Mental Health Awareness Week and Safeguarding Training: Surviving or Thriving?
Mental Health Awareness Week falls between 8th-14th May 2017. This year’s focus is to understand why too few of us are thriving with positive mental health. Instead of asking why so many people are living with mental health problems, the Mental Health Foundation are seeking to explore how we can look after our mental wellbeing.
Through our safeguarding training courses here at EduCare, we have learnt that positive mental health can be difficult to achieve. While our training primarily focuses on those who require specific support when it comes to living with mental health problems, we appreciate how common it is for people to suffer from mental health issues. With this in mind, we support this approach from the Mental Health Foundation.
Mental Wellbeing in the UK
In recent weeks, we have seen the flag of mental health awareness being flown high. If you haven’t already, we’d highly recommend you watch Prince Harry’s interview for the Mad World podcast at The Telegraph. Prince Harry speaks so openly about his battle with mental health — and this is what is really important about his interview. Considering as many as one in four of us have been diagnosed with a mental health related illness, having a high-profile public figure sharing their experience just shows how anyone can be affected.
It’s time to face up to the facts. Suffering from a mental health related issue is common, so why is there still a stigma surrounding it? To leave those stigmas and stereotypical images at the door, we must first understand there is a broad spectrum of mental health illnesses. These range from common to very rare and can disrupt one’s life in small ways, or be life threatening. Being open to discussion and acceptance, instead of keeping a ‘stiff upper lip’, is key in supporting positive mental wellbeing.
Safeguarding training is one of the ways we can advocate mental health awareness within institutions around the UK. It helps people by providing the core skills necessary in identifying and discussing mental health problems successfully. Creating effective support networks and places where everyone feels able to speak freely are very constructive ways to challenge stigmas and reinforce productive mental health practises.
Surviving: Safeguarding Training and Supporting Communities
In this context, surviving means that you are living with a mental health issue. For many, this is the conscious process of going about your day-to-day life. For some people, this may seem simple, but for others, this can be difficult, hence the word ‘surviving’. Getting out of bed, getting dressed, having breakfast, going to work, going to sleep, socialising; they can all pose a different set of challenges.
Mental Health Awareness Week aims to help those who are surviving rather than thriving. Better support should be in place; not only to help those who face challenges but to try to normalise these problems, rather than stigmatise them.
A good example of this is the Blue Light Course being implemented in Wales by Mind Cymru. By offering support to as many as 20,000 emergency workers, they seek to help combat the high-stress levels and suicidal thoughts prominent within their community. Across the country, businesses could benefit from offering safeguarding training to their employees. It would empower colleagues to be more mindful and supportive of their peers, creating spaces in which people feel encouraged to discuss mental health issues, not ignore them.
Thriving: Promoting Positive Mental Wellbeing
Even if you have never been diagnosed with a mental health problem, it does not mean you are necessarily thriving. Mental Health Awareness Week also seeks to raise awareness about those of us who consider ourselves absent of mental health issues. Sound mental health is more than simply ‘getting by’. Just because you don’t think you suffer from a mental health issue does not necessarily mean you have a thriving mental wellbeing.
The difference between surviving and thriving are not so rigid, though. In fact, it could be better to describe the relationship between them as being “opposite points on a circle”. Sharing features and being connected to each other, we can even consider it possible to be both surviving and thriving at the same time.
‘Thriving’ might mean you have developed a mechanism to help make your ‘surviving’ less difficult. It might mean you have understood how to further your mental wellbeing, or that you have simply just recognised that you have mental health problems. Mental Health Awareness Week is a great opportunity to help convey the message of ‘surviving’ and ‘thriving’. It empowers people to understand how to reduce the stigma around mental health issues and to help create a more supportive, considerate society.
We are currently developing a new training course in partnership with YoungMinds which will cover advice for people working with children and young people. The course is due to be released later on this year and will be included in the EduCare for Education® service.
To celebrate this new partnership and to mark Mental Health Awareness Week, EduCare will be offering a 10% discount* off EduCare for Education® throughout May.
Everyone who purchases EduCare for Education® during May will automatically receive the new course as soon as it is available, at no extra cost.
To find out more or request a quote, speak to one of our advisors today; call us on 01926 436 212 or complete an enquiry form.
*Offer applies to all new purchases of EduCare for Education® only and is valid until 31st May 2017. Discount is not available in conjunction with any other offer.
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