Experiences of instructors delivering the Mental Health First Aid training programme: a descriptive qualitative study

Mental health literacy among the public is often poor, and although people frequentlyencounter others experiencing mental distress in their workplace, families and communities,they may be ill-equipped to provide appropriate support. ‘Mental HealthFirst Aid’ (MHFA), a 12-h mental health promotion programme seeks to address this,training people in the knowledge and skills needed to engage with someone experiencingmental health problems. Research relating to the MHFA programme hascentred on course attendees, with a paucity of research surrounding the delivery ofbasic mental health training programmes. Understanding experiences of instructorsdelivering such programmes is key to the success of future delivery. This study soughtto identify the views and experiences of instructors delivering the MHFA programmein Wales. Fourteen MHFA instructors participated in semi-structured audio-recordedinterviews, with the transcripts analysed to identify key themes. This paper explorestwo of the identified themes namely prerequisite skills and support required by instructors.The study highlighted that because of the ensuing emotional labour experiencedby instructors, universal mental health training programmes must put in place a clearinfrastructure to train, support and monitor those delivering them, for programmeroll-out to be effective