Mental Health First Aiders

NDPCHS have a number of MHFA England trained Mental Health First Aiders on hand to offer confidential, informal support to anyone within the department experiencing poor mental health or stress, whether work-related or not. They can be your first point of contact and, by understanding your situation, can talk through your options and signpost you to the right service if further support is required. 

Please be assured that they will treat any contact and conversation with the utmost discretion and confidentiality and will only escalate issues in an emergency.

How can they help?

• Listen non-judgementally.
• Available for a support conversation.
• Maintain confidentiality as appropriate.
• Support and encourage you to get appropriate help which may be in the form professional support or self-help strategies.

Please get in touch with our Mental Health First Aiders directly using their contact details on the right and pass on this information to any NDPCHS member who you think might benefit from having an informal chat with someone at a convenient location that suits them. 

See the bottom of the page for support outside of core hours. 

University signposting

• Within the University, students can get support from Student Welfare through the Student Counselling Service.
• Further local support for staff and students is signposted from the EDU website.
• Health Assured - an Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) is a confidential employee benefit designed to help you deal with your personal and professional problems that could be affecting your home life or work life, health and general wellbeing. The University has partnered with Health Assured to provide this service to all University employees, your partners and dependants.

External support

If you wish to explore more options, there are a number of websites below which you may useful (please note that these are external to NDPCHS).

https://mhfaengland.org/

https://www.mind.org.uk/

https://www.restore.org.uk/

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/stress-anxiety-depression/

Support outside of core hours

If you or someone you know needs urgent support or is in crisis outside of core working hours:

• Call 116 123 to talk to Samaritans, or email: jo@samaritans.org for a reply within 24 hours.
• Text "SHOUT" to 85258 to contact the Shout Crisis Text Line.
• Call 111 for urgent GP advice or appointments.
• More information about all these services can be found on these NHS webpages.

We're always happy to welcome new individuals to our growing community of Mental Health First Aiders. If you're passionate about supporting mental health and want to learn valuable skills, this is a fantastic opportunity to become a qualified Mental Health First Aider.

To find out more about the training and how to get involved, please get in touch with Ginger Jansen ginger.jansen@phc.ox.ac.uk who coordinates the training.