Free webinar series on mental health from Mosaic Counseling begins this week
OTTAWA COUNTY — A free series of webinars on mental wellness will begin Tuesday and offer insight on a variety of mental health topics.
The six-week series comes from Mosaic Counseling, a nonprofit with offices in Holland and Grand Haven. Each Tuesday from Feb. 7 to March 14, the group will offer a free webinar on a different topic.
The series comes at a time where the need for mental health services is continually increasing, said Mosaic Counseling Executive Director Sarah Lewakowski.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a greater need for mental health services than what I’m seeing right now,” Lewakowski, who's been in her role for 19 years, said. “The severity of the calls is the worst I’ve seen, as well — people calling and saying ‘I need to get in right away, I feel like I’m in crisis, I’m feeling suicidal.’”
Requests for services began rising during the COVID-19 pandemic, and haven’t tapered off since.
“I remember during the height of COVID, I was reading that the longest lasting effect from COVID was going to be on people’s mental health,” Lewakowski said. “At Mosaic Counseling, we’re living that right now. Our phones are ringing off the hook — we don’t turn anybody away."
Providing a free, virtual series is an effort to reach more people throughout the county.
“We wanted to do something virtual to remove that barrier of location,” Lewakowski said. “We just really wanted to be able to provide some education.”
Webinars will be held 4-5 p.m. Tuesdays. Each session will see a therapist from Mosaic Counseling provide information, education and tips in a certain area of mental wellness.
Areas of focus will be suicide prevention (Feb. 7), unmasking grief (Feb. 14), navigating mental health resources (Feb. 21), understanding addiction (Feb. 28), trauma and how it presents (March 7) and coping made easier — using a self care approach (March 14).
“We carefully chose the six topics we thought were really the hot topics,” Lewakowski said. “These are the things we know people want to know about.”
Subscribe:Receive unlimited access to your local news coverage
Community members are welcome to join all six webinars, or just ones they feel a particular interest in. Register at mosaiccounseling.com/events.
Lewakowski said the suicide prevention training was nearing capacity as of Thursday afternoon, and Mosaic is planning on adding more sessions for that topic throughout the six-week series. The nonprofit plans to hold additional webinars moving forward, as well.
— Contact reporter Mitchell Boatman at mboatman@hollandsentinel.com. Follow him on Twitter @SentinelMitch.
This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Free webinar series on mental health from Mosaic Counseling begins this week
