The guide is the first to bring together the principles of etiquette and mental health, helping to break down stigma while introducing the concept of psychological first aid and demonstrating how it can be applied in everyday situations.
Bids submitted by individual agencies or consortiums were also required to include press relations, monitoring, evaluation and performance analysis, culminating in the delivery of a final report, as outlined in the tender specifications.
The guide aims to bring together, for the first time, two themes—etiquette and mental health—into a single resource designed to encourage the use of psychological first aid. Still unfamiliar to many, the concept offers simple strategies that can be applied in moments of emotional crisis.
Taking a practical and accessible approach, the guide provides readers with practical tips to help them feel more confident when dealing with emotional challenges, their own and those of others, and to build more empathetic and healthier relationships through the use of psychological first aid techniques.
“We realised that, to explain what Psychological First Aid is, we first had to talk about the importance of mental health. But we also recognised that one of the biggest barriers to having open conversations about the subject often lies in social conventions and the way we have been brought up. That is how the idea for the guide was born—to provide a practical way of breaking down the tension between these two topics,” explains Ricardo Lourenço, Creative Director at COMON.
The guide also features contributions from experts and public figures including Margarida David Cardoso, Maria João Ruela, Cláudia Semedo, António Raminhos, Marcio Gagliato, Arz Stephan, Rita Redshoes and Nuno Delgado. Bringing together real-life stories that reflect both themes, these testimonials show that many people may already have provided psychological first aid without even realising it.
“Mental health is not a luxury, it is a universal human right. The Mental Health Etiquette Guide provides practical tips to help readers feel more confident when dealing with emotional challenges, both their own and those of others, while fostering more empathetic and healthier relationships through simple, effective techniques,” says Susana Gouveia, EU4Health Project Manager at the Portuguese Red Cross.
The guide is available free of charge through the Portuguese Red Cross’s Psychological First Aid training courses or online via the project’s dedicated website: https://eu4health.cruzvermelha.pt/. It is also available in English and Ukrainian.
