NUS Lunchtime Forum: Conflicts and Challenges – Developing an Undefeated Mind

— Brought to you by NUS Development Office & Department of Psychological Medicine, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine

“Developing an Undefeated Mind” took place on 30 April 2009. It showcased valuable skills on how to develop personal resilience to deal with our daily conflicts and challenges and the various ways to defeat our negative habitual thoughts and emotions.

Assoc Prof Goh Lee Gan, Head of Family Medicine in the University Medicine Cluster, National University Health System (NUHS) shared with us how to nurture mental health with positive emotions and provided us with the secrets to positive psychology in life to ensure personal resilience. He showed us the three lives - happiness life, engaged life, and meaningful life - which ultimately provides the reservoir of positive psychology to life and ensures personal resilience.

Our second speaker, Assoc Prof Cheong Pak Yean, Adjunct Associate Professor, Division of Family Medicine NUHS and Clinical Psychotherapist & Specialist Physician (Internal Medicine) equipped us with the psychological therapy tools to deal with the tough conflicts and extreme challenges that all of us face in our daily lives. His constructive narratives and very detailed graphics kept the audience captivated.

Programme

Introduction
Chairman, Prof Kua Ee Heok, Dept of Psychological Medicine, NUHS

From BIPT to Personal Resilience – Programme to cope with conflicts and challenges in our daily lives as well as to develop personal resilience and confidence.

Nurturing Positive Personal Mental Health and Psychology
Assoc Prof Goh Lee Gan, Head, Division of Family Medicine, NUHS

Nurture mental health to be flourishing with positive emotions, positive psychological functioning, and positive social functioning. Living the three lives of happiness life, engaged life, and meaningful life provides the reservoir of positive psychology to life and ensures personal resilience.

Defeating Negative Habitual Thoughts and Emotions
Assoc Prof Cheong Pak Yean, Adjunct Associate Professor, NUHS & Psychotherapist

We need psychological therapy tools to defeat negative habitual thoughts and emotions; Constructive narratives of ourselves help to give us the self-esteem to deal with conflicts and challenges in our daily lives.

A Therapeutic Conversation
Assoc Prof Goh Lee Gan & Assoc Prof Cheong Pak Yean

A demonstration of the power of a therapeutic conversation that promotes and cultivates personal resilience by correcting cognitive distortions, and by using the techniques of re-membering, re-constructing, re-framing, and re-telling to turn problem saturated stories to stories that can help us to move on to cope with life.

 

About the speakers

Assoc Prof Goh Lee Gan
Head, Division of Family Medicine, NUHS

Assoc Prof Goh Lee Gan is currently Head of the newly formed Division of Family Medicine in the University Medicine Cluster, National University Health System (NUHS).

He has several interests: developing family medicine (general practice) in Singapore and Asia Pacific region; contributing to make the world a better place to live in; and exploring the mind-body connect. He is currently President of the College of Family Physicians, Singapore. He was immediate past Regional President, World Organisation of Family Doctors (Wonca), Asia Pacific region; past president of the Singapore Medical Association.

For his contribution to Singapore as Chairman of the Ministry of Health’s AIDS Task Force, he was awarded the Public Service Star (BBM).

Assoc Prof Cheong Pak Yean
Adjunct Associate Professor, Division of Family Medicine, NUHS
Clinical Psychotherapist & Specialist Physician (Internal Medicine)

Assoc Prof Cheong did postgraduate internal medicine training in Singapore & Edinburgh and is a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, American College of Physicians and the Academy of Medicine Singapore. He specializes in the continuing care of chronic diseases such as diabetes & hypertension.

He was valedictorian of the graduating master class (2006) in professional counseling of Swinburne University (Melbourne) and trains doctors, counselors & psychologists in psychological therapy. He is a past president of the Singapore Medical Association (SMA) and the College of Family Physicians Singapore.

 

About the Chair

Prof Kua Ee Heok
Senior Consultant Psychiatrist, NUH

Prof Kua has a bachelor’s degree in Medicine and Surgery (MBBS) from the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur and had postgraduate training in Psychiatry at Oxford University, UK. He was a recipient of the Oxford Health Authority Scholarship as well as the China Medical Board Scholarship to pursue training in geriatric psychiatry at Harvard University, USA. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists (UK).

Prof Kua has published over 180 scientific papers and 19 books on ageing, stress and addiction. He has won awards for his work, including first prize in ASEAN Psychiatry Research and the Sandoz Research Award for Gerontology. Furthermore, Prof Kua has been an invited lecturer at Harvard Medical School in Boston and the UN World Forum for Mental Health in New York. He is the President-Elect of the Pacific-Rim College of Psychiatrists and Editor of the Asia Pacific Psychiatry journal.