With lockdown restrictions tightening once more, we at First Psychology Scotland thought it might be useful to share some of the resources we have developed to help businesses and organisations support themselves and their employees during this difficult time.

We have a Keeping Mentally Healthy Toolkit during COVID 19, full of information, tools and techniques to help everyone keep mentally healthy, including coping strategies and advice on what to avoid to stay calm. The toolkit can be downloaded from our website free of charge, by following the link here.

In addition to this, we also have a series of pre-recorded webinars to help individual’s maintain their wellbeing. These include:

• Looking after your mental health during lockdown: how to de-stress and relax
• Resolving household conflict during lockdown
• Helping children and young people cope during lockdown
• Maintaining wellbeing while working from home
• Staying connected during a winter lockdown
• Coping with seasonal affective disorder
• Maintaining wellbeing after lockdown
• Supporting staff returning to work after lockdown

Our webinars aim to guide you through improving your ability to cope with the additional stressors of lockdown by learning some simple cognitive behavioural techniques and relaxation skills, as well as helping you acquire the skills and knowledge to adapt to changing, uncertain circumstances following the easing of lockdown restrictions and the return to work. You are welcome view recordings of the above webinars here, we hope they may be of help to your organisation and employees.

As an organisation that is dedicated to working with businesses and organisations to support employee wellbeing, we appreciate that while working from home may suit many, it can come with a new set of challenges and difficulties for others. With this in mind, we developed a new service to specifically target the improvement of any difficulties that may arise from working from home; KeepWell Working From Home MOT.

A KeepWell Working From Home MOT session is a single, 60 to 90 minute appointment delivered online, by telephone or in person with an experienced psychological therapist or psychologist. It is designed to provide you with an opportunity to evaluate your general health and wellbeing while working from home, identify any areas of potential improvement, and develop an action plan towards change, with a 30 minute follow up session provided 4 to 6 weeks after the session has taken place. Further information on our KeepWell Working From Home MOT service can be found here.

We also understand that some organisations may also have a need to offer training to support groups of staff on some of the stresses and anxieties arising from the current COVID circumstances and their impact on work and life. We are able to offer a range of training and support programs in this area and we would be happy to provide more information on these upon request.

If you have any questions or queries regarding our service or resources, please contact us on 0845-872-1780 or by email at info@firstpsychology-assistance.co.uk. Our team are available during normal working hours and we would be delighted to help you.