PRE-CONFERENCE CONNECTION WORKSHOP - IMEC International Meaning Events & Community

PRE-CONFERENCE CONNECTION WORKSHOP

Organising partner: MentalHealth4All: Natalie Fraser MSc & Dr Joel Vos

One of the biggest challenges of pandemics is the social isolation. We miss opportunities to authentically connect with others and to share experiences. In this workshop, we will follow the format of the weekly COVID-19 Social Support Groups that MentalHealth4All has been offering since the start of the pandemic. In the first hour, this workshop will start with a brief theoretical introduction to the psychological impact of COVID-19 and how we could cope with this, followed by a plenary discussion. In the second hour, all participants will be randomly allocated to groups of four, in which they can share their personal and professional experiences of COVID-19 and how they cope with this. Participation in this workshop is free for conference participants, but at registration, people need to register for this workshop. Participants to the weekly MentalHealth4All workshops have described these sessions as ‘feeling that we are in this together’, ‘authentic’, ‘life changing’, ‘an anchor point’ and ‘the weekly sessions have become an inherent part of the quarantine experience’.