The Mental Health Foundation says that there are two things we need to do to support our mental health:
Reduce risk factors
Increase protective factors – doing things that build us up because simply reducing risks is not possible – currently there is a lot that is outside of our control.
Check out the information in the image.
As part of our goal to grow a support community for wellbeing, we want to develop the capability of kaimahi/staff in mental health, a topic increasingly important for all of us to understand. The list below consists of offerings currently available. If you have any other ideas or comments to share, please get in touch with Wellbeing and Safety team via safety@unitec.ac.nz
Emotional First Aid book
- We sustain psychological injuries even more often than we do physical ones, and yet, even though there are scientifically proven techniques we could use to treat them, we don’t.
- Why do we favor physical health over mental health? Is it simply because we don’t understand it as well? Guy Winch, in his book ‘Emotional First Aid’, gives examples that parallel mental health to our knowledge of physical health. Even just browsing through the book and noting a couple of examples is a good start to developing this understanding.
- Copies of this book are available at our library. Check it out and tell us what you think!
Supporting distressed students
This workshop will help you learn how to assist distressed students at Unitec within the boundaries of your role here. A three-hour workshop, offered by the Student Success team, covers how to recognise and respond to student distress and risk at Unitec, the current support options available to our students and how to safely refer students to these.
To enquire about upcoming sessions email studentwellbeing@unitec.ac.nz
Mental Health First Aid (MH101) and Understanding and identifying distressed Ākonga 90-minute programme
Structured framework for psychosocial safety in the workplace
Please contact safety@unitec.ac.nz and we can let you know when our next courses are scheduled, or we can offer bespoke team sessions of the Understanding and identifying distressed Ākonga 90-minute programme, which includes:
- Introduces the concepts of understanding and identifying poor mental health in ākonga
- Addresses stigma and the mental health continuum
- Recognise signs and symptoms of poor mental health in ākonga
- Build confidence in starting conversations about poor mental health
- Introduce the Supporting Distressed Ākonga flowchart
- Provide information on accessing support services
- Ensure facilitators understand professional boundaries and how to keep themselves safe
Support Options
For further information on support available via various channels, please visit the Staff Support page.
This will provide you with agencies/charities that can assist individuals and/or families and also offer tools to share and use as teams.