It can be very frightening to be in crisis or distress or to be witness to someone else’s crisis or distress. If a person’s mental or emotional state gets worse quickly, this can be referred to as a mental health crisis or a mental health emergency. A mental health crisis often means that a person no longer feels able to cope or be in control of their situation. A crisis can be experienced in many ways but may include emotional distress or anxiety, not being able to cope with day-to-day life or work, thinking about suicide or self-harm, or experiencing hallucinations or hearing voices. This course considers how a crisis may present itself and what you can do to help yourself cope with a crisis and looks at ways you can prepare yourself and develop resilience in the longer term, as well as how to respond and support someone who is experiencing a crisis right now.
This course will take approximately one to one and a half hours to complete, but this timing will depend on how fast you read and how long you spend on the activities and reflective questions. You do not need to complete the whole course in one go. If you leave and come back to the course it will remember where you got up to.