Upcoming Mental Health Awareness Workshop

Mind your Mate is an innovative project designed to help students improve their mental health and help others

The Students’ Representative Council (SRC) is hosting an interactive workshop to increase mental health awareness and help students manage their own wellbeing.

The free workshop will be held on the 31 January, in room 208 of the McIntyre Building. The three-hour session will cover a range of mental health issues, and aims to equip students with the skills and knowledge they need to help themselves and others.

Mind your Mate will focus on suicide prevention and the causes of mental illness, as well as how to access help and support networks within the University and local area.

Participants will learn about the ways in which it can be difficult to help those at risk of mental illness, as well as the reasons why vulnerable people may not access the support they need. There will also be advice on how to help someone at risk, including how to use the “Look-Listen-Link” model of suicide prevention.

Students will also look at ways to maintain and improve their own mental wellbeing.

The workshop has already been delivered to over 200 students and staff at the University, and was received positively by those who participated. All those involved in delivering the workshop have received training from a professional mental health charity.

The SRC received £10,000 of funding from the lottery to develop this project, and the free workshop is available to all students.

Lauren McDougall, the Vice-President for Student Support, said: “With more and more students declaring that they are struggling with their mental health, early interventions are an absolute priority for the SRC. Mind Your Mate is a three-hour interactive workshop covering mental health awareness and suicide prevention skills. The workshop gives attendees the confidence and skills to recognise that someone is in crisis and focuses on practical and simple steps to help. The emphasis is not only on helping others but also covers how to recognise when you might be struggling and how, and where, to reach out for help. The feedback from the pilot sessions has been overwhelmingly positive with 100% of respondents saying they’d be more likely to help someone at risk after attending the workshop. We hope to empower students to feel comfortable talking about mental health, especially with those who might be at risk, and to reduce the stigma around reaching out for help.”

This coming session is the first of the semester, however there will be more free sessions held throughout the year. Students can sign up for the event via EventBrite.