About the Mental Health Awareness Programme
Mental health problems are very common and NHS staff would benefit from greater awareness, as people with poor physical health are more likely to experience mental health difficulties. Equally, people with poor mental health often also have poor physical health.
This short programme aims to raise the awareness of mental health amongst health care staff. It is designed to give a broad overview of what encompasses mental illness, the link between mental and physical health diagnoses and outline some possible treatment options. These sessions provide all staff working within health care with some general strategies to help support individuals who are worried about their mental health, and advice about where to find extra support.
Programme structure
The Mental Health Awareness Programme is a collation of several small projects, focusing on different disciplines that all deal with mental health every day. Click each section header for further information on each project.
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Perinatal Mental Health
Perinatal Mental Health
The Department of Health mandated Health Education England (HEE) to develop an elearning resource in the field of Perinatal Mental Health. HEE has developed a set of five 20 to 30 minute elearning sessions. The sessions assume no prior knowledge of perinatal psychiatry and are designed to be accessed by any health care professional that has contact with a mother or baby from the period prior to conception until the child is 1 year of age.
All content is referenced and the learner is signposted to additional detailed learning resources for more advanced learning. The content and structure of the sessions were formally agreed during a stakeholder consultation exercise in May 2015. This included input from several medical royal colleges including the RCN, RCGP, RCOG and RCPsych amongst others.
The sessions commence with 2 introductory sessions, which provide a broad overview of the topic and essential learning points for all health professionals. The 3 subsequent sessions focus on different stages in a mother’s journey – the pregnancy, birth and the first year of a child’s life. The subsequent sessions contain more detailed advice, which may be of more interest to particular professional groups, for example, obstetricians may choose to complete session 4 on labour and the immediate post-partum.
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Mental Health in Emergency Medicine
Mental Health in Emergency Medicine
The Department of Health mandated Health Education England (HEE) to develop an elearning resource in the field of Mental Health Awareness in Emergency Medicine. HEE has developed a set of four 20 to 30 minute elearning sessions. The sessions assume no prior knowledge of mental health within emergency medicine and are designed to be accessed by anyone involved in this discipline.
The four sessions will include ‘Suicide and Self-harm’, ‘Assessment and Management of Violent Behaviour in Emergency Department: Post-assessment’, ‘Abscond and Treatment Refusal’ and Personality Disorder.
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Mental Health Awareness for Healthcare Professionals
Mental Health Awareness for Healthcare Professionals
The Department of Health mandated Health Education England (HEE) to develop bespoke elearning mental health learning resources for the Primary Care workforce. HEE has developed a set of four 20 to 30 minute elearning sessions. The sessions presume very little prior knowledge of psychiatry and are designed to be accessed by GPs, Primary Care nurses and other Primary Care based health professionals.
The content and structure of the sessions was designed in collaboration with the RCGP; based upon the identified learning needs of their members. The session topics include Self-Harm, Psychological Therapies, Physical Health Care for Mental Health Patients and Medically Unexplained Symptoms.
All content is fully referenced and the learner is signposted to additional detailed learning resources for more advanced learning.
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Mental Health Awareness for GPs
Mental Health Awareness for GPs
The successful collaboration between the Barnet, Enfield and Haringey Mental Health Trust, its partner CCGs and the many GP practices that have hosted the training is now expanding to include elearning. In an important joint project with Health Education England’s (HEE) elearning for healthcare programme (elfh), Trust clinicians will develop a series of elearning sessions to supplement the Academy’s face to face programme. The Academy’s elearning will be offered nationally by elfh.
With this expanded education programme the Academy aims to retain the local character of its programme at the same time as improving access to its learning. More GPs will be able to access the Academy training through the convenience and flexibility of elearning. The same rigorous approach to the educational content that has helped make its face-to-face sessions successful will apply to the elearning, through the Trust’s partnership with the leading public sector elearning programme for the health service.
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Mental Health for Practice Nurses
Mental Health for Practice Nurses
Health Education England working across North Central and East London commissioned UCL Partners to develop an elearning resource in the field of Mental Health specifically for the target audience of Practice Nurses. This elearning programme consists of seven modules as follows:
- Managing Alcohol Misuse in Primary Care
- Managing Drug Misuse in Primary Care
- Medication for mental health problems in primary care part 1
- Medication for mental health problems in primary care part 2
- Care Planning
- Specific Mental Health Conditions
- Your Patient’s Journey
Open access session
Please note that if you access the content below, your progress and completion of sessions will not be recorded and you will not be able to generate a record of completion. If you require evidence of learning, please register and then log in to access this programme on the elfh Hub.
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Mental Health Awareness
Executive team
Dr Julia Moore
Chair, HEE elearning for healthcare
Patrick Mitchell
Health Education England
Dirk Pilat
Royal College of General Practitioners
James Cain
HEE NCEL Head of Workforce Programmes
Helen Jameson
UCLP Director of Corporate Programmes & Chief Finance Officer
Project team
Dr Nicole Eady
Clinical Lead, Health Education England
Jonathan Guy
Project Manager, HEE elearning for healthcare
Scott Mountifield
Lead Learning Designer, HEE elearning for healthcare
Mandeep Kaur
HEE NCEL Senior Workforce Development ManagerSian Jones
UCLP Senior Project ManagerEllen Nelson
UCLP Project Support Officer
Steve Hewitt
Lead Learning Designer, HEE elearning for healthcare
How to access
In order to access the Mental Health Awareness programme, you will need an elfh account. If you do not have one, then you can register by selecting the Register button below.
To view the Mental Health Awareness programme, select the View button below. If you already have an account with elfh, you will also be able to login and enrol on the programme from the View button.
NHS healthcare staff in England
The Mental Health Awareness programme is also available to NHS healthcare staff via the Electronic Staff Record (ESR). Accessing this elearning via ESR means that your completions will transfer with you throughout your NHS career.
Further details are available here.
Not an NHS organisation?
If you are not an NHS health or care organisation and therefore do not qualify for free access elfh Hub, you may be able to access the service by creating an OpenAthens account.
To check whether or not you qualify for free access via OpenAthens, you can view the eligibility criteria and register on the ‘OpenAthens’ portal.
Registering large numbers of users
If you are a HR, IT or Practice Manager and would like to register and enrol large numbers of staff within your organisation for access onto the Mental Health Awareness programme, please contact elfh directly.
Organisations wishing to use their own LMS
For HR departments wanting to know more about gaining access to courses using an existing Learning Management System please contact elfh directly to express interest.
More information
Please select the following link for more information on how to use the elfh Hub.