@Anony18 Yes it was me who did a Mental Heath First Aid course. I think you will find it helpful. You can end up learning a lot about yourself as well as how to look out for and help others.
I also find a lot of people will talk with me about their problems, and sometimes they're people who hardly know me. Dunno, maybe some of us naturally send out the "you can trust me" signals without even realising it. It does leave us with a bit of a burden of responsibility, both in how we respond to the person talking to us, and in the need to respect their confidentiality and not gossip on the conversation to others. And yes, it can be hard to pull back, even if you're running on empty yourself at the time.
One shortcoming with the Mental First Aid course is that it's more designed for professionals/community members who are likely to encounter people with MI in the course of their normal activities; it doesn't necessarily give a lot of strategies that work for people who are living with or otherwise frequently/constanty close to someone with MI. If someone at a workplace has a psychotic episode, it'll teach you how to calm them while you get professional help for them. If it's a family member who's having the psychotic episode, any handover to a professional who knows more than you do will only be temporary. The professional will go home at 5:00pm, and you'll still need to deal with it when the person has a panic relapse at 11:00pm. If the First Aid course could be treated as a "basic level" course, and a second course offered to follow on from it for carers living with someone with a MI, now that would be really really helpful.
