Understanding Mental Health

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Gain the confidence to respond and support people living with a mental health condition, using recovery -oriented, person-centred principles.

This course was created with the input of consumers, carers, mental health experts and other stakeholders, to familiarise people with current frameworks about mental health. The course is facilitated by trainers with lived experience, who speak with insight about their personal journey and self-defined recovery. The training uses a variety of methods to introduce concepts, making it a highly accessible introduction to recovery-oriented approaches to mental health.

This course course is designed for a broad spectrum of health care workers or individuals who would benefit from a greater understanding of Mental Health. This course covers topics such as stress, phobias, anxiety, eating disorders, and schizophrenia among others – all conditions under the topic mental health.

Understanding Mental Health acknowledges the essential role of consumer movement in shaping an understanding about mental distress, recovery and moving away from a clinical model.

It is based on the understanding that people view mental distress through different frameworks and cultural backgrounds that impact their understanding of experiences – and these experiences are self-defined.

It places mental health in the context of multiple factors that impact on wellbeing, such as community connection, housing, physical health, poverty, gender, ethnicity, education and more. Because mental health is everybody’s business.

Learners who successfully complete this course will:

• Learn about real-life experiences of mental ‘illness’ and recovery
• Understand the impact of age-related changes, losses and health problems on mental health
• Develop skills to CONNECT and communicate with older people experiencing mental distress
• Recognise the impact of trauma on older people
• Gain new insights on duty of care and risk
• Enhance your existing skills in aged care to support mental health
• Support older people to ‘remain in control’
• acquire an understanding of the theoretical background associated with mental health issues
• be made aware of the moral, ethical and legal considerations associated with mental health
• be familiar with the theories and types of mental illness
• understand the positive and negative factors which may affect your mental health and to gain insight into the strategies for the promotion of positive mental health
• understand and appreciate the various treatment approaches from a biopsychosocial perspective
• be able to apply this knowledge in the workplace and in everyday life.