Film and photography production trainee Jake recently attended Impact Hub London for Mental Health First Aid training hosted by Social Enterprise ABC Life support. Jake really enjoyed this training and in his own words below wants to tell you why he’d recommend it.
Jake - ‘It was an enlightening and educative course that showed me a lot and how little I knew about positive mental health and the best ways to support people that are struggling. In the course we went over a broad spectrum of topics such as stress, anxiety, depression, Bipolar and much more. When going through the topics we learnt the ways that people may show signs that they could be experiencing these struggles and the best way for ourselves to identify these things and to approach the person that we are concerned about without making things worse.
One of the biggest things that I learnt is the massive difference between sympathy and empathy and how sympathy can sometimes seem condescending to the person you are talking to even if that is not your intention or it lacks sincerity as that may appear more obvious than intended.
One of the hardest things about the sessions were the practice conversations, we would group up in threes, one person role playing as the Mental Health First Aider, one person struggling with their mental health and the other judges the conversation and how you can improve as a First Aider, I found this particularly difficult as I am no actor and I struggle with mock up situations, this was obvious in my first attempt at the conversation, however by the second I found my feet a little bit and by the final attempt I felt myself massively improve, which helped to build up my confidence. From these practice conversations I pulled out a lot of knowledge and experience I can take with me further, but it also showed me how important it is to plan conversations so that I don’t just stare at them blankly and make things worse.
Overall it was an amazing experience to get to learn about how I could possibly help people in the future and how I can apply the knowledge I have gained from the course at work, the workshops that we provide at work, as well as my everyday life. I would also like to say aa big thank you to The Impact Hub London and ABC Life Support for hosting and providing this great Mental Health First Aid training course.’
Sara - We are so proud of Jake for completing this two day course. We think it's really important in every workforce that someone gets the opportunity to train in this area, you could be the difference between someone surviving or thriving and we all thrive when we are supported.
