Wellness Wednesday: Mental Health Awareness

Interested in finding simple yet impactful ways to weave wellness into your professional and personal life?  If so, please join faculty and staff colleagues for Wellness Wednesdays.  Each session offers information, resources, and/or immersion into different wellness modalities that are supported at UMBC.

At one time or another, everyone experiences symptoms of mental illness. Too frequently the response to such symptoms in the workplace is confusion, fear, judgment, avoidance and outright rejection. This leads  to a worsening of symptoms and a deterioration of performance. This training is designed to reduce the stigma associated with mental illness and to promote ways of supporting one another in the workplace.  The session will address signs and symptoms of distress and effective ways of providing support for co-workers. The training also will include exercises to develop these skills.

At the end of this workshop, you will be able to:  

• Understand the universality of mental health issues in the workplace 
• Recognize the most common symptoms of mental illness  
• Identify the most common unhelpful reactions to symptoms, why they occur and how to avoid them
• Identify ways of expressing compassion and support to a distressed co-worker
• Recognize the warning signs of suicide 
• Become familiar with “Ask, Agree and Arrange” intervention
• Identify support services and resources for all employees