Steven D. Brown

The aim of Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) is to improve people’s mental health literacy and encourage people experiencing mental distress to access further support and treatment services (Atanda et...

New kinds of transdisciplinary thinking have been promoted as a way of addressing the ‘Grand Challenges’ and ‘perma-crises’ associated with the Anthropocene. Often, however, they (inadvertently) maintain the social sciences and humanities in a subservient position. The ‘elemental turn’ and other forms of planetary thought show renewed interest in, and engagement with, the sciences – but they also reinforce problematic assumptions about the relation between ‘science’ and other practices, and about the traffic and direction of knowledge. In this article, we develop an understanding of the nature of transdisciplinary instruction that does not rely on a global dichotomy between the sciences and humanities. We elaborate two contingent series, one of (Western) science and reason and one of madness and unreason. The series communicates through dissonance rather than consonance across a plane stretched between them, which we call the devil’s interval . This is where novel concepts travel. In conclusion, we reflect on the implications of the devil’s interval for joint transdisciplinary instruction.

The Anthropocene represents a wholly changed, and still rapidly evolving, Earth state: one where human patterns of consumption of the Earth's resources are essentially out of control, and as a result risk degrading the very life support systems that sustain humans and all other organisms on this planet. This entry explores the development of the Anthropocene and outlines its relevance for Critical Management Studies.

In this paper, we consider changes to memorial practices for mental health service users during the asylum period of the mid-nineteenth up to the end of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century. The closing of large asylums in the UK has been largely welcomed by professionals and service-users alike, but their closure has led to a decrease in continuous and consistent care for those with enduring mental health challenges. Temporary and time-limited mental health services, largely dedicated to crisis management and risk reduction have failed to enable memory practices outside the therapy room. This is an unusual case of privatised memories being favoured over collective memorial activity. We argue that the collectivisation of service user memories, especially in institutions containing large numbers of long-stay patients, would benefit both staff and patients. The benefit would be in the development of awareness of how service users make sense of their past in relation to their present stay in hospital, how they might connect with others in similar positions and how they may connect with the world and others upon future release. This seems to us central to a project of recovery and yet is rarely practised in any mental health institution in the UK, despite being central to other forms of care provision, such as elderly and children's care services. We offer some suggestions on how collective models of memory in mental health might assist in this project of recovery and create greater visibility between past, present and future imaginings.

Background: Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) is a mental health intervention that teaches people how to identify, understand and help someone who may be experiencing a mental health issue. Reviews of the implementation of MHFA found between 68 and 88% of trained Mental Health First Aiders had used their skills when in contact with someone experiencing mental health difficulties. Reviews evaluating the impact of MHFA suggest positive outcomes. However, to date, there has been no systematic, rigorous evaluation of the impact of MHFA on recipients of the intervention, the organisations providing it and the cost-effectiveness of MHFA overall. This trial will evaluate the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of MHFA. Methods: The study is a multi-centred, two-arm clustered randomised controlled trial. Organisations will be randomly allocated to the control or intervention (estimated sample size 800 recipients). The intervention is the standard MHFA intervention provided by Mental Health First Aid England (MHFAE). The control condition will be organisations having a brief consultation from MHFAE on promoting mental health and well-being in the workplace. The primary outcome is health seeking behaviour, measured using the Actual Help Seeking Questionnaire, at 6 months’ follow-up. Data collection will be undertaken at baseline (T0), post-intervention—up to 3 months (T1), at 6 months (T2), 12 months (T3) and 24 months (T4). The primary analysis will be conducted on those participants who receive MHFA, a per protocol analysis. Discussion: The study is the first to evaluate the effect of MHFA in the workplace on employees with direct and indirect experience of the intervention, when compared with usual practice. Being also the first to assess, systematically, the social impact of MHFA and investigate its cost-effectiveness adds to the originality of the study. The study promises to yield important data, as yet unknown, regarding the effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, implementation issues, and the sustainability of MHFA in the workplace. Trial registration: Clinicaltrials.gov NCT04311203. Registered on 17 March 2020.