Mental Health in the Workplace Training
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
Mental health has become, rightly so, a very important topic for many businesses. Quite often people confuse mental health with mental illness, but they are fundamentally very different things. In this article we explain this in more details. But why is understanding mental health important? First and foremost, any good employer has a moral duty to support their employees during times of stress, depression, anxiety or any other period of feeling low or not quite 100%. For those who prefer facts, according to MentalHealth.org.uk 70 million work days are lost per year due to mental health issues and it is the leading cause of sickness absence. No matter how you look at it, mental health in the workplace training can only be a good thing.
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Mental health vs mental illness
Often the two are mixed up and used interchangeably, but they are different. Mental illness is where a specific illness is diagnosed such as clinical depression, anxiety disorders, Bipolarism or Obsessive compulsive disorder as examples. Now some people will, on occasion feel depressed or anxious but when it comes to the diagnosed illness it has reached a stage where it needs to be treated by specialist medical professionals. Mental health can affect anyone and tends to fluctuate so for periods someone can be very positive, upbeat and carefree and other times feel low or anxious. Think of it like having a cold, everyone can get one, for a period of time they are under the weather and then they can bounce back. So, someone going through a break-up or struggling with their job might not, mentally, feel 100% but they are not mentally ill. This is an important distinction and one that employers need to understand.
Supporting mental health in the workplace is important as those who are suffering are not being productive, are likely to have strained relationships with others in their team, are likely to take sick leave and ultimately could leave the company with the ensuing problems that causes on the rest of the workforce.
Mental Health in the Workplace Training
The first step in supporting your staff with mental health is to understand it and here at Chris Garland Training we have two courses, run by expert trainers to help organisations understand mental health better:
- Our half day Mental Health Awareness training course is ideal for everyone including those in adult social care and community workers. The aim of the course is to raise awareness of the common types of mental health issues, explain how people feel when they experience these, give an understanding as to how these problems might influence a person’s support needs and also give some guidance on how having a positive attitude towards mental health will aid in supporting those who are struggling with mental health
- Our Mental Health Awareness CPD course aims to explain in more detail the difference between mental health and mental illness and will cover the symptoms of the most common mental illnesses such as Bi-Polar disorder, depression, psychotic disorders and schizophrenia as well as the symptoms of anxiety, personality disorder and self-harming and then goes on to give guidance on how to support people suffering with these conditions
If you have any questions on either of these training courses or any of our other expert led courses please do contact us on our website contact page, via email on [email protected] or just give us a call on 01565 746555. We look forward to hearing from you.
