Sandy Naiman

Topics

Presentations

Creating an open culture to promote and support Mental Health in the Workplace
How people can thrive, not just survive with problems that are too often kept secret. The goal? To work in a corporate culture that shows leadership on all levels stressing the value of a mentally and emotionally healthy workplace, which is more productive and profitable for employers’ bottom lines and employees’ everyday lives.

Emotional Health
A discussion about why we must reframe how to speak and think about mental and emotional health to heal the toxic public discourse. Them and Us ~ there is no them. We’re all us. Labels are for jars, not people. And labels have a habit of sticking. Tough talk about taking on prejudice in the workplace at all levels. There is no normal. We’re all “Next to Normal.”
  
What is Emotional Health?
A new vision of the “issues and challenges” we all face, directly and indirectly in 21st Century life. How the workplace can assist in supporting everyday emotional health – from education and resources to support stressors such as problems with health, major life transitions and stressors all of which can damage emotional wellbeing and adversely affect workplace performance.

Prevention. The role of education.
Teaching everyone. It’s not only okay, it healthy to talk about mental health and issues affecting your emotional life. Essentially, an environment focusing on communication, self-awareness and teamwork is a winning workplace. Education and an open dialogue help employees know where and who to turn to for support. Education breaks the silence so everyone, peers, managers et all are brought on board to share the burden and responsibility of maintaining a culture of safety and tolerance so those in need can reach out.

To Disclose or Not To Disclose
This is the big question for employers and employees. What are the advantages / disadvantages? How and why you should consider being more open and honest in the workplace, so you can be understood and accommodated.

Recovery
The multiple routes to wellness. Is the medical model the only approach to emotional health? Other ways to find support and approaches to healing that you can do for yourself. Talking therapy/ group therapy/peer support for healing. Who to talk to when you can’t find a psychiatrist? The role of and need for specific steps for supportive return-to-work policies. How these policies can adapt to fit each employee’s needs.

Summary Profile

 Sandy Naiman is an award-winning journalist, blogger and college professor whose psychiatric history informs her writing, teaching and her emotional health advocacy. She's always been open and "out" and started speaking out to audiences across Canada and the United States after her First Person feature Coming Out Crazy was published in the October 1999 issue of Chatelaine.

With a curious nature and more than 51 years of psychotherapy, "I'm working on my Ph.D. in me," she has said. "And I'll never graduate with my degree."

She became a spokesperson for the Ontario Canadian Mental Health Association-sponsored Mental Health Works initiative shortly after its inception in 2002. From 1977 to 2007, Sandy was a staff reporter at The Toronto Sun, a frequent CHFI and CBC radio commentator, television guest and freelance magazine writer.

She first entered the blogosphere in April 2008 when the Toronto Star invited her to create a "mental health and wellness blog." She named it Coming Out Crazy. On the second anniversary of her award-winning blog, The Toronto Star dropped it.

Without missing a beat or a deadline, she seamlessly launched a second incarnation of Coming Out Crazy independently. Dr. John Grohol, CEO and Founder of the 16-year-old U.S. psychology website PsychCentral quickly picked up Coming Out Crazy where Sandy now blogs regularly.

In July 2007, Sandy started teaching Women's Studies at Seneca College in Toronto. The following November, she was asked to develop and teach Leadership in Society, Seneca's first community service course because of her passion for and lifetime of community work.

Sandy Naiman was born in Toronto and educated at Seneca College, Queen's University, Ryerson University and York University. She lives with her husband, screenwriter Martin Lager and their Dandie Dinmont Terriers, Riley - a Canadian champion - and Lucy, who is proliferating this endangered breed. Sandy tends to takes her work more seriously than herself.

"What I've done in the past is yesterday's news," she often says. "It's 'now' that counts. Now is one of my favourite words."

On Family Day, February 20, 2011, she opened the next chapter in her lifelong commitment to universal "mental" health with the creation of her first official social entrepreneurial agency ~ Emotional Health Advocacy. EHA launches in September 2011.

Client Testimonial:

"Sandy Naiman is fierce and fabulous. Sandy is a dynamo who is an offline mental health advocate and speaker. In Coming Out Crazy, she's making gorgeous jewellery from her goldmine of experience as a person living with bipolar."

PychCentral