Mental Health & Wellbeing Coaching

I see coaching as facilitating a partnership between the coach and the client

(coachee) to work together to achieve the client’s goals and empower them to

optimise their potential in the future”

The techniques of general coaching adapt very well to the context of Mental Health &

Wellbeing and that, therefore, I would define Mental Health & Wellbeing Coaching as

being:

“A partnership between me as a coach and you as the client/coachee to work together

to achieve your mental health & wellbeing goals and empower you to optimise your

future mental health and wellbeing”

It is worth emphasising that coaching is about empowering the client and that in the

coaching mindset I have every confidence that you have the resources within you to

reach your goals – coaching is simply us working collaboratively towards enabling

the coachee to tap into those resources and meet their goals.

Future is also a keyword in the definition because as a coach I work from the here

and now, using clients' current strengths, and facilitate them to have an empowered

future. In that sense, coaching is quite different to mentoring where usually an expert in one's

own field teaches what they have learnt rather than developing your already existing

strengths.

Coaching is also very different from therapy which of its nature tends towards looking

backwards and dealing with unresolved issues. In mental health and wellbeing coaching, it is critical that the distinction is drawn by me as a coach and understood any client who may have had previous, current or future need for therapeutic interventions.

In coaching the client controls the content and the coach controls the process so that

the topics discussed in conversations at every session will be set by the client.

The coaching contract states that it is the client's responsibility as a coachee to

identify, plan for and achieve their goals.

Coaching can be defined in many ways:

- International Coaching Federation “Partnering in a thought-proving and

the creative process to maximise personal and professional potential

- Kingstown College (2022) “A powerful alliance designed to forward and

enhance the lifelong process of human learning, effectiveness and fulfilment.”

- The European Mentoring and Coaching Council 2022 “facilitates the client’s

learning process by using professional methods and techniques to help the

client to improve what is obstructive and nurture what is effective to reach the

client’s goals’’

The World Health Organisation (2022, June 17) states that “Mental health is a state

of mental well-being that enables people to cope with the stresses of life, realize their

abilities, learn well and work well, and contribute to their community. It is an integral

component of health and well-being that underpins our individual and collective

abilities to make decisions, build relationships and shape the world we live in. Mental

health is a basic human right. And it is crucial to personal, community and socio-

economic development.

- Mental health is more than the absence of mental disorders. It exists on a

complex continuum, which is experienced differently from one person to the

next, with varying degrees of difficulty and distress and potentially very

different social and clinical outcomes”

- This is to illustrate that a person can experience mental wellbeing (flourishing)

despite a diagnosis of mental illness. A person can experience mental

distress (languishing) whilst not having a diagnosis of mental illness. Mental

health and wellbeing can be enhanced for everyone, with or without a

diagnosis of mental illness.

- Corey Keyes is an American psychologist and sociologist. Keyes (2005)

provides empirical support for the hypothesis that mental health and mental

illness are not opposite ends of a single continuum but rather constitute

distinct, though correlated, axes.

His research says that:

- The absence of mental illness does not necessarily equal the presence

of mental health.

- And the presence of a diagnosis of mental illness does not necessarily

mean the absence of mental health.

- Poor mental health does not equate to poor performance. ‘An individual can

have a serious mental health problem but, with the right support, can still be

thriving at work’ (Stevenson and Farmer, 2017). Many people with mental

health challenges perform at a high level, some with and others without

support or adjustments.

- It also needs to be understood that people’s mental health fluctuates in the

same way as their physical health. It’s normal for people to experience some

periods of poor mental health and for performance to dip at times in line with

this.

- We can all go from a state of flourishing to a state of languishing and back.

My hope is that by working in a coaching partnership with me clients will learn tools

and techniques that help them flourish both in the short term and over the

longer term and allow them to enhance the resilience that they already have.