Mental Health First Aid North East - Mind Body Boogie Report

It's been a while since I've reported in but I have been busy being rained on in Ireland, Scotland and England. My holidays involved a Father Ted pilgrimage in the West of Ireland and  a trip to the Edinburgh Festival. While in the former, Limerick disappeared underwater and while in the latter, we had a month's rain in 24 hours. Such is life and the climate at the moment.

Last weekend I spent 3 days doing MHFA promotional work at the Mind, Body and Boogie Festival in Bollington, which is near Macclesfield in Cheshire. It's a music festival with an emphasis on mental health organised by a charity called Week4aday. The leading light is a wonderful guy called David Raines who is in charge of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy training at Chester University. There is a huge committment from all the volunteers who help run the festival and in addition to the mental health message there were over 50 quality bands to be enjoyed over 5 venues in the three days.

I held workshops for potential trainees and instructors, as well as manning an MHFA stand using a rollup banner borrowed from CSIP in York, and doing plenty of leafleting and networking. The result is that the charity will be running the first course in the North West in November (dates to be confirmed) and will be giving a great deal of help in organising instructor training in the region.

I will be happy to go back again next year and help out in any way I can.

At the top of this report  you can see a photo of Black Bart, one of the many great bands at the festival, that recently supported Bob Dylan. You can visit their site here

I'm off to Morpeth next week. I'll report on that soon.

If you would like to find more information on MHFA you can visit my website at www.mentalhealthfirstaidnortheast.co.uk