You’re looking at that link at the top of the site, Psychological First Aid, and you click on it. There’s a bunch of websites, but what is it all about?
Psychological First Aid is like Emergency First Aid, but for your mind. It is training available across the world that anyone can take in order to learn how to help others cope in stressful situations. For example, the Australian Psychological Association promotes PFA training such that “any person in distress should have access to psychological first aid, where possible. This includes adults, adolescents and children, as well as disaster relief workers and first responders”. Knowing how to be emotionally supportive to your friends, family, coworkers and clients/patients can improve your mental health as well as theirs.
PFA training promotes social support, which is a protective factor in a person’s ability to cope with psychological trauma. No matter which version you pick to learn, they all will teach you how to:
1. Promote safety: meet basic needs for food, water, shelter, financial, material assistance, remove from the threat of harm
2. Promote calm: remove from stressful situation, listen without judgement
3. Promote connectedness: help them contact friends or family, or other resources, address immediate concerns
4. Promote self-efficacy: encourage them to address their own needs, assist with decision making, prioritizing problems, helping to solve those problems
5. Promote hope: ensure them you are willing to help, offer them reassurance
So click on the Psychological First Aid link, pick a program, and get started!