Just like physical first aid, timely competent help from a mental health first aider can really prevent more serious problems developing. This is a much needed skill as the mounting stress in so many people’s lives is harming our individual and collective mental health as well as our physical well-being and economic prosperity. So, this first aid course is designed for you to be able to first explain to a friend or colleague exactly what is going on in their mind and secondly, and even more important, the training will help you alleviate their immediate sense of chaos, confusion, isolation and fear.

Timely intervention with mental health first aid can literally help turn someone’s life around.

In addition to human suffering, stress and poor mental health also adds significant costs to any organization. Consequently, we see these extra costs in terms of lower productivity, employee disengagement, more accidents, mistakes, absenteeism, a decline in creative problem solving, loss of talented staff and more. In this respect applying the practical mental health first aid tips you will acquire from this course will reap dividends in terms of cost savings and enhanced people performance.

Twelve learning points

As a mental health first aider, you will be able to lead and normalize conversations around mental health. The simple skills on this course can literally put a smile back on someone’s face and so prevent a difficult situation getting worse. The most important major learning points are:

1. Advice, tools and techniques to provide timely help with stress, burnout, emotional distress and mild to moderate mental health problems.

2. An understanding of the risk factors that create mental health problems and how to spot the symptoms.

3. The biological mechanics of stress and how long-term stress leads to both mental and physical ill-health.

4. A working understanding of common mental health issues and stressors.

5. How to quickly calm someone down and get them back into their rational brain.

6. How to ease someone out of a panic or anxiety attack and prevent it occurring again.

7. Help someone identify key stressors in their life and deal with them.

8. How to help prevent distress becoming a more serious mental health problem.

9. Key stress prevention strategies that improve well-being for the individual and so automatically improve their productivity and performance at work.

10. Guidance on how to support someone who needs to seek professional help.

11. The ability to communicate mental health concerns to appropriate managers.

12. Ways to help develop a positive work culture that will ease workplace stress and incidentally stimulate more productive working.

And a lot more that will help you make someone’s day.

The course content is based upon the Human Givens school of psychotherapy which comprises powerful science-based treatments that routinely provide rapid and sustainable relief for mental distress and illnesses. These include chronic anxiety and anger, depression, PTSD, phobias, psychosis, schizophrenia and addiction.

As such, this course utilizes recent scientific knowledge about:

· The physiological process called the stress response,

· The role our innate physical and emotional needs play in triggering stress,

· How innate physical and emotional needs help maintain health and mental well-being,

· How identifying someone’s unfulfilled needs can lift a variety of symptoms quickly,

· The stress continuum and its role in the onset of mental ill-health,

· The different functions of the brain’s hemispheres,

· The cycle of depression and how to break out of it quickly,

· The role of the dopamine system – nature’s reward system, in maintaining balance,

· The role of trance in learning, human behaviour, 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,

· How the ‘observing self’ separates 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,

“Really excellent content - so useful for any manager or HR practitioner. There is a huge amount of material in here” Head of workforce transformation at an NHS Trust

"One of the best seminars/ workshops I have attended, ten out of ten!" – Training and education officer (Social Services)