Psychological First Aid Training for the Gaming Community

Gamers vs. Depression is a Movember funded project managed by Play Aid tasked with improving mental health knowledge and support within the esports community. 

One in seven 10-19 year olds is experiencing a mental disorder, 16-24 year olds are now reported as the loneliest age group, suicide is the fourth leading cause of death among 15-29 year olds, and nearly half of mental health services globally are struggling to meet demand. We need to level up the community to be able to better support each other as a matter of urgency. 

Through Movember's funding, we are able to provide free mental health literacy and psychological first aid training to the gaming community. The programmes have been developed by qualified psychologists with over 200+ peer reviewed papers and many years of practitioner experience.

We're calling on all esports organisations in the UK to commit to naming and training a psychological first aider. Much like an emergency first aider is required within traditional sports teams, we believe someone trained to deal with psychological emergencies should be embedded within each esports team. We know young men particularly are highly unlikely to ask for help, so embedding people with knowledge on how to provide support within teams is vital!

In this online psychological first aid workshop, you will be introduced to what psychological first aid is (and isn't) and trained in how to deliver psychological first aid to your teammates. The course is highly interactive and access to a mic is essential. At the end of the training, you will receive a certificate of completion.

Our team have adapted the training to meet the specific challenges gamers often face, such as not being in the same physical location with the person in need. If you share our belief that each team should have someone embedded who is able to provide better support should their teammates ever need it, these are the courses for you.

The training builds upon our Mental Health Literacy Email Course, so if you've not yet completed that, we'd encourage you to start there: https://playaid.gumroad.com/l/mental-health-email-course.

Please select a date and time that works for you from the adjoining list. Spaces are limited so if you cannot make a specific time, please let us know immediately to avoid spaces going wasted. Should demand outstrip available places, please visit www.gamersvsdepression.org/course-sign-up to add your name to the waiting list for the next available course. If you are a team rep and are booking on behalf of someone else, please state their name and email when prompted.

If you'd like to make a donation to Movember to thank them for making the course freely available you can do so here: https://uk.movember.com/donate/details?teamId=2441520#amount

For more information, please visit https://gamersvsdepression.org.