Weaving Mental Health First Aid in Workplace Wellness
Each month, Anne LaFleur sends employees in her office a quiz on various health topics. If the topic was depression, she received twice as many answers as normal employees.
If LaFleur, Vice President of Human Resources at a credit union in Pawtucket, RI, a Mental Health First Aid course was in February, they quickly understood the reason for the high level of interest in mental health issues. The training also helped her identify people in her office, which may be suffering a mental health problem and taught them how to help and refer people to help themselves and provide professional resources. “The training made me realize that mental health issues are very common, but one of the least talked about the problems,” said LaFleur.
suffer more than one in four people in a diagnosable mental health problem in any given year. Mental illness is likely to cost businesses more than billion in billion in lost productivity. The statistics show, have the arm with the passage of federal legislation to implement health care reform to the significant need for mental health staff in burgeoning wellness programs to get a shot.
Mental Health First Aid has improved as an ideal program for mental health in the workplace across the country to promote.
LaFleur is one of more than 6,000 people in Mental Health First Aid certified, as the training was in the United States two years ago by the introduction of National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare, along with the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and the Missouri Department of Mental Health.
Those who learn to participate in the 12-hour health first aid course is a five-step process to assess a situation, selection and implementation of appropriate measures and help a person, the signs and symptoms of mental illness or appropriate care in the crisis. Participants also learn about risk factors and warning signs of certain disorders such as anxiety, depression, psychosis and addiction.
evaluations show that the Evidence-Based Mental Health First Aid program saves lives, it expands people’s knowledge of mental disorders and their treatments and reduces the stigma of mental illness, helping people understand and accept mental illness as a medical condition associated. A trial version of 301randomized participants found that those who took the training to seek advice more confidence in helping others, greater likelihood of people had professional help, and decreased stigmatizing attitudes.
Unexpectedly, the study also found that Mental Health First Aid, the mental health of the participants to be improved.
“By understanding the signs and symptoms of depression, I learned to recognize this in me,” said Kelly-Ann Heenan, director of human resources in a company in Lincoln, RI.
Heenan, who had the training in February, has an adopted son from Russia, which suffers from a number of emotional issues.
“The tools I learned made it easier to connect in touch with him and understand where he comes from,” she says. “In the end, improved the education of my own mental health.”
LaFleur also has the lessons they learned applied in the course of their life at home.
“My children are in their 20s and they go through the typical ups and downs,” LaFleur says, “I see my mental health first aid training, as my children are feeling.” LaFleur says she treated by the field of mental health in the course was surprised.
“We looked at how to cope with both crisis and non-crisis situations, and it made us very aware of the terminology we use that may not be socially correct,” she says, is determined that the description colleagues can be considered “crazy” or “mother case” be harmful to people going through an emotionally difficult time.
The training was particularly helpful, Lynn Corwin last January, when two colleagues went to her office in a panic. They told Corwin, Director of Human Resources in the organization that an employee was extremely upset about the recent earthquake in Haiti. The distressed young woman had a close friend in Haiti and was not in a position to the person for five days. Fearing the worst, the woman was able with difficulty to cope with their feelings, let alone work.
While the two workers had no idea how to deal with the situation, Corwin emerged in practice.
“I used to, which I have to calm down over the woman and talk to her about how she learned the feeling,” says Corwin. “I explained to her that it was okay to be excited and not be embarrassed about it.”
“The training I do with a greater sense of confidence about dealing with a variety of people issues that come in every office,” concludes Heenan. “It’s such a stigma wish to mental health and people do not talk about it, so the information makes me confident that I will be able to these types of situations in which they arise control.”