Howard Vaughan (Director of Finance and Assets), Elizabeth Douglas (Learning and Development Manager) and Hazel De Santos (Deputy Care Home Manager) attended Mind Matters: Positive Outcomes with Positive Futures run by Support in Mind Scotland (SiMS) earlier this month. This one day mental health awareness raising course was run for the first time by SIMS and as such a group drawn from a cross section of organisations were the “test pilots” for the event.
There were a number of aims and objectives for the day;
• To outline the main principles of positive mental health and to allow participants to learn how to recognise the impact and indicators of poor mental health in various settings
• To give participants a greater understanding of different mental health conditions including recognising different traits, symptoms and treatments as well as identifying key statistics on mental health
• Understand the differences between Stigma and Discrimination as well as enabling participants to recognise the impact of such within multiple settings and discuss possible opportunities to challenge these behaviours
• Provide participants with the tools and resources to assist them with managing their own mental health as well as supporting others who may be experiencing poor mental health or mental illness
The sessions were carried out in a safe and encouraging environment with the group agreeing in advance to confidentiality, participation (at a level each attendee was comfortable), breathing space (the option to step out from session if feeling uncomfortable or overwhelmed) and respect.
The design of the day was a clever mix of interactive sessions, thought provoking discussions, fun challenges and provision of a range of useful background information facilitated by a number of SIMS highly skilled staff team.
The Viewpoint staff present found the day hugely informative and committed to exploring avenues for wider Viewpoint staff team involvement in raising awareness and upskilling staff in dealing with issues in this important area.
SiMS is Viewpoint’s charity of the year. To date, Viewpoint staff and customers have raised over £3500 for SiMS.