3 What can prevent learners from accessing support?
Learners may be reluctant to access support for fear of being labelled or because of the stigma around mental health, as mentioned in the earlier sections of this week (and which will be discussed in more detail in Week 5). When signposting and supporting learners to access available support, it is important to be aware of these kinds of barriers in order to understand why learners may find it difficult to access such help.
Learners may also find conversations about mental health intimidating and difficult. They may not know who to speak to, or how to ask for help, or may lack confidence that support will be forthcoming or helpful. Sometimes, even finding appropriate words to articulate feelings can feel challenging for learners. As an educator you can help learners know how to ask for help and who to go to. You may wish to refer back to Week 3 for guidance on conducting supportive conversations on mental health. In the activity below the focus is on supporting learners in being confident to ask for help themselves.
Activity 5 How to ask for help with mental health
- Look at the resource How to ask for help with your mental health [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] produced by the Charlie Waller Trust in the UK. You can either download this as a PDF document or view the web-based version.
- Read through the various steps and think about how you could facilitate them in your role as an educator.
- Think about how you might share this, or similar, information with your learners, to encourage them to be able to speak out and access support. What might be the best time, place and setting for this? Could it be during the course induction, or a pastoral session, or tied in with any curriculum content where mental health is, or could be, discussed?
Discussion
Introducing all learners to the steps outlined in the above resource can help to de-stigmatise talking about mental health and can encourage individuals to ask for help, as appropriate and when needed, and to access the support they may need.