{"id":7292,"date":"2019-05-13T22:17:01","date_gmt":"2019-05-13T22:17:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress-469047-2068593.cloudwaysapps.com\/?p=7292"},"modified":"2019-05-25T14:23:14","modified_gmt":"2019-05-25T14:23:14","slug":"mental-health-and-awareness-in-the-workplace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thegrouphug.com\/2019\/05\/13\/mental-health-and-awareness-in-the-workplace\/","title":{"rendered":"Mental health and awareness"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
It’s Mental Health Awareness Week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Recently, the company I work for gave me the opportunity to attend a Mental Health First Aider course. This course was run by St Johns Ambulance and consisted of two days of discussion, information giving and quite frankly, a huge eye-opening experience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The course covered:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As is a normal part of group discussion events, we started\nday one by introducing ourselves to the group. We were a collection of HR\npeople, managers, caseworkers and myself and when it came to the course tutor\nhe introduced himself and then went on to note that although he was here to\nteach us about Mental Health, he was himself a person who had daily suicidal\nthoughts, had tried to commit suicide in the past, and was currently still\ndealing with his own anxiety and depression. We did not expect this!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To give some background, I am a Commercial Director in the construction industry. I have worked in the construction industry for over thirty years and it is only after the thought-provoking course I experienced that I realised what a real issue this was within my own industry. This is not just something for staff in my office but also right across the industry and at all levels where people are dealing with their own issues on a daily basis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A two day course clearly around mental health in the workplace has not given me the skills to be able to fix anybody\u2019s problems. But what is has given me is the training to be able to spot when someone is showing the signs of a mental health issue and also the confidence to be able to approach this person and talk to them in the correct way to try and understand what they are experiencing. It is only through this process that I can then provide information and assistance including pointing them in the right direction of where they can, if they want to, receive the support they need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n