The Working Mind
Oral Healthcare Manager
"This course provides a safe space for oral health professionals to explore the importance of maintaining positive mental health in their workplace."
- CDA President Dr. Heather Carr
The Working Mind: Workplace Mental Health & Wellness for Oral Health Care Professionals was developed by the Canadian Dental Association in partnership with the Mental Health Commission of Canada, and launched in October 2023. It grew out of CDA's COVID-19 Practice Recovery Task Force, and as CDA CEO Dr. Aaron Burry put it, when CDA and the provincial and territorial dental associations prioritized the issues facing dentists and dental practices, mental health was the top priority for everyone involved. The MHCC adapted the underlying program from Road to Mental Readiness, a Canadian Armed Forces program, and the continuum model and coping skills at its core come from there.
Dental and hygiene schools have traditionally focused on clinical skill, rarely including courses on leadership psychology, mental health, or crisis management. Practice owners and dental team leaders graduate into a demanding profession where they carry responsibility for the well-being of everyone in their building. Dentists lead their practices, their teams, and their patients, often while managing their own mental health in silence. No amount of technical training prepares you to shoulder that kind of pressure. This program provides the framework to do it.
How leaders respond to these challenges matters. You set the tone for whether mental health gets talked about at all. This program provides the industry-specific videos, case studies, and practical frameworks needed to move past a traditional culture of perfectionism, helping you establish a psychologically safe practice environment where your team can thrive.
$375 per person. 8 hours. Virtual. Canada-wide.
Don't see a date that works? Get in touch. Token is happy to arrange additional sessions for your practice's leadership team, including in-person delivery. Hello@ateliermhl.ca
50%
of female Canadian dentists and 37% of male Canadian dentists report experiencing mental health issues.
Practice owners specifically cite staff management and leadership as primary stressors - meaning the person running the practice is often managing their own mental health while trying to hold everyone else together.
Maragha et al., JDR Clinical and Translational Research / University of British Columbia, 2025
The Curriculum
-
This program was developed by the Canadian Dental Association in partnership with the Mental Health Commission of Canada to address the specific pressures of running a dental practice: patient anxieties, high staff turnover, and the day-to-day reality of managing a team's mental health alongside your own. It's delivered by a facilitator who has managed teams herself, not just studied them. The videos, scenarios, and case studies throughout are drawn directly from oral healthcare settings, featuring real dental professionals discussing the clinical, emotional, and business pressures your team faces every day. Running a sustainable practice starts with sustainable leadership, so this course protects your own resilience just as much as it builds your ability to support your team. What happens in the room reflects what you're already living day to day.
-
We explore fundamental mental health concepts and the specific dynamics of stigma in dental practice - where the relentless pressure for precision and professionalism can make it significantly harder for both leaders and staff to acknowledge when things are not okay. -
Module 2 - The Mental Health Continuum
We take the guesswork out of workplace well-being by introducing a practical, color-coded spectrum tool. Leaders learn to recognize early, subtle changes in their own mental health and their team's - knowing exactly when and how to open a supportive conversation before a situation becomes a crisis. -
During this module we examine the specific chronic stressors of dental practice leadership - including high-stakes patient care pressures, staff management, the commercial realities of business ownership, and the unique isolation many practice owners experience - while building personal resilience using the Big 4 Coping Strategies. -
Our final module provides leaders with the practical management tools to build a healthier, safer clinical environment. We focus on psychological safety, key leadership responsibilities, and workplace accommodations; how creating conditions where every team member feels safe to discuss mental health openly and without judgment works to protect staff retention, reduce costly burnout, and strengthen the overall resilience of the entire practice.Please note
For prevention purposes, this course includes content on suicide awareness. Verbal trigger warnings are provided prior to discussing this material to ensure a safe, supportive learning environment for everyone.
Reduces stigma in a small practice setting where struggles are difficult to hide and harder to raise
Recognizes early warning signs in a close-knit team using the Mental Health Continuum, before it affects patient care
Prepares you to support a struggling team member, even while managing scheduling, patients, and the practice all at once
Atelier Mental Health Literacy + Facilitation delivers The Working Mind as parallel programmes - one designed specifically for managers and one for employees - because what each group needs from this training is genuinely different.
When both cohorts complete their respective streams, they return to the same workplace with a shared language and shared frameworks for mental health. That shared foundation is what builds psychological safety - and psychological safety is what changes workplace culture.