Mental Health Awareness

Mental health awareness training delivered at your workplace or live online. Half a day or a full day workshop on request. The understanding, confidence, and signposting knowledge every team needs, built around the legal obligations most employers don’t yet know they have.

Course Overview

Mental Health Awareness Training is not about turning staff into therapists. It is about giving everyone in your organisation the understanding to recognise when something is wrong, the confidence to respond appropriately, and the knowledge of when and how to signpost someone to the right support. Those three things, in any business and any sector, make a real difference to the people who need help and to the culture of the organisation as a whole.

One in four people in the UK will experience a mental health problem in any given year. In most workplaces, that means it is already present in your team. The question is not whether your staff will encounter mental health challenges at work. It is whether they are prepared to respond to them.

Since the HSE updated its first aid needs assessment guidance, employers are required to consider mental health when assessing their first aid provision. This means evaluating whether your workforce’s mental health needs are being met, and whether appointing a trained Mental Health First Aider forms part of your first aid arrangements. For many organisations, this is a requirement they are not yet aware of, and one that this course directly addresses. The course reflects the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, the Equality Act 2010, and current guidance from the Health and Safety Executive, Mind, and Mental Health at Work.

Course Details

  • Duration: Half-day (3 to 4 hours), or full-day workshop option available
  • Delivery: Face-to-face in-house or live online via Zoom or Microsoft Teams
  • Certificate: CPD-Accredited Certificate of Achievement in Mental Health Awareness
  • Awarding organisations: HTN, CPD-Accredited
  • Validity: No formal expiry. Refresher is recommended every 2 to 3 years, or sooner following significant changes in the workforce, following incidents, or where updated guidance warrants review.
  • Group size: Maximum 15 learners per trainer

Who This Course Is For

This course is right for any organisation, in any sector, where staff may encounter colleagues or customers experiencing mental health challenges.

  • All employees across any sector requiring mental health awareness as part of induction or ongoing development
  • Team leaders, supervisors, and line managers who need to recognise and respond to mental health concerns in their teams
  • HR professionals and people managers with responsibility for staff wellbeing
  • Business owners and employers reviewing their first aid needs assessment and considering mental health provision
  • Health and social care, education, retail, hospitality, construction, and professional services teams
  • Organisations wanting to strengthen their mental health culture across the whole workforce

No prior knowledge is required. For health and social care teams wanting content built around the clinical and regulatory context of care work, our Mental Health Awareness (Care Sector) course may be more appropriate. Not sure which is right for your team? Get in touch, and we’ll help you work it out before you commit.

The Legal Requirement

Under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, employers have a legal duty to protect the health, safety, and welfare of their employees. The HSE is clear that this duty encompasses mental as well as physical health. Work-related stress, anxiety, and depression are among the leading causes of workplace absence in the UK, and employers who fail to address mental health risk in their workplace are failing a statutory obligation, not just a pastoral one.

The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 require employers to assess risks to employees’ health and safety, including psychosocial risks. A risk assessment that considers physical hazards but ignores mental health is not a sufficient assessment.

The HSE’s updated first aid needs assessment guidance now explicitly requires employers to consider mental health when evaluating their first aid provision. This means looking at the mental health risks present in your workplace, the likely needs of your workforce, and whether you need to appoint a trained Mental Health First Aider as part of your first aid arrangements. Many organisations have completed first aid needs assessments without ever addressing this, and likely falling short of HSE expectations. This course helps employers and managers understand that obligation and what it means in practice.

The Equality Act 2010 adds a further layer of legal obligation. Many mental health conditions, including depression, anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder, and PTSD, can qualify as disabilities under the Act where they have a substantial and long-term effect on a person’s ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities. Where that threshold is met, employers have a legal duty to make reasonable adjustments. A manager who does not recognise a mental health condition, or who misreads its symptoms as attitude or performance problems, is not in a position to meet that duty. The consequences, including employment tribunal claims and reputational damage, are significant.

Mind and Mental Health at Work both provide robust guidance for employers on creating mentally healthy workplaces, supporting staff with mental health conditions, and building cultures where people feel safe to ask for help. This course draws on both. The business case is also straightforward. Mental ill health costs UK employers billions annually through absence, presenteeism, and staff turnover. Organisations that invest in awareness training, which give managers the tools to notice and respond early, consistently see better outcomes for their people and their business.

What the Day Covers

Content is adapted to your sector, your workforce, and the specific mental health challenges most relevant to your organisation. Topics covered include:

  • What mental health is: the full spectrum, the facts, and the myths that still shape how workplaces respond
  • Common mental health conditions: anxiety, depression, stress, PTSD, bipolar disorder, and others, including how each may present at work
  • Signs and symptoms: what to look for, why changes in behaviour or performance often signal something more than a conduct issue, and how assumptions cause harm
  • Stigma and attitude: where resistance to mental health awareness comes from and how to challenge it, including within teams where the attitude is “this doesn’t apply to us”
  • Responding supportively: what to say, how to listen, how to start a difficult conversation, and where the boundaries of the non-clinical role lie
  • Employer legal obligations
  • First aid needs assessments and mental health: the HSE requirement to include mental health in first aid risk assessment, what this means in practice, and the role of Mental Health First Aiders
  • Signposting and support pathways: internal routes, external services, and how to connect someone with the right help without overstepping
  • Workplace mental health culture: what a mentally healthy workplace looks like, what gets in the way, and what individuals and organisations can do differently

Every course is also built to include your sector, your existing wellbeing policies, and your first aid needs assessment as standard.

How the Course Is Delivered

This course is available face-to-face at your workplace or chosen venue, or live online via Zoom or Microsoft Teams for teams in multiple locations or with remote workers. Sessions are discussion-based, practical, and built around the real mental health situations your staff encounter at work. The aim is a genuine shift in awareness and attitude, not a passive run-through of statistics.

Groups are capped at 15 to ensure every learner has space for the kind of honest discussion this topic generates. We can build content around your sector and the specific stressors most common in your working environment, your existing employee assistance programme or wellbeing policy, your first aid needs assessment, and what it currently says about mental health provision, and management-level sessions focused on recognising mental health in teams and having difficult conversations. This course can also be combined with Health and Safety Awareness or Risk Assessing for a broader wellbeing and compliance programme.

Delivery includes:

  • Direct challenge of the attitudes and assumptions that most commonly prevent effective mental health support in workplaces
  • Scenario-based discussion covering the situations managers and colleagues actually face, including how to respond to disclosure, how to approach a conversation with someone who seems to be struggling, and how to recognise when something needs to be escalated
  • Practical discussion of the first aid needs assessment obligation and what it means for your organisation
  • Signposting and support pathway review relevant to your sector and location

Mental Health First Aid

Mental Health Awareness Training is an excellent foundation. For organisations that want to go further, Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) is an accredited qualification that trains individuals to provide initial support to someone experiencing a mental health problem, in the same way physical first aid provides initial support to someone who is physically injured.

Given the HSE’s updated first aid needs assessment guidance requiring employers to consider mental health in their first aid provision, many organisations are now looking at appointing trained Mental Health First Aiders as part of their first aid arrangements.

Prima Cura Training can arrange accredited Mental Health First Aid training through one of our specialist trainers. This is delivered separately from this awareness course and leads to a nationally recognised MHFA qualification. If your organisation is considering MHFA training, get in touch, and we will talk through what is involved and whether it is the right next step for your team.

Mental Health Awareness or Mental Health Awareness (Care Sector)?

Both courses build the same core awareness, confidence, and signposting skills. The right choice depends on your sector and context.

Mental Health Awareness (this course) is designed for all businesses across all sectors and addresses mental health from a general workplace wellbeing and employer legal duty perspective. It is the right course for offices, retail, hospitality, construction, education, and professional services teams.

Mental Health Awareness (Care Sector) is built specifically around the clinical and regulatory context of health and social care, including how mental health awareness connects to the people being supported as well as the workforce delivering that support. If you work in a care setting, that course may be more appropriate.

We don’t make that determination for employers; the responsibility sits with you. But we do provide guidance throughout the enquiry process.

Certification and Validity

On completion, learners receive a CPD-Accredited Certificate of Achievement in Mental Health Awareness.

A refresher is recommended every 2 to 3 years, or sooner following significant changes to the workforce or working environment, following incidents where mental health was a factor, or where updated HSE or government guidance warrants review. For organisations appointing trained Mental Health First Aiders as part of their first aid arrangements, we can arrange accredited MHFA training through one of our specialist trainers as the natural next step.

Why Organisations Book With Prima Cura

Most training providers arrive with a course. We arrive with yours.

Before the day, we gather information about your workplace: your incident reporting forms, your internal procedures, and the specific hazards your team actually faces. On the day, your trainer works that into every scenario, every discussion, every practical exercise. If your staff work in a care home, they’re not practising on hypothetical office workers. If your team are lone workers, that context shapes how the session runs.

It means the training lands. Not because it was well-delivered in a generic sense, but because it was relevant to the people in the room and the situations they’ll actually encounter.

A few other things that matter to the organisations that book with us:

  • 98.9% learner satisfaction across all Prima Cura courses
  • All trainers hold Enhanced DBS certificates and maintain ongoing CPD
  • We advise honestly on the qualification level at the enquiry stage. If a different course is a better fit for your workforce, we’ll say so before you book, not after

We respond to all enquiries within one working day.

Where We Deliver

We deliver in-house training at your workplace or chosen venue across Manchester, Greater Manchester, and the wider North West. We also deliver nationally across England, including North England, South England, London, and Surrey.

All sessions are led by experienced Prima Cura Training instructors. Groups are capped at 15 per trainer to protect the quality of hands-on learning.

Our associate network means we can deliver across England. You can meet the team on our Associates page.

FAQs

Does my first aid needs assessment need to include mental health?

Yes. The HSE’s updated first aid needs assessment guidance requires employers to consider mental health when carrying out a first aid needs assessment. This means evaluating the mental health risks in your workplace, the likely needs of your workforce, and whether you need to appoint a trained Mental Health First Aider as part of your first aid arrangements. Many organisations have completed first aid needs assessments without ever addressing this, and are therefore non-compliant. This course helps managers and employers understand what that obligation means and how to meet it.

Is this the same as Mental Health First Aid?

No. Mental Health Awareness Training gives staff the understanding to recognise signs of poor mental health and respond appropriately within their role. Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) is an accredited qualification that trains individuals to provide structured initial support to someone experiencing a mental health crisis. Both are valuable. Many organisations choose to train their whole workforce in awareness and appoint a smaller number of qualified Mental Health First Aiders. We can arrange accredited MHFA training through one of our specialist trainers. Get in touch to discuss.

What are an employer’s legal obligations around mental health under the Equality Act?

Many mental health conditions qualify as disabilities under the Equality Act 2010 where they have a substantial and long-term effect on a person’s ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities. Where this threshold is met, employers have a legal duty to make reasonable adjustments. A manager who does not recognise a mental health condition, or who treats its symptoms as a conduct issue, is not in a position to meet that duty. This course covers employer obligations under the Equality Act in practical terms.

What should a manager do if they notice a change in an employee’s behaviour?

The instinct in many workplaces is to treat a change in behaviour, a drop in performance, withdrawal, or a short temper as a conduct issue first. That instinct is often wrong, and acting on it before checking in with the person can make things worse. This course gives managers a practical framework for starting that conversation supportively, without overstepping into clinical territory, and for recognising when a situation needs to be escalated to HR, occupational health, or external support. We deliver this training across Greater Manchester, the wider North West, and nationally, and this scenario comes up in almost every session.

Related Courses

Book or Enquire

Book your training or request a quote

Tell us your team size and your sector. We’ll come back with a quote, the right advice on qualification level, and a straight answer on whether this is the best course for your team.

We respond to all enquiries within one working day.

Our Commitment to Quality and Compliance

At Prima Cura Training, all courses reflect current UK guidance and best practice. All trainers are experienced professionals with relevant qualifications and ongoing CPD. Because many of the organisations we support work with vulnerable individuals, all trainers hold Enhanced DBS checks.

This course is reviewed against updates from the Health and Safety Executive, Mind, Mental Health at Work, and current UK legislation, including the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, the Equality Act 2010.

You can read more on our Quality Assurance and Compliance page.

Reviewed by Stephanie Austin, Owner and Lead Trainer, Prima Cura Training | 25+ years in health and social care | 15+ years as a trainer | Last reviewed: June 2026 | Next review: June 2027

This page is for general guidance only and reflects current UK legislation, HSE guidance, and best practice as of the date of review. It does not constitute legal, clinical, or medical advice. Mental Health Awareness Training is a CPD-accredited awareness course and does not qualify learners to diagnose or treat mental health conditions or to provide clinical mental health intervention. This course does not constitute Mental Health First Aid training or qualification. Employers remain responsible for ensuring their mental health risk assessments, first aid needs assessments, reasonable adjustment processes, and staff training comply with all applicable legislation, including the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, the Equality Act 2010. Where individuals require clinical mental health support, they should be referred to an appropriate healthcare professional.

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