Company: Peak Resilience Counselling Inc.
Employees: 16 counsellors, four administrative staff
Challenge: Mere months before the COVID-19 pandemic, Peak Resilience moved its private counselling practice from a 400-square-foot office to a 4,000-square-foot office in downtown Vancouver, where registered counsellors interact with patients in one-one-one settings and group sessions. With public health officials urging people to stay at home, counsellors can no longer interact with clients in person to address mental health and wellness. Meanwhile, expenses continue to accrue for the expanded office.
Response: Founder and clinical director Jennifer Hollinshead says that while in-person sessions remain the “gold standard” for reading body language, the company has now scaled up its capacity to offer video counselling and phone sessions (previously 2-5% of the business) and is deploying Zoom’s telehealth option to ensure all calls remain secure.
Quote: “People who struggle with mental health issues — anxiety, depression, trauma or anything like that — with all of this added stress, mental health symptoms that might have been present before can sometimes get worse. So a lot of people are making their video and phone sessions work no matter what because they really need it … I’m feeling extremely grateful that this is forcing us to get better online services.”
—Jennifer Hollinshead
