gap is the whole reason this page exists.
I build mental health programs with organizations, not just for them. That means we sit down first, look at what your people are actually carrying, and shape the pieces below around it. Some organizations start with a single session. Others build a full slate across a year. You choose the depth.
Here is what is on the table.
What can I bring to your organization?
Psychoeducation sessions for your people
Short, plain-language sessions delivered to your staff or members, in person or online, on the subjects organizations are actually asking for in workplace mental health. These are the topics we can build a single session or a series around:
- Stress and resilience. Recognising stress load before it piles up, and the practical skills that build the capacity to carry it. The most common place a team starts.
- Burnout prevention. The early signs, the workload and always-on patterns that drive it, and what a team can change before people hit the wall.
- Recognising when someone is struggling. A shared language for the signs, how to start a supportive conversation, and where to point a colleague for help. This is the one that quietly lowers the stigma.
- Anxiety and low mood. Plain-language education on the most common conditions and how they show up at work, so they are met earlier and with less fear.
- Working through change and uncertainty. Steadying skills for restructures, new systems, and the low hum of economic worry.
- Healthy boundaries and recovery. Protecting the time to switch off and rest, which is one of the supports employees rate most highly.
Built to support leaders too. Canada's National Standard for Psychological Health and Safety has made manager awareness a real priority, and it is often what moves an organization to act. I deliver the employee-facing education and can help equip your people leaders to notice the early signs and respond well. To be clear about my lane: this is education and awareness, not a compliance audit or a formal psychological or WorkSafeBC assessment. Where one of those is needed, I will say so and point you to the right professional.
Open dialogue, by design. This is not a canned deck. We co-develop the exact subjects and examples with you, so the language fits your industry, your schedules, and your culture. You know your people; I bring the clinical grounding. The session is built where those two meet.
Self-guided digital tools your people can use alone
Not everyone will sit in a session, and not everyone should have to. So there are free tools on the website that a person can use on their own phone, on a break or at 2 a.m., with nobody watching.
- Guided breathing: a paced breathing tool for the moments when the chest gets tight and the day is not done.
- Thought defusion: a short exercise for stepping back from a thought that will not let go, so it stops running the show.
These are live now, and the library keeps growing through the blog. Every tool is confidential and needs no login. Nothing a person types leaves their device, and nobody, including you and me, sees who used it.
Built around your program. The tools do not have to be off the shelf. When we run a psychoeducation class, I can build a matching tool, or a small app, that carries the same lesson. It goes onto the phone your people already hold, so the skill from the room keeps working long after the session ends, and the examples read like your people's day, not a stock brochure.
Assessments and check-ins (being built now)
A set of private self-check tools is in development for the website: recognised screening questionnaires used everywhere in mental health, including the AUDIT and DAST for alcohol and drug use, and the PHQ-9 and GAD-7 for mood and anxiety.
Read this part carefully, because the framing matters. These are used for screening and self-reflection, never for diagnosis. A screening tool can help a person notice a pattern and decide whether to reach out. It cannot tell them they have a disorder, and it is not a substitute for a professional assessment. I am a Canadian Certified Counsellor, not a psychologist or physician, so anything that needs a formal diagnosis or a disability assessment gets referred out to the right professional. That guardrail is not a limitation to work around; it is what keeps these tools honest and safe.
For a person, they are anonymous and scored privately, with the score meant to start a conversation, not end one. For an organization, they are a low-pressure front door: a way for someone to check in with themselves before anything feels like a big step.
Custom multi-unit courses
For organizations that want more than a one-off session, we can build a course in units, each one a small, self-contained piece: a short lesson, a practical exercise a person actually does, and a check-in to see what landed. Units stack into a program you can run over weeks or roll out to new staff and members as they arrive. The content is yours to shape; the clinical structure is mine to hold.
Group therapy, on-site programs, and support for your peer people
- Group therapy and on-site programs. Structured group work, run where your people already are, so support is not one more thing to drive across town for.
- Peer-supporter backup and consultation. Many organizations already have peer supporters, wellness volunteers, or a member-assistance team doing frontline support. I can back them up: consultation on tough situations, a clinical sounding board, and a place to refer when something is beyond a peer's role. It strengthens the people you already trust instead of replacing them.
- Speaking slots. Psychoeducation talks for a training day, an all-staff meeting, a conference, or a wellness event. I have spent eight years speaking to rooms like yours.
A referral pathway for your people and their families
When someone on your team, or their spouse or kid, wants their own support, they can book with me directly and privately. This is a private counselling practice, fully separate from any employer, union, or program. Nothing said in a session goes back to the workplace without the person's written consent. Sessions are covered by most extended health benefit plans, and Veterans Affairs Canada is accepted through Medavie Blue Cross for anyone who has served.
Will your people's benefits cover counselling?
The simple version: if a plan covers clinical counselling, it covers this. I am a Canadian Certified Counsellor (CCC), and CCC counselling is an eligible expense under most extended health plans that include counselling or mental health services. So wherever your people's benefits cover clinical counselling, they are covered here. These are the providers already accepted across the practice:
Extended Health Insurance
CCC counselling services are eligible for coverage under most extended health benefit plans.
Why bring me in?
This is not a new experiment. The work already travels across very different workplaces, and across the people in them.
- Delivered in real workplaces. Psychoeducation for a nurses' union, a school district, and municipal staff. Healthcare, education, and local government are three different worlds, and the work holds up in all of them.
- Across the people themselves. Years of one-to-one work with trades and physical workers, first responders and nurses, veterans, leaders and business owners, faith communities, and everyday staff carrying an everyday load. Whatever your people do, the odds are good I have already sat with someone doing it.
More about Sean's background and credentials
I also did not come to this work from behind a desk.
- Ran my own business and worked in the trades, so I know the weight of making payroll and the culture of pushing through.
- Served in the Canadian Armed Forces infantry.
- Spent years in frontline ministry, including leading a street church and running a recovery home, next to addiction and crisis every day.
That range is context for how I meet whoever is in the room; it is not the point. The point is what it lets us build for your people.
The clinical side is real too. I am a Canadian Certified Counsellor (CCC) with the CCPA, holding a Master of Arts in Counselling Psychology (MACP), a Master of Divinity (MDiv), and a Diploma in Professional Counselling (DPC). I work primarily through Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT): learning to feel something hard and still choose how you respond. It is practical and direct, which tends to land with people who think in outcomes.
Is it confidential, and does it stay in scope?
- Confidential, and separate from the workplace. I am bound by CCPA ethical standards and BC privacy law. What a person shares with me does not go to you, their supervisor, or their union, without their explicit written consent.
- Screening, not diagnosis. The check-in tools measure and reflect; they do not diagnose. Anything that needs a formal diagnosis or a psychological or disability assessment is referred to a psychologist or physician. I stay firmly in a counsellor's scope.
- Education, not individual treatment, in the group room. Sessions, courses, and talks are education and skills for a group. They are not individual therapy for a named person, and they carry that framing clearly.
- A clear path when someone needs more. If a session surfaces something acute, there is always a next step, including crisis lines (call or text 9-8-8, any time in Canada) and a warm handoff to appropriate care.
What do organizations ask?
We already have an assistance program. Why add this?
Assistance lines do real good, and this is not a replacement for one. But a phone line is generic by design: session caps, a different counsellor each time, and material that was not written for your workplace. This is built with you, in your people's language, by someone who has already delivered it in workplaces like yours. The two can sit side by side.
Is anything my people tell you reported back to us?
No. This is a private practice, separate from your organization. Individual counselling is confidential under CCPA standards and BC law; nothing is shared without the person's written consent. Group sessions and courses are education, so there is no individual clinical record to report in the first place.
Can you diagnose our people, or do WorkSafeBC assessments?
No. As a Canadian Certified Counsellor I provide counselling, education, and screening; I do not diagnose, and I do not perform psychological, WorkSafeBC, or disability assessments. Anyone who needs a formal diagnosis or assessment is referred to a psychologist or physician. I am careful about that line on purpose.
What does it cost?
It depends on the pieces you choose and the size of your group, so the honest answer is that we scope it in the first conversation. Individual counselling for your people and their families is $150 per session and covered by many extended health plans.
Does this only fit certain industries?
No. The topics and examples are co-developed with you, so the program fits a hospital, a school district, a trades local, a municipal office, or a small business equally well. What stays constant is the clinical grounding and the plain language.
Where do you deliver?
In person across the West Shore and Greater Victoria, on-site at your location, and online anywhere in British Columbia when getting everyone in one room is not realistic.
How do we start?
Book a conversation or email sean@introspectuscounselling.ca. We will talk about your people and what a first piece could look like.
Ready to start a conversation?
The first step is a short conversation, no cost and no pressure. Tell me who your people are and what you are seeing, and I will tell you honestly whether I am the right fit and what a first piece might look like. If it is a fit, we build from there. If it is not, I will point you toward someone who is.
You look after a lot of people. Let's make sure someone is looking after that.
