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COVID-19 and Depletion

Wellness is the integration of physical, mental, emotional, spiritual and social well-being for each person. Our goal is to inspire our community to live a healthy lifestyle.

Sometimes it can be challenging to find support when we’re feeling stressed or overwhelmed. We’ve compiled some resources and useful tips that can be easily incorporated into your daily life to support your personal wellbeing, help you manage stress and cope with changes in your environment.

Audio Library

Listen to these guided mediation and relaxation clips to help your brain and body recover from stresses such as work, technology and other external resources. These clips are just a few minutes long and can easily be integrated into your daily life.

• Five senses – Dr. Kerri Ritchie (2 mins 50 seconds)
• Utilisez vos cinq sens – (Dr. Bryce Mulligan (1 min 54 seconds)*
• Square meditation – Dr. Kerri Ritchie (1 min 31 seconds)
• Meditation en carre – Dr. Caroline Gerin Lajoie (1 min 57 seconds)*

*en francais

Videos

Have you taken your vitals lately? Watch our video, “Mental Health Continuum Model ,” where some of The Ottawa Hospital’s top experts talk about the different phases of health and wellness individuals move through, how we can be more aware of how we’re feeling and ways to sustain our mental health when it starts to dip.

Tips

Here are a few stress management tips that you can practice and try to use regularly in your everyday life!

Find your go-to strategies for managing stress:

Mitigate depletion by monitoring your level of arousal

When arousal is high, you use more of your energy and feel the effects of fatigue even more. Decreasing your arousal can help you save some of your resources.

First, recognize signs of stress or emotional discomfort, like sweating, heart racing, hand shaking, rapid breathing, or distraction.

Next, evaluate your level of arousal on a scale from one to 10. You want to stay under six as much as possible, for best emotional processing.

• From one to three you are in the green state – very calm.
• From four to five you are in the yellow state – you are ok, but your arousal is increasing.
• From six to eight your arousal level is too high for the situation. This is the time to check in with yourself and bring it back down to five or below.
• If you are at nine or 10, it is time to prioritize bringing your arousal level down.

Managing stress as early as possible reduces our overall level and experience of stress.

Additional support

Visit Ottawa Public Health’s Mental Health and Substance Use Services and Resources page for more information on additional wellness support available in Ottawa.

For COVID-19 specific supports, visit the Government of Ontario’s COVID-19: Support for people webpage.

If you are in crisis, please contact the Mental Health Crisis Line, available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, at 613-722-6914 or 1-866-966-0991 if you are outside Ottawa.

If you, or your child, are experiencing thoughts of suicide or self-harm, please call 9-1-1.

Connect with us!

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Last updated on: March 15th, 2021