{"id":20531,"date":"2021-02-16T23:59:16","date_gmt":"2021-02-17T04:59:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cpa.ca\/psychology-month-profile-melanie-joanisse\/"},"modified":"2022-05-05T14:17:06","modified_gmt":"2022-05-05T18:17:06","slug":"psychology-month-profile-melanie-joanisse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cpa.ca\/fr\/psychology-month-profile-melanie-joanisse\/","title":{"rendered":"Psychology Month Profile: M\u00e9lanie Joanisse"},"content":{"rendered":"
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M\u00e9lanie Joanisse<\/strong>
\nWhen the pandemic began, Dr. M\u00e9lanie Joanisse created a simple, easy, and funny Guide to Wellness<\/a> for her frontline co-workers at the Montfort hospital. It immediately took off and has been shared and translated around the world to help healthcare workers everywhere.<\/div>\n
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M\u00e9lanie Joanisse<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI wrote this in what I would call a hypomanic phase\u2026as psychologists, we always have to pathologize any kind of creativity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr. M\u00e9lanie Joanisse was still processing the fact that she was not going to be able to attend a Pearl Jam concert when she had something of a viral moment in the early days of the pandemic. Can we still say \u2018going viral\u2019? Or has that phrase now passed out of the lexicon like so many others before it that conjure unwelcome memories? Anyway, a lot of people suddenly found Dr. Joanisse\u2019s work. Like, a LOT of people. Her \u2018Guide To Wellness<\/a>\u2019 was being discovered.<\/p>\n

\u201cI got a call from the communications director at the Montfort hospital, who said \u2018what was your marketing and communication strategy for this? [M\u00e9lanie laughs heartily] I was like\u2026none? She said we were being bombarded with messages from people who said they like it, and I was starting to receive a lot of emails \u2013 even from people in Europe \u2013 saying \u2018we like this, can we translate it?\u2019 And so I said sure, go for it! So the communications team at the Montfort helped me to create a creative commune so people would understand that they could just take it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr. Joanisse\u2019s has a private practice in Ottawa, but does a lot of work at the Montfort Hospital, Ontario\u2019s only francophone hospital. When the pandemic first hit, she saw at the Montfort the stress that the staff was experiencing. The sudden worry among doctors and nurses. The occupational therapists and social workers who were wearing masks and gowns, something they would never have done before. It was all hands on deckand changed how everyone was working. She wanted to do whatever she could in her capacity as a psychologist to help.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a psychologist I\u2019m not trained in acute care \u2013 no one would want me in the ER! So I figured maybe doing a guide would be helpful. I was reading a lot online, and there are a lot of good resources, but I was just picturing a physician or a nurse or an RT sitting down with a list of 25 papers that they could read on wellness. I just pictured them shutting down their computers and saying \u2018I don\u2019t have time or the capacity for this\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

So Dr. Joanisse set about writing something that encompassed as much as possible about the evidence-based ways to wellness, but to package it in a more engaging way. Visually attractive, a little bit funny, and representative of what frontline healthcare workers were experiencing. An easily-digestible light read, rather than another arduous undertaking.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only mask you should be wearing is a medical mask; please discard the infallible mask, as research has shown it suffocates its users.\u201d<\/p>\n