I tend to fall into the trap with blogging of only ever writing a blog post when I have a very specific thing I want to talk about. But blogging can also be a public thinking space, somewhere to organise one’s thoughts.
With that in mind, I thought I’d take a moment to do a quick flyover of my work world, mostly for my benefit, but as a reader. maybe you’ll see something that sparks some curiousity.
I’m thinking about my work differently
Since joining Prevention United (just as a member), I’ve really started defining my overall work as mental health promotion. My goal is to equip people with knowledge, skills, tools and resources they can use to build, maintain, or repair their mental health. This simpler description of what I do helps me assess new opportunities and hone existing ones.
I’ve also been attempting to shift my mindset about my work. Coming through the standard education system and then into academia, I had really internalised this idea that work was about proving myself through continued growth and achievement. I was finding this a punishing way of being in the world. I am trying now to cultivate more of a sense of caretaking – utilising what I have learned (and continue to learn) to help others and contribute to the greater good. This isn’t an easy mental shift for me, being quite tightly attached to my ego, but one that has contributed to 2024 feeling much more collaborative and compassionate.
I’m blessed to have many different projects
I use Workflowy to track what I do at Flinders University and then my CPD journal (see the template I use) to track my psychology-related projects outside of work.
At Flinders, my main jobs fall into the following categories:
- Managing digital information channels (e.g. websites and blogs)
- Development and delivery of therapeutic programs/workshops (e.g. Be Well Plan, Studyology)
- Lectures and presentations on mental health (e.g. self-care, impostor syndrome)
- Topic specific collaborations (e.g.
- University-wide mental health promotion
- Development and delivery of custom topics
Some projects that I am really excited about at the moment across those categories are:
Positive Shifts – built on the excellent COM-B model, Positive Shifts is a behaviour change theory inspired clinical process for those in medical and allied health roles to better support clients make lasting healthy lifestyle changes. It started as a 2 day workshop, became a preliminary set of instructional videos and in the second half of 2024 will become a self-guided online topic avaialable to all Flinders students with an interest in such work. Building with my colleague Tam.
Wellbeing visual identity and website – Flinders is really investing in making student wellbeing a core pillar of the university experience. With that comes a wellbeing-specific visual identity and website. Much of my future work (and that of my colleagues and collaborators) will come underneath this pillar, making for a much more coherent approach to student wellbeing. To see this take shape in my time at Flinders has brought me much joy. We’ll be building this in the second half of 2024 for a full launch at orientation 2025.
Allied Health Rural Mental Health Self-care – We built a multi-session mental health self-care program for rural and remote allied health students and delivered it as part of their interprofessional practice sessions in Semester 1, 2024. I got a bunch of things right and wrong in the process and am currently rewriting it for 2025. Sneak peak of topics:
Self-care and mental health – my thoughts on self-care and mental health are always developing. I am currently spending time with three different wellbeing models, Big 5, Power 9 and SEWB, understanding what they have in common (e.g. they speak to daily practices) and how they are different (e.g. the conceptualisation of the self). Explored together I think they say some really interesting things about how we care for ourselves, which I hope to articulate better in future presentations.
Studyology V4 – I’ve been loving Tim Pychyl’s “Solving the Procrastination Puzzle” audio course in the Waking Up App. I’ll be using his insights to write the 4th version of our Studyology program, a tackling procrastination program that we’ve delivered here at Flinders since 2018. We currently address procrastination as an emotion regulation failure, which is in line with current theory and practice. However Tim’s course provides many more practical strategies for addressing this than we have in the program currently.
In my psychology life outside of work, my two main areas of focus at the moment are:
- Psychology and Health Forum &
- Visualising Mental Health
I realised the other day that the Psychology and Health Forum is 20 years old. I’m not sure I can quite wrap my head around that. Started as a networking opportunity (and way of procrastinating) during my PhD, we now have 3000+ members in an online community that engages in informal sharing, connection and learning. Nothing overly complex, just a place to connect with mental health colleagues in South Australia. Most of the ‘work’ I do with this forum is just steadily adding content and refining useablity. Sometimes I think I need to revamp the community but quickly remember that it is already functioning well. It is a good example of knowing the difference between growth for growth sake, versus growth for the greater good.
Visualising Mental Health is also getting on in age a little. I think this is our 8th year??!! We have a slightly different team this year as some of the original project team (Jane and Doreen) stepped into new roles. But Martina and the crew stepped up, and 2024 was one of our stronger years, in terms of the student projects. My hope is that I can get this initiative established at Flinders at some point, and have creative professionals from multiple disciplines imagining new and interesting mental health promotion projects.
If you are in the mental health or university sectors and want to learn more about any of these projects, feel free to shoot me an email (gareth.furber@gmail.com). Always happy to discuss. You can read about other things I am doing here.
Ill finish with an update on an art piece. Has nothing much to do with mental health promotion but I do find that my art pieces end up representing something I am grappling with at the time. This piece hasn’t revealed its message yet.
Dr Gareth Furber 