Diabetes Ireland hosted its first ever live webinar on Thursday 20 August and unfortunately large parts of the country suffered a power outage preventing some of the 420 people registered from attending.

Still 197 people tuned in to hear Dr Austin Bayley, Senior Clinical Psychologist, Mater Hospital speak on ways of managing stress and coping effectively during COVID-19 as a person with diabetes.

Using ideas from resilience training, cognitive behaviour therapy, and positive psychology, Dr Bayley examined how we can influence our thoughts, body, and action to manage stress and our mood as well as possible so that you will feel more empowered to make positive changes to manage the additional stressors associated with COVID-19.

During the webinar, there was very positive engagement with over 60 questions were received from attendees. Feedback was also very positive with a range of comments such as:

“Thank you so much for this webinar. It has helped and encouraged me to really face my stress properly as so many people don’t realise, I am hurting inside. I found your piece on meditation and journaling very helpful and I plan on trying to meditate and write down my thoughts.”

“Having just sat through the webinar, I would like to thank all involved. It was straightforward, easily understandable and very helpful. I’m so glad the psychology of having diabetes is finally being addressed.”

Ms Clair Naughton, Regional Development Officer, Diabetes Ireland, who moderated the webinar said , “I would like to thank everyone involved with webinar and especially the sponsors Novo Nordisk Ltd and Dr Bayley who provided a fantastic presentation and was so open and positive in dealing with the various questions. The engagement from attendees made the event more beneficial for everyone so thanks to those who took the time to participate.”.

The webinar is available to view at the following link https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/recording/8179457623611563022

This is the first of a series of 3 webinars we plan to host over the next few weeks to provide people with practical information around the challenges of living with diabetes at this time.

Our next webinar will be specifically for people with Type 2 Diabetes and the last one will be for people living with Type 1 diabetes. Further information on these webinars will be available as soon as the dates are finalised.