🥼 Virtual Mental Health / Obesity Management (⬆ $$$, ⬇ Stress, ⬇ Charting)

Obesity is a complex, relapsing/remitting neurobehavioral disorder.

Your role as a mental health specialist, as part of a larger multi-disciplinary team, is to break down cognitive and psychiatric barriers preventing patients from succeeding in their weight loss journey.

When a patient is first referred to the AOC you will be tasked with conducting an initial comprehensive assessment and screening for undiagnosed or under-treated mental health disorders. This may include mood disorders, anxiety disorders, addictions and substance-use disorders, traumatic disorders, sleep disorders, eating disorders, attention/concentration deficits etc.

Once a plan has been established for any outstanding psychiatric conditions or barriers to recovery, then the treatment plan begins to address any underlying behavioural patterns and counterproductive thought processes as they may relate to the patients current weight. This may include addressing eating habits, emotional eating, boredom eating, self-sabotaging behaviors etc.

You'll be working with the patient to determine their underlying motivation and bolstering it to get them excited about creating sustainable lifestyle changes that they can maintain over years and decades. This can include helping them with setting goals and targets to create a roadmap for their weight loss and mental health success.

• Working 1:1 with a specialized bariatric nurse educator to assess, manage, treat and follow-up with patients
• Managing psychiatric medications
• Providing psychotherapy

• Patient encounters are primarily virtual and appointments are conducted via phone to patients across the entire province. Although appointments are virtual we do have an office where we work in person in a collaborate multidisciplinary team environment.

Mental Health

• Specialized training and certification in patient counselling and psychotherapy techniques (CBT, etc)
• A deep understanding and comfort with prescribing psychiatric medications

Obesity

• Understanding and knowledge of obesity and common comorbidities