Full day Mental Health First Aid & Peer Support Skills course @ CSC

On 12th July 2022, I attended a Virtual Classroom as part of the training for Wellness Ambassadors (WA). The course was taught by Joy Ong from Inspire Joy. Besides the notes offered to participants, we were asked to take our own notes and I thought I might as well kill two birds with one stone by taking down some of the more notable points in my blog.

Joy shared that being socially active is the opposite to socially anxious (or awkward)

Easy to remember rhyming reactions; Mad, Sad, Scared

Left 2 is the Mental Health spectrum and the Right 2 is the Mental Illness spectrum (mild, moderate, severe, disorder)

Legibility is affected when one uses the 'draw' annotation function instead of 'text'

Note: Orange in mental health/psychology tends to be related to issues while green is correlated with an excellent psychological state

Be careful as we do not want to over-label those with mental health conditions. Insomnia occurs when someone has trouble sleeping for over more than 2 weeks. As for recurring nightmares, they are often related to trauma (Road Traffic Accidents (RTA), Dating/Domestic Violence etc.).

Three types of dreams:

1. Falling dream (cannot stop and makes one feel helpless)
2. Stucked (unable to get out of danger)
3. Running away (being chased and trying to escape)

Recurring nightmares can cause a child to regress.

Be mindful of the following over-the-counter (OTC) drugs that tend to be abused/overconsumed: 

• (Anti-pyretic - anti-fever/heat and mild pain killer) Panadol/Tramadol (Paracetamol) is often associated with hearing loss (*tinnitus- ringing noise)
• (Anti-Histamine - anti-flu, hives, eczema) Flu tablets and Cough Syrup is often used to get the drowsy effect

A bit of stress is good for us aka eustress.

We were tasked to do a bit of research on anxiety and depression.

1 to 2 days before or sometimes up to one to two weeks before if there is a set date

Those who have done desk research and carried out field research (site recce etc.) are at moderate to high risk already and when approached they will try quite hard to deny/dismiss the symptom. Do not take it lightly (this is based on wisdom and experience from police and clinical psychologists).

SOPs for WAs

PSD guidelines

This mothership article pointed out guidelines from 2020 which ensured that S'poreans no longer have to declare mental health conditions in job application forms. If employers do not abide by TAFEP guidelines, they may be liable for enforcement actions on the grounds of discrimination.

Below, I have included photos I took of a makeshift booth I created (with a touchscreen-enabled screen) that features the mindline.sg + BBT (Brain Boost Time) mindfulness resources.

Positioned it in a common walkway near my desk (with sweets too)

Managed to get some feedback from my first few patrons too

Check out this NCSS list of resources and remember the 69782728 WhatsApp counselling by Hear4U/Care Singapore or Brahm Centre at 88230000 (provide general support, not just youth).