FAQs

Mental Health First Aid England® offers a range of training courses from awareness raising to skills development. Our mental health training courses are designed for everyone, with varying options to suit different people, workplaces, and industries.

Through our courses we take people on a journey to understand what mental health is. We discuss how we all have mental health, like physical health, and we teach people to look after their own and others’ wellbeing. 

For example, our Mental Health First Aid course: 

• Encourages people to challenge the language we use around mental health
• Explores our different frames of reference and the stigma attached to mental health
• Helps people to understand what good mental health looks like
• Explores the factors that can have an impact on our mental health
• Looks at how to support yourself and others with self-care, sharing the skills to influence your own mental health and help prevent poor mental health
• Teaches how to support someone experiencing poor mental health (including in a crisis), and signpost to further support
• Teaches about diagnosable mental health conditions, what unwell looks like, and how to spot these signs in yourself and others
• Talks about what to do if you think someone is unwell and the steps to take for early intervention
• Talks about recovery from mental ill health and looking forward 

For more detail on what you learn on the different MHFA England courses, visit the course pages from the menu above.  

MHFA England courses are for everyone! We offer a range of training options to suit different people, workplaces, and industries. Our courses are designed so that you don’t need existing knowledge of mental health, just like you don’t need a medical background to take a first aid course.   

As workplace mental health experts, we deliver inclusive, market-leading, and evidence-based mental health training and consultancy, tailored to the needs of you or your organisation. We therefore recommend MHFA England training for anyone, in any workplace.  

Here are just some of the people who benefit from MHFA England skills: 

• Managers
• HR professionals
• Social care professionals
• Teachers
• Parents
• Foster parents
• First responders
• Staff nurses
• Local authorities
• Friends and family
• People with lived experience of mental ill health 

We believe MHFA England training works as one part of a joined-up mental health approach. Each of our courses are based on research and developed by mental health experts alongside people with lived experience of mental ill health.  

Research and evaluation has repeatedly demonstrated the effectiveness of MHFA® training in England and worldwide. You can read about the impact of our training across a range of organisations in our case studies, MHFAider stories, and as demonstrated in our MHFAider report.

It depends on what you’re interested in and who you want to support. We have courses to help you support: 

• The general adult population
• Any employee within the workplace
• Managers supporting their teams
• Young people aged 8-18
• Students and staff in higher education
• People in the NHS and financial services sectors 

 Our courses also differ in length, ranging from our Mental Health Aware course (four hours) to our Mental Health First Aid course (two days).

To become a Mental Health First Aider you need to take a Mental Health First Aider course. The course is structured as four sessions for both online and face-to-face delivery. These can be delivered over two to four days. The online course is delivered through the MHFA England Online Learning Hub.. 

If you’re booking as an individual, you can book with one of our independent instructors. If you’re looking to train as a group or for your organisation, get in touch with our workplace mental health experts to learn more and discuss your requirements. 

• First, choose who you want to support and the length of the course from the course list
• Go to ‘Book your course’ at the bottom of the page. You can filter by course type, location and date, or just browse the list of courses below
• Click the ‘Book course’ button for the course you’re interested in. Fill in your contact details and accessibility requirements, then click ‘Submit’
• Your course instructor will be in touch to confirm your booking. Please do not book any travel arrangements until the instructor has confirmed your place 

If you’re booking as an individual, you can book with one of our independent instructors as above. If you’re looking to train as a group or for your organisation, get in touch with our workplace mental health experts to learn more and discuss your requirements.

You’ll need to contact the course instructor directly – simply reply to their booking confirmation email. 

If you can’t get in touch with the course instructor this way, drop us an email at info@mhfaengland.org  and we’ll be happy to help. 

Just drop us an email on info@mhfaengland.org or call 0203 928 0760 and we’ll ask the instructor to contact you directly.

We have a range of different courses to suit your needs. The Recommended Retail Price (RRP) starts at only £150 + VAT per person, up to £325 + VAT. 

Costs may vary depending on the course type, location, and instructor. If you have any questions about the cost of attending a course, please contact the instructor for more information by clicking on a course below. Occasionally, some instructors may be able to access local funding to allow them to offer discounted places. 
 
We offer corporate rates for organisations who book whole course cohorts. If you’re an organisation looking to train eight people or more, get in touch with our workplace mental health experts to learn more and discuss your requirements.

The money you pay to attend a course will help the Instructor Member cover their time and costs such as venue hire, travel, and course materials. The money we make also goes into making sure all courses meet our quality standards, keeping the content up to date, producing our materials, and creating new courses to reach more people. As a social enterprise, every course you book through us allows us to support the next generation's mental health.  

As a social enterprise we reinvest our profits into providing quality mental health training to those who need it most. While we’re not able to offer free training at the moment, we are happy to provide discounted rates for NHS and non-profit organisations. For more information about how we could support your workplace, please contact us at workplace@mhfaengland.org

We strive to create courses and resources that everyone can access. When you book onto a course through the MHFA England website, please fill in the ‘Accessibility requirements’ section of the booking form and tell us what you need to access the course venue and materials. Visit our accessibility page for more information.

We offer a range of course lengths and depths of learning to suit your needs.  

Our Online Mental Health First Aid courses are structured as four sessions for both online and face-to-face delivery. These can be delivered over two to four days. The online course is delivered through the MHFA England Online Learning Hub. 

We also offer shorter courses to become an MHFA Champion, half-day Mental Health Aware sessions, and a selection of people manager training courses. Most of our courses range from half day to two days. 

Mental Health Knowledge for Managers is a digital learning course that learners can complete at their own pace and is suitable for organisations with 50 managers or more.  

You need to complete all parts of a course to receive a certificate of attendance. All parts of the MHFA course, for example, are equally important to learn a safe grounding in Mental Health First Aid skills. 

Once you’ve chosen the course you’re interested in, go to the ‘Book your course’ section at the bottom of the page and use the location or postcode filter to find courses near you. 

If you can’t find one in your area, please get in touch with us at info@mhfaengland.org. We’ll put a call out to local instructors to see if they have anything coming up. 

At the end of your course, you’ll get a certificate to say you’ve completed the course. Our courses are not currently CPD verified. 

If you’ve completed our Mental Health First Aid course or MHFA Refresher course, you can choose to test your knowledge further and build your confidence in your role as an MHFAider with the internationally recognised MHFAider qualification, RSPH Level 3 Award in Mental Health First Aid. 

Like physical first aid, your MHFA training is valid for three years. We recommend that Mental Health First Aiders attend an MHFA Refresher course every three years to renew their skills, update their knowledge of mental health supports, and practice applying the MHFA action plan. You’ll also get another three years membership to the Association of Mental Health First Aiders®, with exclusive access to a wide range of resources, from ongoing training and qualifications to events and research.

Once your Instructor Member has marked you as having completed the course, you’ll get an email asking for feedback on the course. After you’ve left feedback or chosen to opt out, you’ll get an email with your certificate attached. It’s also worth checking your spam/junk folder in case it’s ended up there by mistake. 

If you still haven’t received it, email us on  info@mhfaengland.org. To help us track it down, please let us know: 

• The date you took the course
• The location of the course
• What type of course it was (e.g. Youth MHFA®, MHFA, etc.)
• The name of the Instructor Member, if you know it 

Certainly – just send us an email to info@mhfaengland.org. Let us know: 

• The date you took the course
• The location of the course
• What type of course it was (e.g. MHFA, Youth MHFA, MHFA Champion, etc.)
• The name of the Instructor Member if you know it
• What needs to be corrected (if applicable) 

There’s plenty you can do to raise awareness of mental health and MHFA England skills in your community! Take a look at our free toolkits for resources and materials to get you started. 

You may also like to follow us on social media or sign up to our newsletter to keep up to date with what we’re doing. We support mental health campaigns throughout the year including our own My Whole Self campaign, as well as initiatives such as World Mental Health Day and Mental Health Awareness Week and we’re often looking for members of the MHFA England community to get involved, for example by sharing your story. 

Want to teach MHFA England courses yourself? We offer an Instructor Training programme to qualify to deliver our courses. 

If you’re interested in working for MHFA England central team, check out our careers  page for our latest vacancies. 

Our MHFA England Instructor Training programme qualifies you to deliver your own MHFA England courses independently. As the only provider of licensed Mental Health First Aid courses in England, our Instructor Training programme is accredited by Royal Society for Public Health.  

Learn how to become an MHFA England Instructor Member here 

As the idea of Mental Health First Aid becomes more popular, some other training providers are starting to offer unlicensed 'mental health first aid' or 'first aid for mental health' instructor training.  

We’d advise caution when choosing a training provider, whether you're looking for a mental health first aid course or interested in becoming an instructor yourself. The quality and safety of courses provided by other training providers can’t be guaranteed. 

The cost of an MHFA England Instructor Training programme reflects the quality of teaching, materials, and support that you’ll receive as part of your six-day experience. Cheaper, unlicensed training is unlikely to have the evidence base or quality that’s associated with MHFA England Instructor Training programmes, which have been running for over ten years and are part of a global programme active in 51 countries. 

Learn more here: Why become an Instructor Member?

Check out our selection of free resources to download where you'll find posters, infographics, and tips for mental health and wellbeing at work, at school, and in the community.

For safety reasons, MHFA England manuals are only given out on courses and can’t be ordered separately. The guidance and training provided by the course instructor will give people the understanding and skills to use the resources in the manual safely and appropriately. 

MHFA is a global movement active in 51 countries. Each country licenses their own MHFA programme separately – you can see a list of all international MHFA programmes at mhfainternational.org. 

If MHFA is not in your country yet, you can find out how to license it in your country at mhfainternational.org 

Quick links to other MHFA organisations in the UK: 

MHFA Northern Ireland

MHFA Scotland

MHFA Wales

We believe the best way to resolve any issue is to talk about it. Please call us on 0203 928 0760 (option 1) to speak to one of the team or email us on feedback@mhfaengland.org.

Complaints will be dealt with sensitively, promptly, and in confidence. For more information, see our complaints policy.

As a training organisation, we can’t offer mental health support or advice, but there are lots of people that can. See our list of mental health support contacts.

In an emergency:

• Call 999
• Go to your nearest Accident and Emergency (A&E)

 If you or someone else needs medical help fast but it’s not a 999 emergency:

• Call 111

This is a free number to call. They can direct you to your local crisis support services and mental health organisations and offer health advice 24 hours a day, 365 days a year

List of support and advice contacts