Introducing: Mental Health Foundations Training

To empower employees to nurture their own mental wellbeing while supporting those around them, we’ve launched Mental Health Foundations Training. The new feature offers accessible, practical and credible mental health training to entire organisations.

This post explores the importance of mental health training, what to expect from our new Foundations Training feature, and how to get started with it.

• Why employers are launching mental health training
• Introducing Mental Health Foundations Training
• What employees get from Foundations Training 
• Foundations Training outcomes 
• How to get started with Foundations Training

Why employers are launching mental health training

Earlier this year we conducted research into how organisations are building out their mental health strategies in 2020 and beyond. Some 79% of our sample said they were looking to invest in training for their teams. With the backdrop of social, environmental, and psychological challenges, many employers are accelerating their plans to improve mental health knowledge and confidence among their workforces.

But the mental health training landscape was far from perfect. According to our community, there were three main barriers. 

• Cost – The costly nature of mental health training means, often, just a handful of employees are sent on courses, putting pressure on those who attend and leaving those who don’t in the dark.
• Time – Courses typically involve people spending at least a couple of days at a time out of the office. (Though social distancing has added further barriers here.)
• Practicality – Few programmes give employees tangible skills that meet the standards within the scientific community while being relevant to the workplace.
  
  

Introducing Mental Health Foundations Training

Our psychology team worked with our expert platform contributors, existing clients, and the wider community to build a mental health training programme to overcome these challenges. As a result, we're delighted to launch Mental Health Foundations Training.

• Practical and ethical training – First and foremost, our courses are designed to significantly improve employees' knowledge and confidence in the key areas of mental health, while not putting too high expectations on them to adopt the role of a counsellor.
• Accessible and flexible courses – Employees are able to engage in our training programmes in a way that suits them. Series are delivered in interactive, bitesize chunks which can be consumed wherever they're working, from any device.
• Affordable and scalable roll-out – In order to contribute towards real cultural change, it's important that everyone in the organisation has access to mental health training – not just a select few. As such, Foundations Training was designed for your entire organisation. 
  
  

Creator of Foundations Training, Dr Heather Bolton, Head of Psychology at Unmind, said: "In building Foundations Training, our aim was to help users gain a solid understanding of the broad topic of mental health, and give them the language to talk about it openly and sensitively. All of the content is based on contemporary understanding and it’s been brought to life with real-person videos of people with lived experience."

What employees get from Foundations Training

The Foundations Training courses are designed to empower employees to look after their own mental health and those around them. Users should walk away with:

• A solid understanding of the mental health landscape.
• Preventative techniques to limit mental health problems.
• The knowledge of how to signpost to professional help when it's needed.
• The confidence and to support others.

Dr Heather added: "My hope is that Foundations Training will progress the overall understanding of mental health across our user base, encourage more open conversations within the workplace, and help colleagues recognise when others are struggling. And, in line with the Unmind philosophy, people who complete Foundations Training will be better prepared to help others connect with the right help at the right time, if they need it."

Foundations Training outcomes  

Early responses from the pre- and post-Series questionnaire point towards positive leaps forward in both understanding and confidence – the key success measures for your workplace mental health training programme. Of those who undertook our trials Foundations courses:

• 7.7/10 improved confidence in the topics studied.
• 7.2/10 improved knowledge in the topics studied.
  
  

The first course within Foundations Training is an Intro to Mental Health, which provides a solid grounding in the basics of mental health. It explores the spectrum of mental health and some of the causes of problems and evaluates the concept of diagnosis. Trainees are surveyed on their knowledge, confidence and attitudes towards the course topic before and after taking each Series.

Overall, scores across the three metrics increase by 34.3%. After taking the Series, users were on average:

• 47% more knowledgable on the topic of mental health.
• 41% better able to put that knowledge into practice.
• 18% more open and positive in their attitude towards mental health.
  

How to get started with Foundations Training

If you’re an Unmind customer, you and your employees will now have access to Foundations Training.

Existing users can simply sign in to their Unmind account, and head to the Series homepage. They’ll find the Foundations Series at the top of the page. Starting with Intro to Mental Health, users register on Foundations Training in one click and can then take the course at their own pace. Before and after each Series, users will complete brief self-assessment questionnaires to measure their development throughout. Meanwhile, administrators and employers will be able to see how employees are interacting with the product in the admin dashboard. 

If you aren't currently an Unmind customer and would like to learn more about how our Mental Health Foundations Training programme could improve mental health knowledge and confidence within your organisation, get in touch with our team today.