Now Offering: MBCT for Depression & Mood Support with Christopher Menard

Group Therapy for Preventing Depression

Building a New Relationship with Moods

Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT)

Experiences of recurrent depression and anxiety can leave one feeling exhausted, uncertain about how to move forward or get unstuck, and like life has lost its color. There are evidence-based approaches that are effective and empowering to help you break free from patterns that contribute to repeated and prolonged episodes of depression and anxiety.  

This depression prevention group will use the MBCT (Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy) curriculum. Through systematic research MBCT has consistently demonstrated effectiveness in preventing relapses of major depression at levels equivalent to antidepressant medication. This group combines training in mindfulness meditation practices with principles from cognitive therapy. The heart of this work lies in becoming acquainted with the modes of mind that often characterize and contribute to mood disorders while simultaneously learning to develop a new relationship with them. 

Cultivating mindfulness offers possibilities and potential for living life in new ways; for learning new skills and new ways of working with and befriending the negative and painful parts of your mind.

How Does MBCT Work?

• Mindfulness practice helps you to see more clearly the patterns of the mind; and to learn how to recognize when your mood is beginning to go down. This means you can ‘nip it in the bud” much earlier than before.

• Mindfulness can help you interrupt the automatic connection of negative mood, negative thinking and bodily sensations such as fatigue and “sluggishness” that often link, trigger or reactivate a downward mood spiral.

• Mindfulness allows you to “shift gears” from a mode of mind dominated by critical and judgmental thinking (likely to provoke and accelerate downward mood spirals) to another mode of mind in which you experience the world directly, non-conceptually and non-judgmentally.

• Mindfulness offers access to another approach to dealing with difficult emotions and moods.

• Through mindfulness, you can discover that difficult and unwanted thoughts and feelings can be held in awareness, and seen from an altogether different perspective – a perspective that brings with it a sense of warmth and compassion to the suffering you are experiencing.

• Mindfulness can help you learn how to be present and appreciate the simple pleasures of everyday life, connect with yourself, and the experience of being alive.

Required reading: Mindful Way Workbook by Teasdale, Segal, and Williams        https://a.co/d/06i64d3P

Read chapters 1 – 4 in preparation for the class. 

During this 8-week class, participants are encouraged to complete daily mindfulness audio training and to journal in the workbook. Daily audio and journaling activities typically take about 45-minutes. If you don’t expect to have the time in your schedule to make this daily commitment, consider attending the Finding Peace in a Frantic World group.

See link to access MBCT daily audios: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1OpPDqfqbyDfiTLoauBB8ejF6WPeVKxPK?usp=drive_link

Class meets for 2-hours/week for 8-weeks + one Saturday 4-hour practice session

Cost: $400

Location: Online or In-Person

An initial Zoom meeting with Dr. Menard is required before beginning the group.

To express interest, ask questions, and join the wait-list for the next MBCT group, email DrMenard@DrMenard.org and put MBCT in the subject line of the email. 

You can also contact Dr. Menard via his work phone at 615-626-3878.

Dr. Menard received his doctorate from the Chicago School of Professional Psychology and completed his internship at the University of Illinois Psychological Services Center in Champaign, IL.  Before moving to Nashville in the summer of 2023, he provided clinical services in Urbana, Illinois and trained doctoral students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy and Mindfulness Based Relapse Prevention.