Life & Mind: an online lifestyle medicine course for mental healthcare
Advice about food, sleep or physical activity can easily remain general. In mental healthcare, it needs to fit the person’s treatment, physical health, circumstances and available support. Life & Mind focuses on that practical step: bringing knowledge about lifestyle into everyday clinical work.
What does the course offer?
The programme goes beyond recommendations about healthy habits. It covers lifestyle and social needs assessment, therapeutic communication, behaviour change, and the planning and evaluation of programmes across care settings.
It also addresses the physical health of people with mental illness and the side effects of psychiatric medication. Perspectives from people with lived experience of mental health difficulties are included alongside clinical experience from different professions.
Who is it for?
The course is intended for people working in mental health: doctors, nurses, psychologists, other health professionals and community workers. Examples cover primary care, inpatient services and community care.
It is led by Dr Tetyana Rocks, a dietitian and Lead of the Food & Mood Academy at Deakin University, and Dr Sam Manger, a general practitioner and lifestyle medicine educator at James Cook University.
From professional consensus to education
The programme’s themes are linked to a modified Delphi study published in Critical Public Health. Professionals from different disciplines and people with lived experience of mental health difficulties worked together to identify priorities for this type of education.
The paper provided a framework for the course content.
See how the programme is structured
In the course introduction, Tetyana Rocks explains the three weeks: foundations, working with patients and implementation in services. Sam Manger’s short introduction describes who the programme is designed for.
Member access
Life & Mind runs online through FutureLearn, with self-paced learning over three weeks. The organiser lists a completion certificate and CPD hours under the platform’s conditions; recognition in Croatia should be checked separately.
Active HUMŽiS members can access the course for AUD 119. Our course page contains the programme, practical information and the member access form. We send the member-rate link after checking membership.
Sources
Lederman et al.: Priorities for lifestyle education in mental healthcare (Delphi study)
