Emotional wellbeing is sometimes overlooked – so an NHS academy is offering free courses to help.
The Recovery Academy, run by Greater Manchester West Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust, offers a range of interesting and inspiring courses to promote recovery and wellbeing for all.
Spaces are available across Greater Manchester and Cheshire, on courses designed to help improve and maintain emotional wellbeing, support recovery from substance misuse and mental health problems as well as challenge the stigma and negative attitudes towards people living with mental health and/or drug and alcohol problems.
The Recovery Academy’s new April – September 2016 prospectus is out now, with information on the range of courses taking place in community centres, local hospitals and learning centres.
Over 50 courses are available for people to book onto for free and are open to current and former users of GMW’s services and their families, friends and carers as well as health care professionals.
All the courses are co-written and co-delivered by professionals and people with mental health and/or substance misuse problems, which mean the courses are enriched by professional expertise and lived experience.
These include courses on Mindfulness, assertiveness skills, peer mentoring, IT, English, Maths, anxiety and depression, addiction and many more. Courses vary in length from one-off workshops to those that take place weekly for a number of weeks.
You can book onto a course next month with the ‘An Introduction to Life Story Work’ course taking place on the 4 May 2016 and the ‘Living with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder’ taking place on the 10 May 2016.
New courses for this term are; Living with Hearing Voices, Living with Hoarding Behaviours, Nature to Nurture, Using Creativity to Improve Mental Health, Understanding Medication for Mental Health Problems and Shared Reading Groups.
Claire Watson, GMW’s Recovery Academy Lead, said: “All our courses offer a range of learning opportunities to equip students with the knowledge, understanding, behaviours, and skills needed to be able to manage and promote recovery, health and wellbeing.
“We believe recovery education not only equips people with new skills to support the recovery process and an understanding of mental health challenges, but provides people with the confidence to get back into work or go on to further study.”
A student registered with the Academy, said: “Thank you for the most interesting and informative course that I have attended for many years. My daughter, who also attended, found it equally interesting and most helpful for her. I do hope that the Living with Body Dysmorphic Disorder has many more people attending and raising awareness.
“Once again thank you as the information gained will help me understand the difficulty my daughter has in her day to day life.”
The Academy work with partners like The Reader Organisation and The Octagon Theatre to continually develop the provision of courses for people with lived experience of mental health difficulties, their families and carers as well as mental health professionals.
The Recovery Academy’s Spring/Summer term prospectus is available to download from www.gmw.nhs.uk/recovery.
To book a place, either visit www.gmw.nhs.uk/recovery or ring the Recovery Academy on 0161 358 1771.
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