Mental Health Training

Peter Abbott

Peter holds qualifications in teaching, assessing, internal verification, mental health, and mindfulness.  Additionally, he is an accredited instructor for Mental Health First Aid England and is approved to deliver all 4 of their adult courses: 2-day Mental Health First Aid, 1-day Mental health Champion, ½-day Mental Health Aware and the ½-day Mental Health First Aid Refresher courses in the England. Peter is also approved to deliver MHFA England’s new Online Mental Health First Aid and Mental Health Aware courses.

Over 15-years’ experience of training and in addition to the above Peter has delivered a variety of different courses which has included L2 Award in Mental Health Awareness (Ofqual), Department for Transport training for airport security (Manchester Airport), and workshops in wellbeing, such as work/life balance, mindfulness, and stress coping techniques workshops.

He has delivered and supported a wide variety of clients across the UK, which include the charities Mind, Women Out of Prison, Clean Break and the British Institute for the Deaf. Further organisations include the Royal National Theatre, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, 3M, Total Oil, Certas Energy UK, Tescos’ Banking HQ, Netflix, Facebook, G Network and the NHS.

Peter’s commercial and ‘lived’ experience means he completely understands how employee health and wellbeing should be supported in the workplace. His training combines both theoretical and lived experience to bring the courses to life and in doing so enables delegates to see things from the perspective of someone who has had direct experience of mental health diagnosis.

Peter’s ethos is if you look after the workforce they will look after the business for you.

How have you taken care of your own mental health and wellbeing since the start of the Covid-19 Coronavirus pandemic?’

When the news of the Pandemic broke like most people in the country I thought that it might be like the last Pandemic announced across the world a number of years ago, where the UK remain mostly untouched by it. How wrong could I be! We went from a ‘normal’ living mode to ‘survival’ mode. The country was placed into lockdown, families, friends, and colleagues were suddenly told to stay at home if they could. Fear and anxiousness gripped the country and me about our health, our jobs, our finances and for many our homes.

2020 was looking exceptionally good for me for work and suddenly my work stopped overnight, most of my training was delivered face to face and that just was not an option. Organisations were reacting as fast as they could to transform the way their businesses worked, and training of any staff understandably took a back seat.

Initially I was in shock, watching news bulletins about the virus, it’s impact on society, essential services, such as the NHS, and business. It began to affect my mental health and I have diagnoses of General Anxiety Disorder and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder with bouts of clinical depression from time to time.

6-weeks into lockdown I really started to support myself more. I had let looking after myself slide and I needed to get back on track. I’ve been managing my mental health for over 3 decades and have some solid self-care practices to help boast my mental health. Even though I had let them slide, it was comfortable for me to build them back into my daily routine.

It took commitment and there were times I really had to push myself to do something, but how I felt afterwards made me continue and I reaped the benefits from it. My mental health is now in a good place and I’m back to firing on all cylinders.

How do you want to change the world?’

I want a world where mental health and physical health have no distinction when it comes to speaking openly about it across society. No one should ever feel ashamed or too scared to speak up if they are having difficulties and get the help they deserve.

I honestly believe that we should be taught about mindfulness in school as part of the curriculum and part of that should be about our mental health and putting in solid coping mechanisms to undertake modern life.

If these skills were taught in childhood it will enable someone, perhaps in the future, to recognise when something is not right and seek help early.

 

 

 

 

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