Why I became a MHFA instructor
Mental Health First Aid is the most comprehensive, easily digestible, and hands on mental health training you can do. Which is why I talk A LOT about it and I am incredibly passionate about this training.
Sometimes I find during the MHFA courses I run, people tend to get the impression that I created Mental Health First Aid. And I can understand why you might think that, I live and breathe MHFA!
But this isn’t the case, I actually didn’t create the course.
Mental Health First Aid is a nationally recognised and standardised course that was developed by Mental Health First Aid Australia.
As a Master Mental Health First Aid instructor, I am deeply connected to the training and constantly advocate for it - because I truly believe it’s an incredible course.
I actually first did the course when I was 17, while volunteering at my local headspace centre.
At that stage of my life, I had almost no education about mental health or mental illness. The extent of my knowledge was through the lived experience of the people around me, and looking back, I honestly provided poor support to friends and family before completing MHFA.
Before doing MHFA, I knew that I wanted to learn more about mental health and illness, and providing support to others, so I began to research courses I could do.
I found a lot of the other courses approached the subject from a very clinical perspective and were very neuroscience heavy. And while it is SO important that the education you receive about mental health is evidence based, as a regular everyday person, these courses didn’t make much sense to me.
I found the MHFA course was amazingly comprehensive, covering the more common forms of mental illness with tightly evidence based information and examples. Yet despite the depth and breadth of information in MHFA, I could immediately digest and put into practice what I was learning - because it’s designed to empower the everyday person.
When I completed my first training, it opened my eyes to just how incredible MHFA really is, and made me realise that it really should be a course that everyone completes.
From that moment, I became an immediate champion for MHFA.
Here’s why I believe everyone should be trained in MHFA:
It is evidence based: you know that what you learn works.
There are practical aspects: it’s one thing to have the knowledge but it’s a whole different kettle of fish to have the skills to provide support and actually help someone.
It covers a broad spectrum of information: The training equips you to provide support to someone in the early stages of a mental health struggle, all the way to the pointy end where someone may be suicidal, and everything else in between.
Interested in completing a MHFA training? Check out my calendar of upcoming online MHFA trainings, or get in touch to organise one for your school, workplace, or community!