Our services | Our Mindful Youth | Mental Health Occupational Therapy

Our Therapy

At Our Mindful Youth, we provide therapeutic support services to children, adolescents, and young adults across Melbourne, with a strong focus on mental health and emotional wellbeing. Our work is grounded in a strengths-based, trauma-informed approach that recognises each young person’s unique potential and lived experience. We aim to foster resilience, build capacity, and support individuals to develop the practical skills and self-understanding needed to navigate life’s challenges.

Through Mental Health Occupational Therapy, we work alongside clients to build self-awareness, self-esteem, and emotional regulation. We help young people strengthen their coping strategies, develop executive functioning and organisation skills, and explore creativity and mindfulness as tools for wellbeing. Therapy also supports transitions across school, work, and home life, ensuring each young person feels more confident and capable in their everyday roles and relationships.

Our approach is informed by a range of evidence-based models and therapeutic techniques, which allow us to tailor support to each person’s needs:

Model of Human Occupation (MOHO): Emphasises motivation, habits, and roles. This helps us understand what drives a young person, what routines support them, and how they see themselves in relation to their world.

Trauma-Informed Approaches: Ensures therapy is delivered with sensitivity to past experiences of trauma. We prioritise safety, choice, trust, and empowerment in every session.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT): Uses mindfulness and values-based strategies to help young people accept difficult thoughts or feelings, while committing to actions that align with what matters most to them.

Strengths-Based Therapy: Focuses on identifying and building on a person’s existing strengths and abilities, rather than only addressing problems or deficits.

Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (DBT) Skills: Provides practical tools for emotional regulation, distress tolerance, interpersonal effectiveness, and mindfulness; supporting young people to manage intense emotions and relationships more effectively.

Psychoeducation: Involves teaching young people and their families about mental health, emotions, and coping strategies so they can better understand themselves and their needs.

Skills Training: Supports the development of practical life skills such as planning, organisation, problem-solving, and social communication.

Sensory Modulation: Helps young people explore how sensory input (sound, movement, touch, etc.) can influence their emotions and behaviour, and teaches strategies to regulate their nervous system.

Art Therapy Frameworks: Uses creative and experiential approaches to support expression, self-discovery, and healing in ways that go beyond words. These approaches are particularly powerful for those who may find traditional talk-based therapy challenging. At the heart of our work is the belief that every young person deserves safe, inclusive, and meaningful support that empowers them to live a connected and fulfilling life.