Your employer may have an Employee and Family Assistance Program (EFAP), which provides for assessments, short-term counselling, referrals to specialists, mediation, and follow-up services to employees and their families.  Northstar is a contracted provider with many employers in the NWT, and is available to assist employees dealing with mental health issues and develop more adaptive coping mechanisms, both at work and at home.  Contact us, or speak to your employer, to find out if EFAP is available to you.

Trauma is the result of extraordinarily stressful events that shatter your sense of security and leave you feeling overwhelmed and helpless. Common symptoms include struggling with frightening memories, feeling numb and disconnected from others, issues with trust and confidence in others, as well as feelings of anger, irritability, mood swings, guilt, shame, and self-blame.  Managing trauma means making sense of the stressful events in your life, and to overcome the tendency to supress the experiences.  Northstar is specialized in helping you speed up that recovery process.

Many NWT residents endured and survived the government sponsored, church run Residential School system that was established to assimilate Aboriginal children into Euro-Canadian culture. Most often, the horrific experience included neglect, alienation from family, and emotional, physical and sexual abuse.  The Federal Government has committed to providing counselling to all survivors and their families. Members, and Northstar is contracted to provide that support. Find out if you or your family are eligible for the government-funded program by calling 1-800- 464-8106. Once your eligibility is established, contact us anytime to set up counselling

Love is powerful. Whether it’s the love of family and friends or a romantic relationship, love and relationships of all types enrich and fulfill your life and provide support and a sense of belonging. Relationships can also cause a hurt, pain, self-doubt, and mistrust when they are not going well.  You are certainly not alone when this happens. We can help you and your loved ones reconnect and feel more secure in your relationship. We assist couples and families with identifying how they are negatively interacting with each other, and why, and finding paths to more meaningful and healthy connections within the relationship.

Anxiety can be an excessive worry about the future events or about unexplainable fears, and can result in personal tension and even physical aches and pains throughout your body. You may also experience rapid heart rates, shortness of breath, dizziness, sleep disturbance and episodes of panic.  Northstar helps you process events and conditions that may be linked to anxiety, challenge negative or irrational thoughts with more realistic thoughts, and lifestyle changes related to exercise, sleep, hygiene, and diet.

Depression is often related to conditions and events happening in your life, but sometimes the reason for its presence is less clear.  Symptoms of depression include poor concentration, excessive or limited sleep, changes in appetite, low mood, and negative and/or irrational thoughts. Northstar can help assess the type or source depression you are experiencing, and guide you through a number of well-established systems for managing and overcoming depression.  This includes support and validation for difficult situations, and replacing unhealthy patterns associated with behaviour, thoughts and feelings.  Sometimes medication is involved; however, this is not part of our practice, and it involves consultation with your family doctor.

Good self-esteem provides comfort and satisfaction as we conduct our daily lives. However, low self-esteem may cause anxious and sensitive feelings. If not managed properly, you may use coping tactics such as avoidance, over-analysing or trying too hard, or adopting a destructive lifestyle. You may find that achieving goals and skills is only a temporary boost to your esteem.  Northstar can assist you in addressing the negative early childhood and adolescent experiences, or experiences in adult life, that result in low self-esteem and being overly self-critical.  We can also help you explore realistic and supportive beliefs and behaviours about yourself to challenge your current beliefs and low self-esteem.

Northstar can provide a wide range of assessment services with the goal of making appropriate intervention plans or strategies in your life. Through these assessments, we can identify specific issues and provide referrals to specific disciplines or specialists in order to receive proper care.  Our services include psychological assessments, pycho-educational assessments, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) assessments, as well as screening & assessment procedures for a wide variety of mental disorders, such as depression, anxiety, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), adjustment disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and personality disorders.