2.1 What do we mean by ‘professional support’?
When it comes to receiving support for mental health problems, society’s views of what this looks like can be quite troublesome. Our views can be influenced by our own experiences or the experiences of friends and family, by cultural norms, or even by how mental health is discussed and presented in the media, film and television programmes. This can be problematic, as these factors can be heavily influenced by historic stigma surrounding mental health, which will be covered in more detail next week.
This section discusses types of professional support and advice that could be offered to adult learners who may be starting to experience poor mental health – such support is often referred to as ‘early intervention’. Support offered to learners at higher risk, or experiencing severe distress or crisis, is covered further on in this week’s content.
To help us understand what we mean by professional support, we can look at the level of help a learner needs, who might provide that support, and where it might take place. You will look at these aspects in the rest of this section. In Week 1 you looked at how mental health can be viewed as a continuum, rather than a binary of being either ‘healthy’ or ‘ill’. We can think of professional support in a similar way, moving away from seeing that support as either not needed at one end, or intense intervention/treatment at the other end. The reality is that a range of support or intervention can be offered at various stages in between, ideally being led by the specific needs of each learner. Remember, too, that it is not your responsibility as an educator to identify the level of support a learner might need, but rather your role is to be equipped to signpost your learner to appropriate professional support.
Activity 3 Exploring self-directed support
- Revisit the ‘mental health continuum’ activity you undertook in Week 1 [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] .
- This time make a list of the things that you sometimes do to help yourself move up the continuum when your level of mental health may be lower than you would like, such as talking to a friend, undertaking a relaxing activity, engaging in mindfulness or meditation, preparing healthy food or exercising.
- Look at Mind UK’s information on the ‘5 Ways to Wellbeing’.
- Look at the list you have developed and see how many of your answers fall under each of these ‘5 Ways’.
- Now consider, are there things that you could add to your list in line with these 5 categories?
Discussion
The Five Ways to Wellbeing (New Economics Foundation, 2011) is a model that has been adopted internationally to support the population in looking after their own mental health and wellbeing. Models like this are used to help people adopt healthy ways of coping when they are not feeling good, to promote self-care, and to prevent periods of low mood developing into more problematic mental illness. These ‘early intervention’ or ‘prevention activities’ approaches are aimed at helping people manage their own wellbeing, through easy, short and everyday behaviours. These activities occupy the middle ground for learners who are not currently accessing support and learners who might benefit from, or currently access, more intense intervention and professional help, referred to in the first paragraph of this section.