Stressing the importance of mental resilience
The need to look after the mental, as well as physical, safety of dentists and their colleagues has gained greater recognition.
A topic that gained greater prominence in dentistry during the pandemic was mental health and wellbeing. The stresses and strains dental teams faced led to large numbers of them experiencing burnout and poor mental health. Since then, the need to look after the mental, as well as physical safety of dentists and their colleagues has gained greater acceptance and recognition.
Dentist and CEO of Psynergy Mental Health, Dr Ritesh (Rick) Aggrawal, who as part of Practice Plan’s commitment to supporting practices with their team’s wellbeing, led a session for practice managers recently on the importance of mental wellbeing. He explained the importance of building mental resilience among team members. The World Health Organization’s official definition of mental health is: “A state of mental wellbeing that enables people to cope with the stresses of life, realise their abilities, learn well and work well, and contribute to their community. It has intrinsic and instrumental value and is integral to our well-being.”
As Rick explained, “Resilience is the capacity of an individual to deal with stress and bounce back from it. Contrary to popular belief, not all stress is bad. Having some stress is good. It’s only when the person experiencing the stress feels it is out of control, that it can become a problem. So, learning from stress, creating tools to build mental resilience is important.”
A useful tool for dealing with stress and overwhelm is reframing. “This is not a case of being a Pollyanna about things and playing the glad game all the time. Although it does involve positive thinking,” Rick stressed. “However, positive thinking is more than just looking on the bright side, it’s about looking at things and reframing the situation. So, it involves taking a look at a situation that might be negative, breaking it down and dissecting it to see how we can turn that into a positive.”
Reframing is a great tool to help deal with perfectionism, something that plagues a lot of people in dentistry. So many dentists or dental care professionals will carry out a procedure that involves a great deal of care and attention and which gives a great outcome for the patient, but can have a tiny flaw, such as an air bubble in a composite filling. The tendency to ignore the other 95 per cent of the procedure that went well and concentrate on the five per cent that was not perfect is prevalent among the profession. As Rick suggests, a way to reframe this is to review what went well – the shape, the rise etc and look for the reasons why we got the air blow and work out how we can avoid it happening in the future. Taking that approach will start to build resilience.
The reasons why we reframe this sort of thinking is important as Rick suggests: “One reason is that the thinking might not be a true reflection of how things really are. For example, I might say: ‘I play a bit of golf and I’m pretty rubbish at it.’ However, I could spin that to say: ‘I play a bit of golf and I’m not so good at the moment, but I know there are tools in my locker to allow me to be able to practise and get better.’ So, whilst the statement might be true that I’m not good at golf, reframing it gives me a purpose to move forward. It creates hope. Having hope is a cornerstone of wellbeing.”
Another tool for building resilience is positive self-talk. So many of us wrestle with a negative inner voice. Our brains cannot differentiate between a critical inner voice or what has been said to us by someone else. So, it’s important our self-talk is positive.
Rather than being constantly self-critical, Rick suggests we try to take ourselves out of the situation and speak to ourselves in the same way we would speak to our friends. Most of us would never dream of saying to our friends the things we say to ourselves in our heads. We would not want to be that unkind or to undermine them. So, why do we allow ourselves to think that way about ourselves?
As Rick asserts: “We need to challenge the negative thoughts we harbour about ourselves. The more frequently we do this and start being kinder to ourselves, the more resilience we’ll build. Often, we’re our own biggest barrier to being resilient.”
Building resilience is not an overnight process and there are likely to be relapses along the way. However, as Rick suggests being kind to yourself and persevering will bring results: “Just tell yourselves that you’re human beings; you’re going to make mistakes and the outcome of what you are doing does not reflect on you as a person. It’s not you. So, talking to yourself as your best mate, as I call it, is a really important piece of advice.”
Ritesh’s session was one of a number of resources available to Practice Plan practices to prioritise their team members’ mental health. As well as online resources such blogs and webinars, there are in person events as well as access to Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) training courses. These are delivered by MHFA instructor and Men’s Mental Health advocate, Andy Elwood, with half of the cost of the course being subsidised by Practice Plan. Feedback on these courses is overwhelmingly positive with comments such as: “Fantastic course, great knowledge from Andy and very useful for everyday use. Really enjoyed the whole course” and “Andy is a great coach, and leaning provider as the information and knowledge he has provided us is great and really in depth. He made sure we all understood and made us feel comfortable throughout the course as there were no silly questions and encouraged us all to take part in discussions so we could get a true understanding of other people’s thoughts and approaches to things. I have really enjoyed this course and have learnt a lot.”
Like Andy’s MHFA course, attendees at Rick’s session gave overwhelmingly positive feedback. Comments included: “The best speaker. Really enjoyed the event. Hard topic made easier”; “Really informative and learnt lots to take away and think about and implement for myself and my team”; and “Good speaker. Nice and informative. Relatable and understanding.”
About Practice Plan
Practice Plan has been welcoming practices into the family since 1995, helping them to grow profitable businesses through the introduction of practice-branded membership plans. With more than 300 years’ dental experience in our field team, if you’re looking for a provider that has that family feel but knows a thing or two about dentistry, get in touch. Call 01691 684165 or visit www.practiceplan.co.uk/be-practice-plan/ For more information visit the Practice Plan website: www.practiceplan.co.uk/nhs
About Ritesh
Dr. Ritesh Aggarwal is a practicing Dentist, Practice Principal and the CEO of Psynergy Mental Health. He has been working within the mental health industry since 2017 and has a strong drive and determination to improve mental health for all.
Ritesh wants to improve the dental industry by implementing Psynergy programmes via their digital platform to measure the mental health and wellbeing culture of dental practices, creating action plans for improvement and inspiring positive, long-term behaviour change for the benefit of all within the practice.
Psynergy is currently trying to shift the paradigm of mental health to a more preventative approach, similar to dentistry, and is working closely with NHS research teams to achieve this.
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