Dr Dave Wood shares how Metanoeo are rethinking how to connect with people to help them live life well.

Did you know that despite all the celebrity announcements, media spotlights and public policy announcements, interventions for mental health treatment still have a huge gender division?

Fig.1 – Accessing NHS talking therapies

According to the Mental Health Foundation the 2021 government national wellbeing survey demonstrated men report lower levels of life satisfaction than women, yet men are less likely to access psychological therapies than women: only 36% of referrals to NHS talking therapies are for men . Although now three-years old, more recent studies don’t appear to be showing any significant changes in the mental health trends.

As a self-confessed ‘not very masculine man’, and someone who has used NHS talking therapies myself, I can’t say I’m a massive fan of such gender divisions. As a former lecturer of the Psychosocial Analysis of Offending Behaviour, and Senior Probation Officer before that, part of my reservation is that there are usually complex reasons behind what might at first seem self-explanatory data.

However, (and I’m sure you saw that coming!) my experience as a community-based life coach working with projects across Merseyside seems to echo the division in who is accessing services. It got me thinking. There was a genuine desire to reach people, and great quality services, so perhaps it was more about making a relevant connection. Then, one day, sitting in a garage having my car serviced, I saw a leaflet for car servicing packages and it hit me: You service your car. So why not your life? And The Life Garage was born.

The idea behind The Life Garage was simple, much like our cars, all of us needed to service and tune up our lives from time to time. If we did this it might prevent some of the issues growing into issues which might need to be addressed with professional interventions. In other words, as we serviced our car to prevent breakdowns, perhaps by becoming our own personal DIY life mechanic, we could also address some of the mental wellbeing issues before they became significant enough to warrant professional intervention.

With this idea in place, The Life Garage was developed using six core concepts; becoming your own coach, the flourishing self, relational living, changing habits, practical hopefulness and growth for life, all based in what research and experience demonstrated were common themes where people could develop skills which would improve their experience of life. Each of these concepts is presented in a two minute video and has associated worksheets for people to complete. Each concept also had two tools attached, again with worksheets to help apply the principles.

Now for the important bit, all of the core materials are free to access!

But, there was still an itch which needed to be scratched. This was fine for people who were motivated by the idea of self-improvement, but how about those people who already weren’t willing to consider accessing services. Our answer. To lean further into the garage idea and think about how people could use their ordinary conversations as volunteers, professionals, or even with their mates to encourage them to service their life. The second phase of The Life Garage was born.

I am really proud that this week our first two Assistant Life Mechanics have passed our Level 2 accredited course. The idea is to give people the tools to be able to have confident short conversations with people around them in relation to enabling them to ‘service’ their own life and live life well. It fits into that same space where suicide awareness training fits in in that it’s not about training people to become a therapist, but to make the most of the opportunities they have and they resources we have. And the Assistant part of the title, well, we want the person to be their own life mechanic, and the trained person just to be there as a support.

Trying to build on the freemium model, we have made completing the course free if you just want to pick it up to gain some skills and ideas for your own personal development, but also have affordable options for gaining a CPD or Level 2 accredited certificate.

So, I’m not sure we’ve got a solution for the issue of mental health. But we certainly feel that we’ve got a response which increases the reach and accessibility of both tools to live life well, and to help others do the same. To find out more visit thelifegarage.org

1. Help-seeking and masculinity in opposition: A quantitative study investigating the potential of coaching to increase men’s engagement in help-seeking, Kennedy, Anna, Moorhead, Anne, The Coaching Psychologist: 17(2). DOI: https://doi.org/10.53841/bpstcp.2021.17.2.30