Equipping Ourselves with First Aid Training – for Mental Health
Earlier this year, I and a group of colleagues took part in a course run by Mental Health First Aid England (MHFA) to become a certified Mental Health First Aider.
As a member of the project management team and a resource supervisor at Real Chemistry, I work with a variety of teams. Being consistently present and interacting with colleagues is an important part of my role. I recognize that not everyone handles stress the same way and that it’s important to identify and support people when a typical “venting conversation” won’t be enough to help.
Now, with increased remote working, sometimes a project manager and a people manager are the only colleagues a person interacts with on an average day. It’s important for people managers and anyone working with others to be able to identify normal stress versus overwork versus something larger going on and provide appropriate support. It’s just as important for our colleagues’ individual well-being as it is vital for the company’s stability.
Fortunately, that’s where the MHFA training course on mental health first aid can provide much needed support. The goal is to make being able to provide assistance with mental health as common as being able to administer CPR. MHFA conducts a range of online mental health training courses to help people manage their own mental health and that of their colleagues. In the course I took, we learned how to identify, understand and help someone who may be experiencing a mental health issue. We developed skills and knowledge so we can have effective mental health conversations. It was an incredibly eye-opening experience. It also was intense. There was sensitive material, and some of it can be triggering if you have experienced mental health issues in the past. Topics ranged from stress and burnout to self-harm, eating disorders and psychosis.
One of my main takeaways was that the quicker someone has access to appropriate supportive information, such as discussing with a Mental Health First Aider the options appropriate to their specific circumstance, the quicker they can receive help and the better the outcome will be. Although resources beyond the MHFA program are available for Real Chemistry team members, such as coaching and therapy sessions offered through Modern Health as well as an Employee Assistance Program (EAP), often the barrier to entry is lack of awareness of resources or the need for a prompt by a colleague to connect them with professional support.
The course also framed anxiety in an interesting way. Anxiety can be like a rash, which can get worse and spread if not treated! This makes sense when I think back to times I’ve been really stressed on a project and suddenly I’ve started to feel anxious about other work or situations in my personal life that may not have worried me so much before I was already stressed about that initial project (sound familiar to you, too?). Especially with the continuously blurred lines between work/home that hybrid work has introduced, it’s not hard to imagine how many more people are experiencing anxiety.
Although I haven’t needed to apply much of my learnings from the course yet, I keep my notes, a large reference book from the course and a pocket-sized reference guide for key information handy in case something comes up so I can pull what I’ve learned into practice.
Having completed the training, I would recommend that as many people as possible be certified as a Mental Health First Aider – not just at Real Chemistry, but across the healthcare marketing and communications industry. Working in a people business with clients and colleagues, we are well suited to observe a mental health issue and make a difference supporting each other.
