COVID-19 Town Hall Series info

If you, or someone you know, is a frontline worker or first responder, join us to learn how to manage trauma, grief, and loss.

Have questions? Ask our experts in the live chat.

Our featured guests include:

Mark Antczak (Host), Anxiety Canada’s in house Registered Clinical Counsellor and Clinical Educator. His primary role is facilitating the online Mindshift Anxiety Groups and consulting on mental health anxiety programming to ensure resources are grounded in evidence based practice. He brings a decade of experience working with mental health in various environments and populations by providing individual and group counselling, mental health education programming, and conducting research while completing his Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and Master of Arts in Counselling Psychology at the University of British Columbia. He’s found great fulfillment providing support and treatment over the years to University students, youth in Vancouver’s DTES, first responders, and cancer survivors.

Dr. Katy Kamkar, Ph.D., C.Psych is a clinical psychologist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto. She is an assistant professor within the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto. She is the Executive Director of the Canadian Association of Fire Investigators (CAFI). She sits on the board of directors for the following organizations: Badge of Life Canada (BOLC), Operation Lifesaver Canada and Canadian Juries Commission. Dr. Kamkar is a fellow and member of the Collaborative Centre for Justice and Safety Advisory Council and the Chair of the Canadian Psychological Association (CPA) Trauma Sector. And Co-Chair of Global Law Enforcement and Public Health Association Inc. (GLEPHA), Health of Police/ First Responders. She is also the provincial mental health advisor for St. John Ambulance Ontario’s council. She is a founding and credentialed member of the Canadian Association of Cognitive Behavioural Therapies (CACBT), and Associate Member of the Canadian Association Chiefs of Police (CACP). She was also the Medical Practitioner for the Invictus Games launched by Prince Harry, Toronto 2017 and closely worked with the Service Members and Veterans. Dr. Kamkar has worked as a clinician and teacher in a wide variety of inpatient and outpatient settings including service to Police and First Responders for mood and anxiety disorders. She provides education and workshops (provincial to international) on workplace mental health and stress injuries, occupational trauma and disability, and resiliency. She makes frequent media appearances and has written over 100 mental health articles for various comprehensive public resources.  She joined Anxiety Canada’s Scientific Advisory Committee in November 2017.

Dr. Carmen McLean, PhD, is a licensed Clinical Psychologist at the Dissemination and Training Division of the National Center for PTSD at the Palo Alto VA and a Clinical Associate Professor (Affiliate) at Stanford University. She is a past Web-Editor for the Association for Cognitive and Behavioral Therapies and an incoming Associate Editor for Cognitive Behavioral Practice. She has published over 90 articles and chapters on anxiety and PTSD. Her research examines ways to increase the reach of exposure therapies for PTSD by addressing implementation barriers and testing eHealth and mHealth interventions. She is currently PI of a DoD-funded study testing an online version of prolonged exposure therapy (PE) for PTSD and Co-PI of a DoD-funded study testing a tailored process improvement approach to increasing PE use in the U.S. military health system. The overall goal of her work is to help more individuals with PTSD benefit from effective treatment.