Lauren Buchardt, M.A., c.o.
PGME Wellness Consultant & Academic Associate
Lauren Buchardt is a counsellor (OCCOQ) working as a Wellness Consultant/ Academic Associate at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of McGill University. She holds a Master’s degree in Counselling Psychology and a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from McGill University and is currently pursuing her psychotherapy permit (OPQ).
Lauren’s past research has focused on performance psychology, particularly the coaching of elite performing artists and athletes, as well as personality change goals, and emotion regulation tendencies in youth. She has facilitated mindfulness/emotion regulation skills workshops in Montreal elementary schools and neuroscience and psychology activities with youth at Explorations Learning Centre. Lauren has also worked as a ballet and Pilates teacher at the McGill Athletics Centre and various other studios for the past seven years.
For her Master’s internship, Lauren offered clinical services at Medipsy Psychological Services and the McGill Education and Counselling Clinic. Lauren is continuing her stage in psychotherapy at Medipsy under the supervision of Dr. Jack De Stefano and has experience helping clinical populations with generalized anxiety and worry, performance anxiety, perfectionism, burnout, depression, major life-transition, and trauma.
Lauren provides confidential short-term counselling to McGill Medical Residents and Fellows. In sessions, her primary goal is to create a warm, supportive, and non-judgmental environment in which learners feel safe to fully express themselves. She draws techniques from cognitive-behavioural and humanistic therapeutic orientations and collaborates with learners to find solutions that are uniquely suited to them.
Alongside her clinical work, Lauren is an active member of the Montreal dance community. She has a background in classical ballet, having graduated from the professional-academic program at Canada’s National Ballet School, and danced professionally in companies in The Netherlands, Ireland, and Québec. For her, creative self-expression, movement, awareness of mind-body interplay, and community involvement in the arts, are integral aspects of wellness and resilience.