Venesky Brown are committed to improving the mental health of our workforce and beyond, by facilitating Mental Health First Aid workshops we aim to de-stigmatise and educate around the subject.
We recently arranged for a course to take place on-site at the ‘Bam Nuttall – Aberdeen to Inverness Railway Project’ where the site team were about to embark on a highly pressurised 10 day blockade. Construction News published an article on the blockade and highlighted the training in a positive light, read it here
To coincide with World Mental Health day we also ran the course at a number of our other sites. A selection of Venesky Brown operatives along with members of the client team took part in the 12 hour course over 2 days.
The topics covered included:
Attitudes to mental health issues
Recovery
Alcohol and drugs and their affect on mental health
Suicide
Listening skills
Self-harm
Depression
Anxiety
Psychosis
A First Aid course provides members of the workforce with the skills to provide emergency help to an injured person before professional help arrives. It’s the same for ‘Mental health first aid’ problems. Mental health first aid isn’t for mental health professionals but for the general public. This course gives the individual the skills for helping someone with a mental health problem. Just like you don’t wait until someone is injured to learn general ‘first aid’, you shouldn’t wait until someone you know is needing help with a mental health problem to learn ‘Mental health first aid’! Mental Health First Aid is a participation-based course full of activities, discussions, film clips and case studies.
All participants who completed the course received:
An NHS Health Scotland certificate of attendance
A 160 page manual and
Best of all… the skills to help someone in a mental health crisis!
You can find some general information on SMHFA below. Scotland’s Mental Health First Aid website.
Along with on-site support and training our chosen charity for the next 12 months is “Health in Mind”, an organisation that offer a range of services to help people cope with mental health problems. http://www.health-in-mind.org.uk/
