MHFA Mental Health Adult Reviews

The course itself was nice and basic. My problem is, is that after 2 Days!, you are given a certificate to say your a Mental Health First Aider. Mental Health is a delicate mater and saying the wrong thing to someone in difficulty or giving the wrong advice, can have serious consequences. You are handing out certificates like sweets. I could of sat at home, in front of my laptop, whilst playing on my Xbox and still been given a certificate. I will not call myself a Mental Health First Aider. Eventually I would like to be. If I could give you this certificate back, I would.

Some parts were delivered well but terminology wasn't really explained and there was not enough time spent on practical steps e.g. how to handle a conversation etc. After the incident I dint really feel particularly comfortable having to go individually say how we felt about things in front of everyone else, particularly when it was clear there was only one answer the trainer wanted to hear- that he had said nothing inappropriate.

I felt the trainer had very little knowledge about the subject matter, he was able to recite the information from the slides or the videos but could not explain content further than this. I felt his attitudes towrds people exeriencing mental illness was dismissive and belittling and some of the information he was delivering was simply incorrect. For example, he showed a complete misunderstanding of the concept of mindfulness and suggested that all you need to do to practice this is to take a break from your desk every twenty minutes. He likened the reason people self harm as the same he had two pizzas for dinner last night. He also used an example that was on a childrens television show where children are taught that Kim Kardashian is not a good role model as what people with eating disorders need to make them better. This displayed a total lack of awareness and understanding into the distress caused by these conditions. I found the exercise where people were to talk into each others ears to mimic hearing voices as insulting and making a mockery of a serious condition. The concept was sound, however all the comments on the script for the "voice" were mocking and childish and along the lines of "I like parsnips" which completely takes away from the persecutery and distressing nature of voices heard by people experiencing psychosis. i appreciate that this was a first aid course and the strategies delivered in the form of ALGEE were good, however the attempt to delve into serious mental health conditions was very poor.

Course handbook and workbook- excellent Course power point- shockingly bad. Broke all the rules about what makes an effective slide deck. Far too much text which forced the trainer to talk through the slides a lot of the time. This meant most participants switched off.

The MHFA manual is quite comprehensive. Content seems generic (and common sense) across disorders, conditions, illnesses. I enjoyed the course but felt it was difficult to engage with the facilitator who read from powerpoint slides. The most engaging courses have minimal content on slides while the facilitator provides original and insightful content without reading off slides! Everyone on the course felt the same as we discussed it. It felt like the slides replicated the manual - I could have read the manual without needing to attend the course, particularly a two-day course. I feel with original power point slides, the course would be condensed into one day (because the slides simply replicate the manual). The videos we watched were also outdated and stereotypical. More effort could be made into finding insightful videos for participants to watch. I also feel self-disclosure is useful when facilitating, yet I felt there was too much self-disclosure on behalf of the facilitator. I assessed this based on how relevant the self-disclosure was to the content - it made it very personal rather than general, that is, it was good to hear about the facilitator's experiences yet it pigeon-holed some of the content to her experience only... if that makes sense. Also, for £300 I feel lunch needed to be provided. The course could definitely be condensed into one day - there's no need to go through every single disorder/condition because most of the guidance is the same and common sense. I suggest picking out several key disorders (GAD, depression, eating disorders) and creating case studies around these, getting people to work in groups to go through ALGEE process. A lot more original thinking needs to go into designing this course.