skip to main content

Teen Mental Health First Aid

Mental Health First Aid International

Equips secondary school students with the knowledge, skills, and confidence to recognise, understand and respond to a friend or classmate experiencing a mental health problem or mental health crisis.

  • ACT
  • NSW
  • NT
  • QLD
  • SA
  • Tas
  • Vic
  • WA

Pricing: Paid

Origin: Developed in Australia for Australian schooling contexts

Affiliations: Approved elsewhere: SA, VIC

Product type: Program; Student activities; Learning modules

Contact details

Mental Health First Aid International
ABN: 57 153 480 436

https://www.mhfa.com.au/our-courses/teen-peer-to-peer-support/teen-mental-health-first-aid/

mhfa@mhfa.com.au

Focus areas

  • Mental health literacy and life skills

  • Suicide and self-harm

Curriculum alignment

Prospective users

Audience: Whole school universal (Tier 1), Whole class universal (Tier 1)

Context: School or centre-based

Main beneficiaries: Year 7, Year 8, Year 9, Year 10, Year 11, Year 12

Delivery style: Classroom teacher is trained; Delivered by program staff

Aims & approach

This course covers developing mental health problems and crisis situations. Students learn how to recognise when a friend or classmate is developing a mental health problem and have a supportive conversation, and how to identify signs of a crisis such as suicidal thoughts. The course focuses on knowing when and how to seek the support of a trusted adult. The learning is supported by videos that tell the lived experience stories of teens who have experienced mental illness.

This course is tailored to students in Years 7-9 and students in Years 10-12 to ensure age-appropriate content is delivered. It is delivered via three face-to-face classroom sessions. All sessions are led by an MHFA trained and Licensed Instructor.

This course is recognised by Suicide Prevention Australia as a safe, high-quality, and effective suicide prevention program.

Implementation support

  • Access to professional facilitator, instructor or mentor

Evidence

All Mental Health First Aid courses are evidence-based, following guidelines that are informed by people with lived experience, their caregivers, and mental health professionals. Rigorous evaluations consistently show that Mental Health First Aid training improves participants' knowledge of mental illnesses and their treatments, and confidence in providing mental health first aid to individuals. e.g.:

  • Hart et al. (2022). teen Mental Health First Aid: 12-month outcomes from a cluster crossover randomized controlled trial evaluation of a universal program to help adolescents better support peers with a mental health problem. BMC Public Health. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-13554-6