MHFA England - captured?

[soontobeconfirmed]

Currently on MHFA England training. It started off badly with the clearly female trainer introducing herself with her pronouns (she/her), she then introduced a case study using the term "cis" which I find highly offence. A later case study focused on a person called "Lou". During the feedback a participant used the pronoun "she". The trainer told her off for misgendering twice and stated that the case study had been deliberately designed to be a trick question that was ungendered to make us have a conversation regarding gender. This was really out of order in my opinion, especially as the trainer had kept going on about how to not be judgemental all session. We were not forced to have a conversation around any other protected characteristic, so it felt rather ideologically focused.Has anyone else been on this training and had a similar experience? I am so cross.

@RedToothBrush I can't take you seriously. Gender critical people would get the same help as anyone. It's all about keeping an open mind and helping the patient in the moment. Challenging dysphoria would not happen during any first aid.

Says it all doesn't it?

I'm going to instantly dismiss you because you aren't on message and are making a point that I deliberately wish to be ignorant about so I don't have to question my own position.

It's more that you seem to be battling an imaginary foe. I'll leave you to it

If someone's in urgent need of mental health treatment the last thing they need is someone indulging their imaginings.

If correctly identifying someone's sex is 'dangerous' it would suggest that the person had already been indulged to the point of fragility.

No I am someone who understands exactly how much damage gender ideology can do the mental health of other people.

HTH.

Also, even if a was 'dealing with an imaginary foe', one of the issues with mental health is what exactly? Would you like me to spell out your ignorance and idiotic logic here for you? I'm sure everyone else can see the paradox you've just created right there.

I haven’t worked in mental health for nearly three decades, so appreciate things will have changes massively. But do you really collude with people over their sex? You’d never say to an obese person, ‘your just a bit podgy’ or ‘you’re slim’ just as you’d never say to someone with anorexia ‘you’re just a little bit skinny’ ‘you’re fat’. You’d generally avoid mentioning any characteristics in the initial phase of treatment and as the therapeutic process evolved, you’d very gently and slowly, start to talk about the difficulties / issues surrounding the illness. So whilst I would use their preferred name and be very careful with pronoun use with a dysphoric patient, I would use their biological pronouns when discussing with a colleague. Would this now be wrong? presumably on the training day ‘Lu’ was not actually present. Or is part of the training about not making assumptions? In which case the instructor could have been reminded the delegate, gently, that when medically treating an individual it’s very important to leave assumptions outside the consulting room door.
the only time it was ever okay (and even then not all professionals would agree) to collaborate with a dementia patient was if being factual with them would cause greater upset.

You mean the number of trans people using MHFA? I wonder why that could be? Maybe the affirming approach isn’t helping

What do you mean "why would they do that?" How do you refer to someone in the third person in a first aid scenario without assuming gender, without buying into genderwoo, and without directly referencing the sex they are presenting as (assuming "gender" as you call it)? So you're on the phone to an ambulance to hand over to paramedics and you need to say "she/he"... or what? What do you say without "assuming gender"? You have to ask the person what they identify as (or as I put it, wanging on about genderwoo). Which I'm saying I would find distressing at a time when I'm already distressed because it's bloody obvious that I'm female and just the act of "not assuming gender" is not a neutral act.

Or are you implying MHFA is only for people having a bad day not people in genuine crisis in need of immediate medical attention? Is the issue here that you've just never actually had to deal with a real and serious MH crisis so don't know that you'd need to... oh I don't know, identify the patient to emergency services?

Thank you. This is exactly how I feel.

i haven’t worked in mental health for a long time either but generally we didn’t go along with peoples beliefs if they were patently untrue no matter how fervently they believed them. I had one man who was absolutely convinced he was Jesus Christ - I didn’t address him as the messiah or the son of god because affirming that delusion wasn’t helpful for him

It would be interesting to know what ‘danger’ you perceive in communicating with people using traditional grammatical standards like pronouns that relate to their sex?

I think it’s probably quite harmful to perpetuate the impression that everyone agrees that a person is actually the opposite sex as that can have serious repercussions for their life.

For example, if everyone in a position of trust around a girl with ‘gender issues’ agrees that she is actually a boy and would therefore follow a pathway that leads her to take testosterone in the future and an elective double mastectomy, rather than helping her address her feelings around, say, the sexual assault that triggered her, that is harmful.

We need to find a way of reaching vulnerable young people that have been convinced of impossible things by trans ideology.

I think people would have a problem if I was white and insisted I was black. No idea why "gender" is anything different.

The trainer told her off for misgendering twice and stated that the case study had been deliberately designed to be a trick question that was ungendered to make us have a conversation regarding gender.

Ridiculous scenario - the trainer set you up to fail.

So Lou was not even present? Why the big deal? And if Lou had been present, what if Lou belonged to the large number of people who find being asked about their gender identity and pronouns confusing, irrelevant, or plain stupid?

I spoke to a person who expressed suicidal ideation in the course of my work today. I used my training, supported, de-escalated and connected with appropriate follow on services.

At no point did I need to ask about sex or gender or use any pronouns other than "You" and "Your".

It does seem like it’s time to try a new approach. Sex based language and not lying to people about fundamental basics of life is definitely worth a try. It might help and will make life a lot better for everyone else.

IME a good 90% of workplace MHFAs did it for the CV points and should be nowhere near the topic.

Too many have a very personal agenda that affects their capacity and competence.

Their knowledge of the area tends to be based on wholly inadequate training. I used to think it was because too much was online. But, from the sound of it, having a human to lead it is not necessarily better.

so...you were presented with a written case study about a person called 'Lou' that avoided using any pronouns and had no clue as to the person's sex, and then someone was told off for assuming the person was female?
that's just a badly written case study!
In real life, as we all know, a person's sex is immediately obvious in 90% of cases also their age and possibly their ethnicity, nationality and class
the only pronoun you would need in real life is 'you'

if they wanted to make a point about respecting people's gender identity (and I agree that in a crisis it's not the time to take issue with that) you would need a case study that obviously flagged that up, eg
Sam is a 25 year old transwoman who....
even then you don't need 3rd person pronouns when talking to someone.

Sounds like you did a great job there @ConflictedbutCritical

I too am struggling to see the need to focus on gender issues for this training. Surely MH first aiders’ training equips you to listen, try to point to resources for help, etc, but specifically is not a therapy or diagnostic. So why try to shoehorn gender ideology training into it? Surely you are talking one to one so use the persons name and “you”?

If I were to approach my works MHFA and was asked about my pronouns I would be dumbstruck (as I would be needing support not antagonism)

The trainer told her off for misgendering twice and stated that the case study had been deliberately designed to be a trick question that was ungendered to make us have a conversation regarding gender

Seems like a typical TRA-type tactic; humiliate people to try to force them to carry out your agenda. There are plenty of other ways to encourage a conversation about gender, and none of them involve a power trip.

Yes, that is exactly what happened. It was a case study, in a workbook that had no pictures etc. I'll post a pic of it tomorrow.

It was online but with a real person leading it. I did it because we deal with some harrowing stuff at work and I wanted to be better able to support staff. I'd say lesson learned, but all I learned was how annoyed I get at forced gender woo.

soontobeconfirmed

Can you give feedback to say that the training was rubbish, and ask for training to deal with Mental Health issues for those with other protected characteristics - say e.g. people with disabilities.

Could you say also that you found it exclusive - that you don't know what the term 'cis' means for example and saw no need to mention pronouns?

I recently did MHFA training and gender identity didn’t come up. My guess is it isn’t a trick question and it’s your specific trainers personal campaign and they’re deviating from the guidance.

My workplace also deliver the training so I work with people who are trainers for it. Gender identity is not part of it specifically, other than the fact you would consider the whole person in front of you if someone needs support.

ETA I am just doubting if your training is via MHFA England because I was going to suggest you contact MHFA themselves and explain that this trainer spent time on this and it felt out of lace and distracted from your learning about the MHFA principles. but I checked my materials and can’t see a character called Lou so maybe your training wasn’t from that provider.