Understanding Mental Health First Aid and Mental Health advocacy in the workplace - Part 1

This year I completed a Level 2 course in Mental health First Aid and Mental Health Advocacy in the workplace.

I found this to be extremely insightful and relatable to the climate, certainly in my school. It covers a range of topic areas: what is mental ill-health, common mental health disorders, signals and signs of someone in crisis, how to support/promote mental health in your workplace and how to work towards creating a mentally healthy working environment.

At a time when mental health is high on the agenda globally, this course was a great refresher of what I already knew and provoked a lot of thought around how improvements could be made in my workplace to improve mental-health and well-being of all staff.

I wanted to share the information from the course with colleagues and so created a presentation from my course notes.

THe NASUWT big Question Mental Health Report in 2019, found that the top 5 concerns for teachers were: workload, pupil indiscipline, school budget cuts, pay and accountability. THe biggest being workload.

So in an attempt to reduce your workload, as well as providing you with a condensed version of my notes, here is Part 1 (Exploring Mental Health) my presentation document, which can be used as you please.

**NOTE: Part 2 (Understanding How to support individuals with mental ill-health) & Part 3 (Understanding a mentally healthy environment) will also be shared in due course.