According to Mind, as many as one in six people suffer from mental health issues in the workplace. Promoting wellness at work is essential to inspiring a healthy and happy environment, reducing stress and improving productivity among staff. Knowing how to recognise and manage mental illness ensures that everyone can thrive and reach their best potential.
Mental health first aid training will equip you and your employees with the skills required to support your peers when they need it most.
Legal Requirements in the Workplace
While mental health first aid training is not a legal requirement, Britain’s regulator for workplace health and safety, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), recently recommended “appointing mental health trained first aiders and implementing employee support programmes.” At The HR Dept, we strongly advise completing a training programme to teach participants how to recognise the symptoms of mental health illness in the workplace and provide the appropriate support.
Key First Aid Skills You Should Know
By demonstrating the following core soft skills, you can effectively support anyone suffering from mental illnesses in your workplace:
- Practising Active Listening: Giving your full, undivided attention is crucial to ensuring those in need feel listened to and supported.
- Showing Empathy and Compassion: Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes helps you determine their needs, motivating you to find a solution.
- Being Non-Judgemental: Approaching the situation with a non-judgemental attitude creates a safe space where the individual can express their concerns with you.
- Demonstrating Confidence: By being confident in your actions, you can respond quickly, build trust and provide a reassuring presence to the person in need.
How Everyone Can Benefit
It is in everybody’s best interest that mental health problems are addressed in the workplace. Just as with physical health, it is difficult to work properly while suffering poor mental health. Illnesses such as anxiety, schizophrenia, depression, bipolar, eating disorders and addictions can affect concentration, leading to a decline in work performance and an increase in mistakes and accidents.
Creating a supportive working environment positively impacts everybody involved. Our first aid training raises awareness of mental illnesses, reducing stigma and encouraging staff to have open discussions about difficult subjects. By providing quality support, you can tackle work-related mental health issues early, protecting the safety of your staff and in turn reducing conflict, employee turnover and company losses.
Implementing a Training Programme
Our mental health first aid teaches staff how to recognise and respond to early signs of mental illness or substance abuse among others. Using role-plays and simulations, the programme addresses how to assess mental illness, choose appropriate interventions and provide help where necessary.
The following steps will help you implement an effective mental health training course in your place of work:
1. Understanding the risks
With our mental health training courses, participants will be introduced to the risk factors associated with mental ill health. This helps them form a better understanding of the impact of mental health problems on individuals and the workplace as a whole.
2. Spotting the symptoms
Being equipped to recognise early signs and symptoms of mental health problems enables people to intervene early and reduce the long-term impact.
3. Providing necessary support
Our training programme teaches participants how to assist people in urgent and non-urgent circumstances and where to direct them for professional, peer and social support.
We offer three levels of mental health first aid courses and recommend completing a refresher every three years to keep up to date on the latest knowledge and practices.
You can also check out our eLearning mental health courses for a simple and effective way to learn about mental health in the workplace:
- Mental health awareness training for carers and nurses
- Mental health awareness training for education professionals
- Mental health in construction training
- Mental health awareness training for managers
- Stress awareness training
Get in touch today for further enquiries or to book a space on our next course.
The Health & Safety Department
With our mental health first aid courses, you’ll feel confident in the skills and knowledge needed to support your employees and peers in a time of need. Our industry-leading first-aiders will teach life-saving skills so that you can recognise early signs of mental health issues and tackle them before they develop further.
At the Health & Safety Dept, we operate on a strict no jargon policy to ensure our training courses are accessible to everyone. We also offer support after you have completed your course and will provide you with additional resources, tips and information that you can refer back to whenever you need.