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34 HEADSPACE AND TIMING The Personnel Support Service (PSS) Who we are: The PSS is a team of trained military personnel and occupational social workers and we can be found throughout the Defence Forces. We supply a friendly and familiar service to discuss any issues, big or small, that may be giving cause for concern. In addition we provide an array of professional skills to support military personnel and their families. For routine advice and for more serious issues, you can rely on the PSS to provide confidential and professional support, and to give military personnel the advice, information and guidance that they need. There are PSS staff trained to offer counselling support for a variety of issues, including relationships, coping with addiction and many others. There is a PSS team active in each installation of the Defence Forces, ready and willing to be of help. Here are some of the other things that we do. Mental Health First Aid: MHFA is our standard intervention to support a positive mental health and wellbeing culture in the Defence Forces. It provides participants with knowledge and awareness on issues of mental health which enable them to better identify when a colleague is in distress. It gives participants the confidence to implement appropriate and timely interventions to support colleagues until they can access clinical or other services. The MHFA course may be conducted online and is currently being delivered to personnel deployed overseas and here at home. Look for an MHFA course in your unit or formation over the next few months and get involved. Mental Health and Wellbeing is the responsibility of each one of us in the Defence Forces. Suicide awareness and prevention: Suicide is an issue which affects everyone in IRELAND, and NOT just in the Defence Forces. Our aim is to ensure that we minimise the risk of suicide to personnel of the Defence Forces and their families. We work closely with the National Office for Suicide Prevention to deliver quality awareness training to all our DF team. Currently our SafeTALK and ASIST programmes are on hold because of COVID 19 restrictions. However there are alternatives - The START programme is an online intervention which can be accessed using a civilian email address and completed at home. Licences can be obtained through the chain of command or through contacting your local PSS team. Suicide awareness training may NOT be Your struggles will always pass, just give yourself time to get through it Sometimes you can't see the problems, but you can still fix them By Lt Col John Martin (PSS) Photos by Pte Derek Feehan HEADSPACE AND TIMING

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