MENTAL HEALTH FIRST AID GUIDELINES PROJECT:

Eating Disorders

INFORMATION SHEET 

What is Mental Health First Aid?                                                                      HOME

Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) is the help given by a member of the public to a person who is developing a mental illness, experiencing a mental health crisis or has an on-going mental health problem. MHFA is not meant to be a substitute for professional help. It is the initial help given before a person gets to professional help. The MHFA training program was developed in 2000 by Ms Betty Kitchener and Professor Tony Jorm in an attempt to provide basic knowledge to people on how to help someone who is experiencing mental health difficulties (see www.mhfa.com.au for more details). The course has been very well-received by the Australian public and has now been taught Asia, North America and Europe.  

What is the aim of this project?

This project will produce guidelines for members of the public who are providing Mental Health First Aid to someone who is suspected to be experiencing or developing an eating disorder.  This research aims to describe how a member of the public should approach a friend, family member or loved one to discuss and help them with a suspected eating disorder. The guidelines developed by this research will be applied in training courses across developed English speaking countries in Australia, New Zealand, Europe and North America. Guidelines for a number of mental health crisis situations, including Depression, Psychosis, Suicidal Thoughts and Behaviours, and Deliberate Self-Injury have been developed over the past two years.   

Who is conducting this research?

The research is being conducted by ORYGEN Research Centre at the University of Melbourne. 

What will the research involve?

You are invited to be an expert panel member for the development of the eating disorders guidelines. This research involves no meetings, as the expert panel will never meet face-to-face. All tasks will be completed individually in your own time via the internet. 

If you agree to participate, you will be asked to do the following:

  1. Complete a questionnaire via the internet which asks you to rate whether certain actions should be included in the Mental Health First Aid guidelines for eating disorders. If you are unable to access the internet, we will provide a paper version of the questionnaire.
  2. You may be asked to rate the statements again after you have seen a summary of the ratings given by other panel members, as the aim of the project is to achieve consensus about the best ways to help someone who may have an eating disorder. You can choose to maintain or change your original ratings.
  3. Depending on the level of consensus achieved, several rounds of this process may be required.
  4. Provide any comments on a draft of the guidelines.

We expect that the questionnaire will take approximately 30-60 minutes to complete. We estimate the total time commitment for this project to be 2-3 hours, but this estimate ultimately depends on the time taken by each individual panel member to complete the survey and the number of rounds required. 

Who is being asked to participate?

We are inviting people to participate as panel members if they have expertise in the field of eating disorders. The panel members will be drawn from Australia, New Zealand, the UK, the Republic of Ireland, the USA and Canada. There are three categories of panel members:

What about privacy?

Any data we collect from you will be held under password protection and not divulged to others. We are interested in the consensus views of the panel, rather than the views of individual members, so your individual answers will never be reported. We will only present the results in statistical summary form. 

Are there any risks?

Some people may find that reading the statements upsets them, or may remind them of their own experiences. However, in our previous studies using this method only a very small number of people reported feeling upset. Many people in our previous studies have said they felt proud and happy to be able to contribute to a better understanding of how to help others. We advise anyone who finds themselves feeling upset to talk to their support people and decide whether they wish to continue with the questionnaire or stop. 

What are the benefits?

This project has the potential to lead to better community support for people who are experiencing or developing an eating disorder, by providing guidance to family, friends or loved ones who care for those with mental health problems. The Mental Health First Aid guidelines developed by this project will be relevant internationally for English-speaking countries and will be implemented in a range of training courses. 

This project has been approved by the University of Melbourne Human Research Ethics Committee. If you have concerns about the ethics of the study, please contact:

Executive Officer, Human Research Ethics,

The University of Melbourne,

phone: +61-3-8344 2073, fax: +61-3-9347 6739.

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