As you may or may not be aware there are two things that are hot at the moment in FTSE 100/250 companies and they are diversity (not for this thread) and mental heath, which I'd like to discuss here.

I haven't properly formulated an opinion on this yet, but my spidey senses were tingling when the topic became more and more of a hot one, culminating in them going off the scale when I saw that over half a million people had been 'trained' in England as MHFA since 2009.

For those that don't know, MHFA stands for Mental Health First Aiders, with the principle being that (after a 2 day training course) these volunteer normal employees (doing any job in a company) are on hand to spot people struggling with mental health issues and talk them through the options (speak to a professional) should the subject arise while they are carrying out their role.

I work for a FTSE 250 company and have today been on a training course about Mental Health awareness hosted by the charity Mind. The day started innocuously enough, with us splitting into groups to discuss the signs of what good mental health looked like and what bad mental health looked like. Now my first comment was that there may be no signs of bad mental health as it doesn't always work that way as far as my limited understanding goes, but we're just starting the day so with an open mind I go with it.

After the break we're then looking at what anxiety is, what depression is, what stress is and how to manage your (mental mostly) well-being. This stuff was quite straight forward, but as an awareness tool you couldn't fault it and if everyone was paying attention they should have understood. At this stage I'm thinking maybe I was being harsh with my scepticism, but then the afternoon hits and Oh.My.God.

We sit back down and first slide up is 'how discussing mental health in the workplace needn't be difficult', which came with loads of hints about how to couch the questions you ask in appropriate language and that you should always say to the person you're talking to that you'll keep whatever they say in confidence. At this point I asked what if what they tell you is that they harm themselves and they have suicidal thoughts constantly? What am I meant to do with that and how do I keep that confidential? The answer I got back was less than satisfactory, being something along the lines of you wouldn't be betraying a confidence if you escalated that sort of thing to the appropriate people. I'm sure the person who has told me in confidence will feel that way.

Other than my Mum having debilitating OCD I've thankfully never really had that much experience of actual mental heath issues, but I do see them as something to be taken seriously and not to be marshalled by a volunteer force (which will include ill equipped people at best and absolute wrong headed morons at worst).

What also struck me as well throughout the day was that there seemed to be a conflating of well-being (e.g. looking after your work life balance), milder mental health issues and serious mental health issues, which frankly I found absolutely irresponsible. I'm no expert in this field, I'm Yevrah, but it strikes me that someone suffering the effects from a bad work life balance can take fluffy steps to mitigate the mental health impact from that, while someone who is suffering from undiagnosed Bipolar disorder, for example, is going to need a lot more than their boss armed with a 7 hour training course and a muppet from marketing armed with their two day certificate to be of any use whatsoever to them. But worse than that, any advice wrongly given might have disastrous consequences. Well-being might be a mental health issue, but my feeling is is that it's about as linked to extreme mental health problems as flu is to stage 4 lung cancer.

For me, if the day had stuck to well-being I'd have had no problem with it as I think senior staff members (of which I am fortunate enough to be one) should take the well-being of their staff seriously, but when it veers into discussions over how to talk to people about their mental health, when you have no idea and are not remotely prepared for what the answer might be, then I think you're on really dodgy ground and frankly involved in something that (as a complete amateur, certificate or not) you potentially shouldn't be anywhere near.

Exponents of workplace mental health awareness often cite that you wouldn't question someone's level of well-being if they had a physical injury, such as a broken leg, and that people who suffer from mental health issues could be just as unwell but you can't see it. That's all well and good, but you can't have it both ways and I wouldn't seek or welcome advice from Bob in Purchase Ledger if I had broken my leg - I'd either be in hospital having it seen to by a medical professional or ignoring it because I don't want to see a medical professional. In either case I fail to see what Bob will bring to the table.

My feeling is that more extreme mental illnesses are brought into the equation (bipolar was mentioned) because it adds more heft to the subject and more validity to the concept of MHFA, for which there is no tangible evidence for the benefit of beyond raising awareness.

http://www.hse.gov.uk/research/rrhtm/rr1135.htm

The courses do however cost £300 a pop, so someone somewhere has raked in £150m of revenue at what I suspect is a fucking good margin and while Mind are a charity their presenters are not and are free to explore whatever business ventures they like.

Appreciate this post is a little rambling (and fucking long), but while I'm no moral crusader this has got my goat as I feel it's not doing much, if anything, to solve the mental health issues we have as a society, is belittling the serious and life-threatening ones by conflating them with well-being and is propagating exploitative business practices that people are all to eager to go along with because, well, "it's a good thing, right?".

What's your view on this? If I'm wrong (in any aspect) then please disabuse me of my wrong-headed notions and if I'm right, please tell me where/how I am so I can form a more coherent argument to keep MHFA (that sit so uncomfortably with me) out of the business I work for.

Thanks for reading.