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You just listened to the WhyWork episode.

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Now listen to the WhyNOT wisdom shot.

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So Alan, what's happening?

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So we're talking a lot about psychological first aid

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or mental health first aid.

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Why?

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Understandably, people are concerned about the mental health

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of the workforce and how they can best help them.

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And there are new standards and codes of practice

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about psychological and psychosocial health.

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There is a new code that has been published now

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about psychosocial hazards, which is a related

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but different topic to mental health first aid.

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And mental health first aid is happening in the workplace

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right now, but why not?

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First aid is good.

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In any organization, you need to have first aid

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to deal with situations where people have been hurt.

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So physical first aid is about physical injuries.

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Mental health first aid is about health issues,

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just as you expect people who are exercising physical first aid

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that they should have some sort of training, a skill.

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I think the same is true for psychological health.

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So if someone is engaged in psychological first aid,

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then they should have some training and some skill.

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So what's the verdict?

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Well, I think there's still a lot of debate about it,

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not just in Australia, but overseas,

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about whether or not it's effective

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and personally, I find it difficult

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when we're using the expression first aid.

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If we're talking about mental health first aid,

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I'd like to see the conversation go the same way

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where you're just stabilizing the person's condition

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until they can get more professional help.

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And we know that trained psychiatrists and psychologists

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can achieve excellent outcomes

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in the area of psychological health.

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I'd prefer us pushing us to those qualified professionals.

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So what we're seeing to be finding is that there's general awareness

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but not necessarily change in the risk landscape,

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if only relying on first aid.

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I think there's an enormous desire to be helpful

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and sometimes we can overstep what we can do

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and we try to do things that we really should be allowing

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people with a greater degree of training to do.