Mental Health First Aid has been around for over 20 years now, and MHFA England is part of an international community of organisations delivering the training across the globe. The course is periodically reviewed and updated to make sure it is meeting the expectations of learners. The latest update to the course launches today –Continue reading “New Mental Health First Aid Course from MHFA England”
Author Archives: Sarah
Unconditional Love – Pets and Mental Health
I am not doing too well at the moment. If you asked me over the past couple of decades what helps my mental health – high up there on the list, if not at the top – would have been my cats. Brother and Sister, Ixxy and Poppy. They have been my world. I don’tContinue reading “Unconditional Love – Pets and Mental Health”
LGBTQ+ Mental Health – Working with Happy Valley Pride
As I gradually return to face to face work, I’m remembering the pros and cons of training to a room of real life humans. Most of the cons are to do with travel and the amount of energy it takes to get places and then train for two long days. So I was delighted toContinue reading “LGBTQ+ Mental Health – Working with Happy Valley Pride”
What to do when hope feels lost.
CW: Suicide, Suicidal Ideation, Self Harm I saw a raft of posts the other day from Andy’s Man Club, with the devastating news that one of their group facilitators had taken his own life. I don’t know who, or where he was, but my heart reaches out to him, his loved ones, and the wholeContinue reading “What to do when hope feels lost.”
All by myself
Yet again I couldn’t get myself in gear to write my piece for Mental Health Awareness Week – but here we are anyway. The theme this year was loneliness. Something many have faced over the past few years of lockdowns – but which is by no means a phenomenon reserved to pandemics. What is loneliness?Continue reading “All by myself”
Online vs. Face to Face
One of the reasons I don’t blog as much as I would like to is that I often don’t know where to start. Then when I do – I don’t know where to stop. For someone who used to write abstracts for a living I am surprisingly bad at concise. Last night is a caseContinue reading “Online vs. Face to Face”
God grant me the serenity
The world is a lot right now isn’t it? Maybe it always is. Always has been. Just some have the privilege at different times to not be affected by, or even notice the turmoil that tears lives apart on distant shores. But the last two hundred years have brought us ever closer together, news andContinue reading “God grant me the serenity”
How Refreshing – Update your MHFA Skills
At the beginning of 2020, just before everything changed, I ran my first MHFA Refresher course. A small group, from a few different organisations, but enough to get a real feel for how enjoyable this new course was going to be. Over the last 18 months of course we have gone online, but i’ve runContinue reading “How Refreshing – Update your MHFA Skills”
Thoughts on friendship
Listening to a recent Brene Brown podcast on friendship today gave me, as they say, “all the feels”. Friendship is such a difficult but important topic. Connection. Love. I don’t have many friends. I am quite difficult to get to know I think, much more so than I once was. It gets really hard toContinue reading “Thoughts on friendship”
Come as you are
I started to respond to this thread on Linked In about someone who shared their decision to be more authentic at work, no longer hiding tattoos and piercings but had more to say so moved over to the blog – others responding widen the topic out to many aspects of identity and personality, that thisContinue reading “Come as you are”