How to become a mental health first aid champion

Mental health first aid champions help prevent workplace stress from developing into more serious mental health problems

On this course, you will receive a working understanding of how to become a mental health first aid champion. In addition, you will also learn the key factors that trigger stress and affect mental well-being. These practical skills will help you to spot early signs of stress and mental illness. And will also enable you to be a trusted confidante to a colleague who is struggling with their mental health.

Why this course is important to you

The COVID-19 pandemic is increasing workplace stress. Unfortunately, long-term stress is hazardous to mental health. And poor mental health is as harmful to your enterprise as it is to you and your employees. So, having  a few people handy to provide mental health first aid is now a must.

Over a prolonged period, stress puts strain on everyone’s long-term mental health and well-being. Now, if this is left unaddressed, it leads to serious mental health problems such as depression, chronic anxiety disorders and even psychosis.

Apart from the human element, stress and poor mental health adds significant costs to a business. Typically we see such extra costs in terms of lower productivity and greater employee disengagement. However stress also provokes more accidents, mistakes, absenteeism, and long-term sick leave.

Practical mental health first aid skills to help prevent a difficult situation get worse

With our mental health first aid training, you will learn the risk factors that create problems for employee mental well being and productive working. In addition, the training will help you normalize those potentially awkward conversations around mental health in the workplace. The net result is that you will help prevent difficult situations getting worse.

By the end of the course, you will be able to spot the early signs of mental and emotional distress. Importantly, you will also be given some simple means to help prevent further deterioration. Similarly, where appropriate, you can support a colleague in finding professional help. As such the course explains:

1. 1. 1. 1.  A working understanding of common mental health issues and stressors.
         2.  Key stress prevention strategies that improve productivity and performance at work.
         3.  How to provide early help with emotional distress or stress.
         4.  Guidance on supporting someone who needs to seek professional help.
         5.  How to communicate mental health concerns to appropriate managers.
         6.  Ways to help management develop a highly productive positive work culture.

Who needs this course?

The COVID-19 pandemic has made mental health first aid a priority for anyone who takes responsible for staff well being. This would include line managers, HR managers, supervisors, team leaders and so on.

However, at the best of times, managers are often strapped for time. But also, there is the stigma around mental health. Thus, we often see anxiety and reluctance about seeking help from the boss. This is why the course is really important for employees as well as managers. The idea is to help anyone provide peer to peer first response to a colleague who may be beginning to suffer distress.

Incidentally, the training will also help delegates promote a healthier work culture. This means they will be able to identify appropriate prevention strategies that will help ease workplace stress and stimulate more productive working.

No prior knowledge or training is necessary to attend. But you do need a willingness to help others.

Important note

This course is not teaching you to become a therapist or counsellor. Nor does it enable you to diagnose serious mental health conditions.

Instead, the training helps you provide an early warning system of stressors in the workplace. In this way, you will also be able to give colleagues some effective initial help with emotional distress and stress.

The important thing is that you will become a welcome point of contact. And this will mean you will be a source of reassurance for someone experiencing emotional distress and possible mental health issues.

Get in contact

Want to learn more about our mental health first aiders course? Then, contact Jeremy Old on 0845 0945 819. Email Jeremy@teambusinessdevelopment.co.uk

The human givens approach to mental health

The Human Givens school of psychotherapy provides powerful science-based treatments. These routinely deliver rapid and sustainable relief for mental distress and illnesses. Such conditions include chronic anxiety and anger, depression, PTSD, phobias, psychosis, schizophrenia and addiction.

This success is based on an understanding that we all come into life with a common biological inheritance. And this takes the form of innate physical and emotional needs and innate resources. As it happens, these biological needs seek their fulfillment through interaction with our environment. At the same time exploiting those innate resources which nature ‘gave’ us. These ‘givens’ (our needs and innate resources) are in essence nature’s genetic endowment to us. As such, they have evolved over millions of years. Incidentally, we all have these givens regardless of our respective cultural or racial background.

Recent research gives a deeper understanding of mental health issues

But the powerful organizing principle of ‘given’ needs and resources is only one reason for the success of this approach. Human givens therapy also capitalizes on recent scientific knowledge about:

• • • The physiological process called the stress response,
    • The stress continuum and its role in the onset of mental ill-health,
    • The different functions of the brain hemispheres in problem-solving,
    • The cycle of depression and how to break it quickly.
    • The role of trance in human behaviour, the learning process and problematic states,
    • How the dream state de-arouses the day times’ stressful stimuli,
    • How your imagination can both create and help solve psychological problems,
    • The importance of the ‘observing self’ as a means to separate someone’s problem from their core identity,
    • How the healing response comprises a rich system of mind-body interaction,
    • The role of ultradian rhythms in making internal mental & physical repairs.