Chris Caras

Chris has been a registered general counselling psychologist since 2006 and is a member of the Australian Psychological Society.

Chris has developed a broad range of skills and competencies in private practice, sessional lecturing in behavioural studies at Monash University, and various areas of organisational development, including Facilitation and Training, mediation, and critical incident debriefing.

At this stage of Chris’ career, he focuses on providing onsite care for organisations and their employees when experiencing a critical incident. A critical incident, as defined by the national code, is a traumatic event, or the threat of an event, which causes extreme stress, fear, or injury.

Chris’ role is to attend onsite to consult collaboratively with the referring manager on the best course of supportive action for staff on the day. Typically, he will proceed with providing psychological first aid for groups and/or individuals, which is a technique designed to reduce the occurrence of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Chris utilises a humanistic approach to allow employees to speak without fear of judgement and aims to normalise and validate extreme reactions through active listening, compassion, and the provision of psychoeducation on fight/flight syndrome.

He then identifies and acknowledges areas of concern and suggests coping strategies such as caring for self and others, social support, and seeking medical and/or psychological referral services, including the employee assistance program (EAP.) Chris will then provide feedback to management on the outcomes and make suggestions for ongoing care.