Ensure trainers understand that they need to make clear the peer visitor’s role when discussing mental health. It is to listen not diagnose/treat, and refer to a professional, much like Telecare.

General

Ask trainers if they are well-versed in mental health support from the peer visitor in-person and remote training manuals. This is another fairly sensitive section and peer visitor trainers might want to talk about how comfortable they are in teaching these topics, and how they can prepare themselves to do it.

In-person

PEER VISITOR ROLE IN MENTAL HEALTH

There is no list of key concepts to be covered in this section although it’s important that the peer visitor trainer spend a few moments talking about the role of peer visitors when it comes to mental health.

GRIEF, DEPRESSION, ANXIETY AND QUALITY OF LIFE

The key concepts for discussion are outlined at the bottom of this section.  As in previous sections, ensure that the future peer visitor trainers are comfortable with the content and able to answer questions related to the content.  Once the content has been taught,  visitor trainers will then lead the group in a fill-in-the-blank activity. It is worth discussing with the group how they might run this activity when they are training future peer visitors either in person or online.

POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER

Encourage trainers to consider additional resources they might use to teach PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). Ask trainers ways to teach the symptoms of PTSD. Guide their discussion towards engaging activities and possible teaching resources.

BODY IMAGE DISTURBANCE

There’s no specific list of key concepts to teach in the section, but it’s worth exploring how comfortable the learners are with teaching about body image disturbance and brainstorming about how they might engage learners as they teach it.