Contents Contents ............................................................................................................ 1 Acknowledgements ........................................................................................ 2 How to use this pack........................................................................................ 4 Section A Learning and mental health ........................................................................... 5 What do you know about mental health? .................................................. 6 What is mental health? ................................................................................... 8 Language the media and stigma............................................................... 15 Understanding mental health statistics....................................................... 24 Your legal obligations .................................................................................... 28 References for Section A .............................................................................. 33 Section B Why worry about learners’ mental health? ................................................ 35 The best time of your life ............................................................................... 36 Walking in the learner’s shoes ...................................................................... 49 Reading the signs ........................................................................................... 61 References for Section B ............................................................................... 79 Section C Developing more inclusive services ........................................................... 81 The cost of mental health difficulties .......................................................... 82 The Disability Equality Duty (DED) - What is the Duty?.............................. 84 References for Section C .............................................................................. 96 Resources Frequently asked questions .......................................................................... 98 Myth buster.................................................................................................... 105 Quiz Answers: What do you know about mental health?..................... 107 Half day training session on learning and mental health ...................... 109 - 1 - Acknowledgements Many people have been involved in the production of this training pack. They include mental health service users, specialist mental health support workers, tutors and day centre managers. People have contributed in a number of ways, but all have given their time, ideas and support for the project. Thank you to all the people who have participated in focus groups at the start of the writing process, given one-to-one and group interviews at various stages in the development of the pack, proof read the many versions, allowed conversations about their experiences of being a learner or a service provider to be taped and transcribed, reviewed early drafts of the pack and provided focused and constructive feedback and contributed articles, ideas and in some cases their own learning materials for inclusion in this training pack. For this edition particular thanks must go to Liz Johnson Acting Head of Patient Experience, Social Inclusion and Diversity, Shefield Care Trust Diane Heywood Positive Assets Co-ordinator, Humber Mental Health Teaching Trust Rachel and Amy Students at West Yorkshire Colleges Lesley White Day Services Manager, Sheffield Care Trust John Pattinson Care Services Improvement Partnership (CSIP) Regional Development Centre for North East, Yorkshire & Humber Andrew Cambridge Manager, Future Prospects Vicky Utting NIACE Regional Project Officer – Mental Health for East Midlands Pauline Bispham Media Officer for POSITIVE Mental Health, Leeds North West Primary Care Trust Tricia Clark Learning Support Tutor, Bradford College and Life Coach Paul Johnson Involvement and Recover Lead for Care Services Improvement Partnership (CSIP), NIMHE North East Yorkshire and Humber RDC John Rowley Additional Support Coordinator, Northern College, Barnsley Derek Freeborn Head of Student Services, Northern College, Barnsley Katina Barret NIACE Regional Project Officer – Mental Health for Yorkshire and Humberside Louise Turner Stepping Out Programme Manager, Park Lane College, Leeds Janet Drinkwater Additional Support Manager for Study Services, North Lindsey Colege - 2 - Additional thanks must go to the following people who contributed to the first edition (2004) Phil Hopkins Stepping Out Programme Manager, Park Lane College, Leeds Pete Vickers Joseph Priestly College, Leeds Louise Tilley Worklink, Huddersfield Anne Sharpe Mirfield Day Centre Karen Lockey The Cellar Project, Shipley Mel, Ivan, Pauline and Jenny The Cellar Project service users Gary and John Mirfield Day Centre service users Sandra Skuse Wakefield M.D.C. Adult Education Service Sarah Hall North Bradford Primary Care Trust Louise Robinson St Anne’s Shelter and Housing Action Service users at The Cellar Project and Mirfield Day Centre, who spoke openly about their experiences and feelings about adult education, but prefer to remain anonymous. Glyn Owen October 2006 ©This book was developed by Glyn Owen on behalf of West Yorkshire LSC. Copyright is jointly owned. This pack may be reproduced for educational purposes on condition that its source and author are acknowledged. For enquiries please contact www.lsc.gov.uk How to use this pack Who is this pack for? This training pack has been designed for anyone working in an organisation that provides learning opportunities. It looks at the prevalence of people experiencing mental health difficulties and the impact this may have on the learning population. It also invites you to look at your own organisation and see how it can support both learners and staff with mental health difficulties. The open learning pack comprises a manual and CD ROM. To get the full benefit from the pack, it is important to work through the activities. You can print off copies of forms and flow charts used in the pack from the CD ROM. The pack can be used in a number of ways: General interest raising Myth buster sheet can be circulated to all staff What do you know about mental health? A quiz that can be used in team meetings, at training events or circulated electronically as an email attachment Frequently Asked Questions are the responses of an `expert’ focus group to questions posed by tutors Awareness raising The pack has been designed in three sections. Section A is for all staff and looks at the prevalence of mental health difficulties in the general population and the role of the media and language in promoting stigma around mental health issues. Supporting tutors Section B is designed for tutors. It looks at the reasons why learners are a particularly vulnerable group, the role of the tutor in offering support and invites tutors to assess how well their own course supports learners with mental health difficulties. Developing the DES Section C is designed for senior managers and those Action Plan working in learner support services. It looks at the legal obligations of public authority learning providers towards learners with mental health difficulties and will help project groups to develop their action plan for the Disability Equality Scheme. Staff Training There is an Agenda, Session Plan, Handouts and PowerPoint presentation so that you can deliver a half day mental health awareness session with little additional preparation. - 4 - Section A Learning and mental health How to use this section This section of the pack is for ALL staff working in a learning environment. This includes library staff, security staff, learning support tutors; in fact anyone who comes into contact with learners. It will give you an overview of the prevalence of mental health difficulties in the general population and explain why all of us should be aware of the barriers that learners face when entering our learning environments. You will read about the way that language and the media shape our views on mental health and find out why people experiencing mental health difficulties find it so difficult to talk about them. You can use this section for your own information or try out some of the exercises with your colleagues. But before you start…try the Quiz. - 5 - Section A What do you know about mental health? 1 What proportion of people experience mental health a) 1 in 10 difficulties at any one time according to the Office for b) 1 in 4 National Statistics? c) 1 in 6 (Source: Office for National Statistics 2000) 2 In a survey of almost 8,000 families selected at random in a) 5% Great Britain, what percentage of young people 5-16 years b) 8% old, had a clinically diagnosed mental health disorder? c) 10% (Mental health of children and young people in Great Britain 2004) 3 In a Mental Health Foundation survey carried out in 2000 a) 10 % with 528 respondents, what percentage didn’t tell their b) 22% families that they had mental health problems? c) 42% (Source: Mental Health Foundation) 4 What ratio of GP consultations are concerned with mental a) 1:10 health issues? b) 1:3 c) 1:2 (Mental Health: Britian’s Biggest Social Problem? Richard Layard 2004) 5 What is the most common symptom of mental distress? a) anger b) fatigue c) crying (Source: Office for National Statistics 2000) d) violence 6 What percentage of people with mental health difficulties a) 7% said that they had experienced discrimination in the b) 17% workplace? c) 27% d) 47% (Source: The Mental Health Foundation, `Pull Yourself Together’) - 6 - Section A 7 Which of the following is NOT a a) loss of appetite symptom of developing a mental health b) increase in time spent alone problem? c) sleeping a lot d) loss of intelligence There is no evidence that mental health difficulties impair intellect, (Source: Change your mindset, however, concentration and Mindout) memory may be affected during the period of difficulty. 8 What is the number of people in a) 100,020 England on Incapacity Benefit that b) 454,200 report their primary condition to be mental ill health? c) 865,900 (Summary of Intelligence on Mental Health: Dacorum 2005) 9 The Disability Equality Scheme (DES) a) Staff attitudes relates to which of the following? b) Teaching materials c) Access to education d) Employment of tutors e) Ancillary and contracted staff working on providers premises 10 One of the definitions of discrimination a) What a member of the public under the DDA is failure to make a thinks reasonable adjustment when a disabled b) What your governing body thinks person is placed at a substantial based on the evidence disadvantage in comparison to a non disabled person. `Reasonable means… c) What a judge in a court of law thinks is reasonable 11 In a survey of newspapers in 2005, what a) 10% percentage of articles relating to b) 27% mental health focused on violence? c) 40% (Mind over matter, SHIFT – 2006) Answers to the Quiz can be found in the Resources section of the pack. - 7 - Section A What is mental health? Everyone has mental health in the same way that everyone has physical health. Sometimes it’s good and sometimes it’s not. Most people’s mental health fluctuates, from day to day or hour to hour. Changes in mood, confidence, and emotions are part of everyone’s life. We all need to look after our mental health and be aware of external and internal factors that affect it. It is not always obvious when people, even close friends, are experiencing mental health difficulties. A survey carried out by The Mental Health Foundation `Is Anybody There’ (1) examined the relationship between friendship and mental health problems. They found: 1 in 4 people only realised that their friend had a mental health problem when he or she was admitted to hospital. Many people with mental health problems felt that they could only tell a few or no friends about their mental health problem. 1 in 3 found very little understanding from some of their friends. People reported friendships ending as a result of a friend's mental health problems. 1 in 10 people reported losing all or most of their friends after telling them about their mental health problems. If you were experiencing mental health difficulties, who would you tell? Your employer? Your partner? Your children? Spend a few minutes writing down the benefits and risks of telling people. People you might tell Benefits of telling them Risks of telling them Having friends and people to talk to can be an important way of coping with problems and the difficulties that we encounter every day. - 8 - Section A RETHINK, a charity that supports people with severe mental illness recommends: There are plenty of ways to maintain your mental health or to help you feel better: Keep in touch with family and friends –arrange to meet up. Make time to do things you really enjoy. Look after your mind and body, eat well and exercise – it really helps your state of mind. Take time to relax – don’t push yourself too hard with work or exams. Talk to people you trust about worries or problems. If you feel you can’t cope, talk to your GP or get in touch with a support group. RETHINK is an organisation that supports people with `severe’ mental difficulties, yet the activities they recommend seem so ordinary. Look at the list again. What do you do to keep your mind healthy? Think about the `feel good’ activities that you participate in on a weekly/ daily basis. Do you punctuate your days with `treats’? e.g. I’ll have a biscuit/glass of wine when I finish this report/lesson plan/essay. List the treats that you give yourself. Treat When do you have it? Piece of chocolate cake. When I’ve put the kids to bed. The list is a good indicator of the way that you pace your life and maintain your own state of mental health. Think about the way the `treat’ acts as a reward. How it affects your mood and motivates you. We are all on a continuum of mental health. Our moods change in response to a wide range of internal and external triggers. Unpaid bills, failing a driving test, finding a bargain in the sales, falling in love, hormonal flows, running out of paper for the printer….there are thousands of things that can affect our moods. - 9 -