Mental Health First Aid for Eating Disorders: evaluation of a training program for the public

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Mental Health First Aid Mental Health First Aid is defined as the help provided to someone who is developing a mental illness or experiencing a mental health crisis. The assistance is given until appropriate professional help is received or the crisis resolves. Mental Health First Aid training is provided to members of the public so that they can learn how to effectively and confidently assist those with mental health problems. The Mental Health First Aid Training Program (MHFA) has been running since 2002 and has trained over 85,000 Australians in how to respond to mental health problems, via a 12-hour training course, which is run in an interactive, group format. Development of First Aid Guidelines Over the last 3.5 years a series of guidelines for providing best practice mental health first aid have been developed by MHFA. These guidelines are based on the expert opinions of panels of mental health consumers, carers and clinicians from Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the UK and the USA. Since developing these expert consensus documents, the MHFA program has begun to revise its training course and teaching materials to reflect the new evidence they provide. Purpose of this research Guidelines on providing first aid for eating disorders were developed in 2007 and published in 2008. Because these guidelines are the first ever to provide consensus-based information about how to assist someone who may be developing or experiencing an eating disorder, we would like to gather some feedback from community members about how helpful they are.