Mental Health 101: A Blueprint Course

Skylight's Director of Operations, Amanda, went to a mental health course over the weekend. It sounded like a fantastic day, so here's what she had to say;

---

Last week, I attended the MH101 workshop run by Blueprint for Learning — and it was certainly a day well spent. This completely free, full-day workshop (9am to 4.30pm) is open to people across the community. I noticed a real spread of people attending, from Playcentre and Citizens’ Advice to Crisis Response to the Wellington City Mission.

The course is designed for non-clinical participants and gives you practical tools to recognise signs of mental distress, understand major mental health challenges including depression, anxiety, psychosis and substance use, and know how to respond — including when someone may be at risk of suicide or self-harm.

Grounded in the Te Whare Tapa Whā model, the workshop takes a holistic approach to wellbeing that felt very aligned with Skylight’s work. Each session is co-facilitated by someone with lived experience of mental health challenges alongside a registered mental health professional, which made for a genuinely rich and honest learning environment.

There was some tough content, such as suicide and addiction, but it was delivered sensitively. The facilitator would then leave time to discuss topics in our groups, listen to lived experiences, and problem-solve the case studies together. I’d highly recommend it to those of us not working directly in the clinical space, as it provided me with real insight.

If you are looking for an accessible community course regarding Mental Health, I would definitely recommend attending one of these!

If you have already attended this course or one similar, how did you find it? Feel free to tell us in the comments or email us at [email protected]

---