Psychology and Counselling Summit 2021

Stephen W. Porges, Ph.D. is Distinguished University Scientist at Indiana University where he is the founding director of the Traumatic Stress Research Consortium. He is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina, and Professor Emeritus at both the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Maryland. He served as president of the Society for Psychophysiological Research and the Federation of Associations in Behavioral & Brain Sciences and is a former recipient of a National Institute of Mental Health Research Scientist Development Award. He has published more than 350 peer‐reviewed scientific papers across several disciplines that have been cited in approximately 40,000 peer-reviewed papers. He holds several patents involved in monitoring and regulating autonomic state. He is the originator of the Polyvagal Theory, a theory that emphasizes the importance of physiological state in the expression of behavioral, mental, and health problems related to traumatic experiences. He is the author of The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-regulation (Norton, 2011), The Pocket Guide to the Polyvagal Theory: The Transformative Power of Feeling Safe, (Norton, 2017) and co-editor of Clinical Applications of the Polyvagal Theory: The Emergence of Polyvagal-Informed Therapies (Norton, 2018). He is the creator of a music-based intervention, the Safe and Sound Protocol ™ , which currently is used by more than 1500 therapists to improve spontaneous social engagement, to reduce hearing sensitivities, and to improve language processing, state regulation, and spontaneous social engagement.

Sonja Lyubomirsky (A.B., summa cum laude, Harvard; PhD, social psychology, Stanford) is Distinguished Professor and Vice Chair of Psychology at the University of California, Riverside and author of The How of Happiness and The Myths of Happiness, translated in 36 countries. Lyubomirsky’s teaching has been recognized with the Faculty of the Year (twice) and Faculty Mentor of the Year Awards. Her research – on the possibility of lastingly increasing happiness via gratitude, kindness, and connection interventions — has received many honors, including the Diener Award for Outstanding Midcareer Contributions in Personality Psychology, the Christopher J. Peterson Gold Medal, the Distinguished Research Lecturer Award, and a Positive Psychology Prize. Lyubomirsky lives in Santa Monica, California, with her family.

Barry Schwartz is an emeritus professor of psychology at Swarthmore College and a visiting professor at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley. He has spent forty years thinking and writing about the interaction between economics and morality. He has written several books that address aspects of this interaction, including The Battle for Human Nature, The Costs of Living, The Paradox of Choice, Practical Wisdom, and most recently, Why We Work. The Paradox of Choice was named one of the top business books of the year by both Business Week and Forbes Magazine, and has been translated into twenty-five languages. Schwartz has written for sources as diverse as The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Slate, Scientific American, The New Republic, the Harvard Business Review, and the Guardian. He has appeared on dozens of radio shows, including NPR’s Morning Edition, and Talk of the Nation, and has been interviewed on Anderson Cooper 360 (CNN), the PBS News Hour, The Colbert Report, and CBS Sunday Morning. Schwartz has spoken three times at the TED conference, and his TED talks have been viewed by more than 20 million people.

Graham Barkus has 30 years of experience in guiding personal, organisational and systemic change, in senior organisation development roles and as an external coach and consultant. His focus is helping people master complexity, uncertainty and change, both to deliver and sustain peak performance and to reduce the costs of work-related stress on organisations, their people and the wider community.

From his base in Hong Kong Graham’s experience has spanned employment and consultancy roles to clients across Asia and the UK/Europe, in diverse industries including banking and finance, insurance, aviation, logistics, healthcare, real estate development, engineering consultancy and FMCG. His work has typically involved spanning boundaries of language, culture, structure, interests and habit in personal as well as professional contexts. Graham holds postgraduate degrees with distinctions in Clinical Organizational Psychology (INSEAD); Strategy & Innovation (University of Oxford), and an LLM in Arbitration and Dispute Resolution from the University of Hong Kong. He is certified in cognitive-behavioural and integrative healthcare coaching; he is a Founding Fellow at the Institute of Coaching at Harvard University and a member of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations and the Australasian Society for Lifestyle Medicine.

Dr. Vanessa Wong is an empathetic, respectful and dedicated doctor who has always been fascinated by the human psyche. She gravitated towards psychiatry because it combined her love of medical science with the study of humanity. She believes in taking an integrative approach by looking beyond symptoms and identifying root causes, and in doing so treat the person as a whole rather than a cluster of problems.

Having been born and raised locally, Dr. Wong studied in England during her formative years and returned to Hong Kong to undertake her medical degree. She completed her specialist training under the Hong Kong College of Psychiatrists' training program, which included general adult, old age, child and adolescent, consultation and liaison, and substance abuse psychiatry. At the same time, she obtained her membership to the Royal College of Psychiatrists in the United Kingdom. Dr. Wong has fifteen of experience working in the Hong Kong healthcare services and has an intuitive knowledge of, and cultural sensitivity towards, issues that we face every day in this dynamic and cosmopolitan city.

With over a decade of experience using conventional treatment modalities, she realised there are shortfalls to a "symptom management" approach, and began to explore functional medicine to help her patients who struggle with not only mental health issues, but also physical problems that are now understood to be inherently linked in a mind-body connection.

Learning from her own experience of chronic fatigue, hormonal imbalances, disrupted gut health and many other medically unexplained symptoms, she eventually started to heal with a holistic approach by addressing the gut, replenishing nutrients, focussing on sleep, movement and relaxation, and most importantly the detoxification of toxins such as mould, endocrine disrupting chemicals and environmental pollution.

This put her on a path of learning about functional medicine, herbs and supplements, complementary and alternative therapies, and innovative technologies, to bring them into her practice with the aim of providing a holistic approach to her clients. She combines lifestyle medicine, stress management, nutritional support and other scientifically proven methods and functional laboratory testing to optimise health and well-being.

Dr. Wong is passionate about learning, and continuously updates her knowledge by studying both via online courses and in-person workshops, attending seminars and conferences such as the Integrative Medicine for Mental Health and the Institute of Functional Medicine, where she can be exposed to new ideas and network with like-minded people. She is currently in the process of obtaining her Fellowship of the Australasian Society of Lifestyle Medicine and her board certification in lifestyle medicine from the International Board of Lifestyle Medicine, expected to be completed in 2020.

She also gives back to the community by giving talks on topics related to lifestyle medicine, ranging from sleep, diets, fasting, gut health, hormonal health, mindfulness, and a broad range of psychological topics such as burnout, depression and anxiety, and addiction. She hopes to pay forward the mentoring she has gratefully received along her career by taking on supervisees in both psychology and nutritional field.

Dr Scarlett Mattoli is a Clinical Psychologist carrying out assessments and psychotherapuetic support in private practice and in volunteering roles with children from five years of age, adolescents, families and individual adult clients throughout the lifespan for a range of presenting issues. She consults for corporate, NGO, educational and not-for-profit organisations on mental health, EAP programmes and employee engagement and well-being. Specialty areas of research and practice include neurodevelopment, learning differences, family systems/parenting and addictions.

Professional qualifications and public and private sector experience were gained whilst living in the USA, UK, Europe and Asia over the past two and a half decades. With credentialing in neuropsychology, psychometric assessments, coaching psychology, supervision and a wide range of psychotherapeutic interventions, Scarlett is well placed to provide support and to deliver informed, informative, engaging and interactive services and public speaking, appropriate for a wide range of audiences and needs.

Dr. Laurena Law graduated from Newcastle University, Australia. She has been practicing in both Hong Kong and Australia as a general practitioner with a special interest in Nutritional Medicine.

She has completed her training in Psychological Medicine and combines principles of Lifestyle medicine in optimizing metabolic, hormonal and mental health.

Dr Law completed her Nutritional Medicine training at the Australasian College of Nutritional Medicine and The Australasian Institute of Medical Nutrition.

In addition, she is Board certified by the American Association of Anti-aging and Regenerative Medicine and has received an Advanced Fellowship in Anti-aging, Metabolic and Functional Medicine.

As a part of her cosmetic practice she optimizes gut health as an integrated approach to chronic skin diseases.

Dr Law is passionate about her fitness and has represented Hong Kong and Muay Thai and powerlifting championships and received several professional fitness qualifications.

Her interest in education for medical professionals include presentations on topics related to intravenous use of Vitamin C and teaching courses in nutritional therapies.

Rachel Winston is an experienced registered play & creative arts therapist in Hong Kong and founder of Full Cup Play Therapy, dedicated to helping children heal from trauma. In her clinical work, she combines elements of art and sand tray therapies and therapeutic storytelling, along with music, dance, drama, yoga and puppets as part of her integrative play therapy toolkit.

Rachel has experience with a wide range of difficulties and backgrounds in Hong Kong, treating pre-schoolers through to young teens suffering from anxiety-related conditions such as selective mutism, trauma and skin disorders. She also works with issues such as depression, trauma, developmental stress, ADHD, ASD, special educational needs and peer difficulties.  For almost a decade, Rachel worked with children in Hong Kong as a teacher, giving her a unique insight into the barriers to learning and a desire to address the emotional wellbeing of children to reach their full potential.

Many children are not able to verbalise their emotions, however children are communicating to us all the time without words through behaviour and our first language, that is play! Through years of training in play therapy, Rachel is able to meet children where they are at in terms of their brain development and help them to feel deeply heard and understood.  Play therapy allows the child to play out their feelings and past traumas, make meaning and heal from those experiences that have no words. This approach is also particularly useful for older children or teens who have experienced trauma in their pre-verbal early life.  Play therapy helps them express themselves through art and metaphor to heal on a deep experiential level.

Rachel also uses the power of play to empower parents in connecting with their children using the infant mental health programme, Baby Bonding, and through filial play coaching for toddlers and children.  Through therapeutic play, parents are able to strengthen their bond with their child, better attune to their child’s needs and have a more harmonious relationship. 

Rachel has been featured in local and international magazines including Playtimes, Play for Life and as a guest on RTHK Radio 3. Follow FullCupPlayTherapy.com where she publishes free articles for parents and educators to spread awareness of Play Therapy and child mental health.