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| My Mental Health First Aid Manual and notes from the training - Millerville, October 2024 |
Hi beautiful people,
Hope you are well.
Just dropping in to share that I am officially a certified Youth Mental Health First Aider (valid for 3 years).
One gets certified after a full day of training (8 hours), and that is how I spent my yesterday - getting trained.
The session was facilitated by Community Services Group - a Pennsylvania based organization that provides mental health, intellectual and developmental services. We covered a selection of topics from the Mental Health First Aid manual (we got free copies) - which I will share in this post.
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| Training Spot, Stayer Hall - Millersville, October 2024 |
The first time I ever heard about mental health first aid was in Ghana (circa 2013) aka my first international mental health conference. The conference was organised by NGOs in Ghana and some Ghanian mental health service providers based in Australia (how many times am I allowed to say Ghana in one paragraph?)
It wasn’t until yesterday's training when learnt about the concepts origins, that I was able to join the dots- the couple who introduced this concept of having first aid training in the mental health space were Australian - and the first people I heard it from were service providers based in Australia.
Just like the 'regular' first aid, mental health first aid is all about providing 'life saving' support - and I think we need to advocate for every one to have these skills.
| We started, and ended, the training with self care (put on your mask before trying to put it on others) |
| We spoke about the need to understand ‘youth culture’ as we get into ‘their space’ as first aiders |
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| We, then looked at the role of a Youth Mental Health First Aider - and their scope of work |
In the afternoon, we delved into mental health disorders and case studies. A lot of it involved group work and case studies that involved using the manual and giving presentations.
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| A-Z of words associated with mental health disorders |
The case studies scenarios were opportunities for us to ‘judge’ if the situation was a crisis or not, and give the action we would take based on the Mental Health First Aid’s AGLEE Action Plan.
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| Mental Health First Aid Action Plan |
The ‘encourage professional help’ part of the action plan led us straight to conversations about suicide, where we learned about available resources, and how to ask questions to someone who might be suicidal so as to know which action or resource best fits the situation.
As we went through the mental health disorders and did the crisis vs non crisis scenarios, I felt like I was back in the Childhood and Adolescent Disorders class I took this Spring…it felt like theory in action.
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| We went back to self care…and then finally, after a veeeeeeery long but engaging and informative day (and some post session evaluations), we were ‘released’ to the world as Youth Mental Health First Aiders |
I enjoyed the training and the 25 or so people I was in the training with. They were very open and funny, which provided the perfect balance given the topics we covered, and the speed.
I also loved the lady who led the session, would definitely do another training with her.
Speaking of other trainings, I think that I am ready to get some clinical exposure. Yep, after all the psychopathology classes, research, and screenings have primed me into thinking I am ready for the real clinical world (for clarification purposes, mental health first aiders do not diagnose or treat, they play more of a de-escalation role which varies depending on situation).
Until the next update on this desire,
Sending love and light to you,
Sitawa
