Workplace Mental Health Programming in Toronto Delivered by Doctoral-Level Psychologists
What Laksman Doell Workplace Mental Health Programming Looks Like
We opened Laksman Doell Psychology when the world was less than a year into the COVID-19 pandemic. Schools and universities had to shift abruptly from in-class to online learning, and that meant that parents had to balance their children’s learning needs alongside all of their other commitments. Many were being asked to work from home, and others were required to maintain in-person work in the face of unknown risk and high infection rates. These changes brought awareness to an issue that had been a mainstay of our clinical practice for years, the overlap between mental health and workplace stress. As a team of psychologists with extensive experience addressing serious mental health concerns and supporting people in high-stress careers, we were keen to contribute.
You may find that workplace wellness content can be repetitious. It typically includes a familiar set of generic strategies: “Get outside. Talk to a Friend. Go for a walk. Nurture a houseplant.” These well-intentioned recommendations fail to address the underlying thought patterns, emotional experiences, and habitual responses that interfere with well-being and impair workplace performance. It is precisely these underlying factors that our team of doctoral-level psychologists have crafted their careers around addressing.
What started as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic has evolved into a transformative workplace mental health program relied upon by a number of leading organizations in the Greater Toronto Area (see below for feedback from our clients).
Our program is based on two founding principles; rigour and relevance. All of the information and strategies we offer are grounded in the latest psychological research and delivered by doctoral-level psychologists with thriving practices. Additionally, any content shared with your organization is tailor-made for your needs; we never give the same presentation twice. We start every new collaboration with a conversation that is designed to carefully assess the unique stressors and challenges that our clients and their employees face. This is what allows our clinical team to speak to a room of senior lawyers, hospital staff, executives, or working parents and to have the audience recognize themselves in what they’re hearing.
We create programming for organizations, HR teams, and people leaders who take their employees psychological health seriously. We also work specifically with high-performance and high-stress organizations, where the additional psychological demands are consistent and often invisible. Law firms. Medical departments. Consulting groups. Financial services. Athlete organizations. Moreover, we recognize that the pressures that are encountered in the workplace don’t often stay at the door when employees head home. Demanding careers and demanding family lives compound each other in ways that often go unaddressed and we have developed and delivered programming with this in mind.
Our content is often grounded in a Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) framework. This framework offers intuitive and powerful insights into the patterns of thinking, feeling, and responding that influence long-term well-being and performance. CBT also provides a versatile toolkit of evidence-based strategies that can help us to adopt realistic and effective mindsets, to moderate our emotions in times of acute distress, and to respond constructively to situations in a way that improves performance, protects relationships, and fosters improved mental health for both self and others within and outside of the workplace.
- Cognitive patterns that typically arise in the face of workplace stress, conflict, and performance expectations
- Communicating effectively at work
- Managing burnout in demanding careers
- Maintaining a high-performance job while showing up as an attentive parent
- Balancing workplace demands and those associated with caregiving for children, aging parents, or family members navigating illness
If you are an HR leader, executive, EAP coordinator, member organization, or association who is looking for effective, engaging, and evidence-based mental health programming, then we would like to hear from you. The programming that we provide can take many forms, such as one-off lunch-and-learns, half-day to multi-day workshops, ongoing on-site psychological services, and multi-year partnerships providing a variety of content to associations and organizations that are seeking to promote the wellbeing of their teams in a meaningful way. We look forward to crafting an approach that efficiently and effectively addresses your teams’ needs.
You may not be sure what your organization needs, but something brought you here…
- You lead a team. You sit on an executive committee. You run people and culture. You’re an HR partner, an EAP coordinator, a chief medical officer, or a managing partner. You have watched stress leaves climb. You have noticed the quiet attrition of your strongest people. You know the existing employee assistance benefit is not enough, and the wellness webinar you ran last quarter did not move anything. You are looking for the type of support that takes your people, and the pressure they are actually under, seriously.
- You run people and culture at an organization whose people operate under pressure and discretion: medicine, law, consulting, finance, sport, technology. The standard EAP is not what your team needs. You are looking to partner with a team of doctoral-level registered psychologists that can reliably provide high-quality psychological assessment and intervention services, with absolute confidentiality, for your team members when they are struggling.
- You are an executive committee thinking about long-term mental health strategy for your organization. You want a partner that can do the high-stakes individual work, the leadership coaching with a psychological foundation, and the team and organizational programming that sets the conditions for people to actually be well.
The feedback that we receive:
Boston Consulting Group
“The team at Laksman Doell has invested the time to understand our business, allowing them to tailor their approach for maximum relevance and empathy. They have offered fantastic support to our staff, whether through all-staff workshops, leader coaching, or as an individual resource to our staff when they need it most. I appreciate their professionalism, accessibility, and partnership-mindset. Would absolutely recommend!”
Adam Gordon, Managing Director & Senior Partner, BCG Toronto
North York General Hospital Department of Emergency Medicine
“Emergency Departments across Canada are under immense strain. As emergency physicians working in this stressful environment, we are prone to moral distress and injury. As fixers, we also carry guilt and self-blame when we can’t provide optimal care for our patients within the system’s limitations. [A Laksman Doell psychologist] delivered an enlightening and engaging talk to our emergency physician group on self-compassion at our annual retreat in 2024. It provided relevant insights and reminders for our group that have helped strengthen resilience amongst our physicians.”
Dr. Kevin Wasko, Chief of Emergency Medicine, North York General Hospital
Gluckstein Lawyers
“The psychologists at Laksman Doell delivered an engaging and insightful session on workplace mental health and wellness that was specifically tailored to the unique demands of legal practice. What set them apart was their deep understanding of the high-pressure environment in which legal professionals operate. Their warmth, professionalism, and genuine interest in our team’s wellbeing created a safe space for open discussion and reflection. The session was exceptionally well-received, with numerous team members commenting on how relevant and valuable the content was to their daily lives.”
Charles E. Gluckstein, Managing Partner, Gluckstein Lawyers
MD Direct
“I have been referring to Drs. Laksman and Doell for many years and have been thoroughly impressed with the care they’ve provided. They have helped many of my clients manage complex mental health symptoms (e.g. anxiety, OCD), navigate a situational crisis, process childhood trauma, etc., in a warm and caring environment. Their professionalism and clinical acumen are second to none, and I couldn’t recommend their services more highly.”
“I’ve referred to Laksman Doell for years. The clinical standard is exceptional, and my clients consistently feel like they’re in the right hands. I can’t think of another group I trust more with my patients and family.”
Dr. Lance Ceresne and Dr. Geoffrey Litner, Medical Directors, MD Direct
York University Staff Association
“The workshops that the Laksman Doell team have delivered to our members have been incredibly well received and were carefully tailored to the concerns that frequently emerge within our workplace. The feedback that we received from participants over the course of several different workshops has been uniformly positive and frequently comments on both how engaging the presenters are and on how helpful and relevant the content is for our members both within and outside of the workplace. We have invited them back several times and they continue to impress us with their skill and expertise as presenters.”
Sonny Day, President, York University Staff Association
The Red Oak Centre
“As a child psychologist, I am frequently asked for recommendations to refer parents of my clients, as well as friends and family. Laksman Doell is my first recommendation. Dr. Zoë Laksman is a dear and trusted colleague and I trust her completely. She, along with Dr. Faye Doell, manage their practice with integrity and care. Clients feel comfortable and are very well supported in their beautiful and professional office. I highly recommend Laksman Doell!”
Dr. Dahlia Fisher, Co-founder and Clinical Director, The Red Oak Centre
“I have referred clients, friends, and family to Laksman Doell daily for years, with the utmost confidence in the care they will receive. We consistently receive positive feedback from everyone we send their way. Each client is treated with attention, care and clinical expertise. I highly recommend Laksman Doell to anyone looking for therapy or assessment.”
Leah Izenberg, Co-founder and Executive Director, The Red Oak Centre
Programming that starts with understanding your organization.
Evaluation and Feedback. Participants complete a survey following each session. We share this data with HR or the organizing team, to measure impact, to identify areas for deeper exploration, and to shape future programming. For multi-session programming, this feedback directly informs the content of the sessions that follow, and it ensures that the programming continually improves in response to what their people are actually asking.
Specialist training.
Private practice experience. Engaging content.
We understand high-stakes environments because we have worked inside them for years. Our team has delivered programming to the Boston Consulting Group across Canada, the York University Staff Association, a variety of Toronto law firms and financial institutions; CAMH, the University Health Network, and North York General Hospital. Every engagement is developed and delivered by doctoral-level psychologists who are registered with the College of Psychologists and Behaviour Analysts of Ontario (CPBAO) and who have worked with high-performing individuals and executives who work in high-demand fields such as consulting, finance, law, medicine and academia, and have given talks and workshops that address the unique needs of individuals working within these fields.
When our psychologists talk to a room about thinking patterns and workplace stress, they are drawing on active clinical work with people who are navigating those exact dynamics. When they speak about burnout in high-performance careers, they are drawing on direct clinical experience with executives, lawyers, physicians, and athletes who came to them when the white-knuckling stopped being enough. When they run a session on caregiving, they are drawing on years of work with the families living it. The doctoral training is what shapes the content. The clinical practice is what makes it uniquely relevant.
Many of our psychologists have wide-ranging experience in terms of presenting talks and workshops. We have psychologists who continue to teach at universities in the Greater Toronto Area and who have presented at various provincial, national, and international conferences. We have psychologists who have held workshops, presented lunch-and-learns, and given grand-rounds for individuals who work in hospitals, at law firms, at consulting groups, and in universities.
To discuss programming for your organization, contact us directly. We respond within one business day and are happy to have an initial conversation before any commitment is made.
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- Customized for your organization
- Evidence-based, engaging and relevant
- In-person or virtual
- Response within one business day
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Frequently Asked Questions
Can content be customized to our organization?
What format do talks and workshops take?
Who delivers the talks?
Are your psychologists actively practicing, or are they full-time speakers?
How far in advance do we need to book?
What industries and audiences do you work with?
How do we measure the impact of a session?
What does it cost?
Do you provide feedback to our organization after a session?
Can you provide supporting materials?
How do we start?
Send us an email at [email protected] or give us a call at 416-840-9793. We will respond within one business day and are happy to have an initial conversation before any commitment is made.