Yashi Yogaraj

I enjoy working to help people achieve better sleep. I see children, adolescents and adults with sleep disturbance. I have an interest in sleep health and treating sleep disorders, and the role that psychology and behaviour plays getting poor sleep back on track.

My goal is to create a supportive and collaborative approach in helping individuals understand their sleep and develop tools to overcome sleep difficulties and establish healthy sleep patterns. These tools may include:

• Establishing healthy sleep routines
• Establishing good sleep hygiene
• Relaxation/calming strategies
• Coping with stress ​
• Managing fatigue
• Coping with anxiety (overthinking, worry about sleep, feeling tense)
• Working with nightmares

I’m trained in Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) which is the recommended first line treatment for Insomnia.

Where appropriate, I incorporate components from other evidence-based therapies such Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and Mindfulness.

In addition to seeing clients with insomnia, I also work with children’s fears around bedtime and the dark, bedtime refusal, teenage sleep disturbance (e.g. poor sleep due to stress, or having a ‘night owl’ body clock).

In terms of my training I completed a Master of Applied Psychology in Clinical Psychology at Murdoch University. I’ve worked across rural, inpatient psychiatry, home visiting, and private practice settings. This has helped me develop my expertise in providing evidence-based psychological assessment and interventions for children, adolescents and adults presenting with an array of mental health difficulties including sleep issues/disorders.

My postgraduate research focused on studying the relationship between suboptimal sleep and common chronic disease risk behaviours (i.e. smoking, poor nutrition, alcohol consumption, and physical activity). Sleep of inadequate/excessive duration or poor sleep quality was found to be prevalent amongst the Australian population and in fact a large body of research has identified suboptimal sleep to be a risk factor for preventable chronic diseases (i.e. heart disease, diabetes, obesity and hypertension) and mental health difficulties. Therefore, this has broadened my interest in studying sleep further and incorporating it into mental health treatments with an overarching aim of improving one’s quality of life.

I speak fluent Tamil and can offer consultations in Tamil as well as English.