News : France has passed the mark of 300,000 trained mental health first aiders, the PSSM France association announced in April 2026. The public target had been set for 2027, it was reached early, and the bar is now set at 750,000 people trained by 2030 (Egora, 24 April 2026). Behind that milestone sits a very concrete question that comes up in almost every assignment I run inside a company: should you send someone on the course, and if so, who exactly? That is what I set out here.
I am a fractional HR director and a mental health first aid instructor. This article is for HR managers, learning and development leads and site directors who keep hearing about mental health first aid without knowing what sits behind it: what the course teaches, how the two days actually run, and how to choose the people you send.
Mental health first aid, known in France as premiers secours en sante mentale or PSSM, is a two-day course that teaches you to recognise the signs of psychological distress in a colleague, to open the conversation, and to signpost the right help. A trained first aider makes no diagnosis and provides no treatment. They take the first step, then hand over.
What the course actually is
PSSM is the French version of an international programme born in Australia, Mental Health First Aid, which has trained roughly 8 million people worldwide (Egora, 24 April 2026). In France it is run by the PSSM France association, the sole holder of the programme licence.
That has a practical consequence: the course cannot be improvised in house. The content is standardised, the instructors are accredited, and participants leave with a recognised first aider status. I am one of those instructors, and that is the position I write from.
The comparison I use to open a session is physical first aid. Nobody asks a workplace first aider to stitch a wound. They are asked to know what to do in the minutes that follow. Mental health first aid works on exactly the same logic.
What it is not
- It is not management training, and it is not training in holding difficult conversations.
- It is not a screening tool. A first aider is not there to detect cases.
- It is not therapy, and it does not replace occupational health.
- It is not an answer to an organisational problem. An unmanageable workload stays an unmanageable workload, trained first aiders or not.
What the two days teach
The backbone of the two days is a five-step action plan, taught in France under the acronym AERER. You learn it, you take it apart, then you rehearse it in role play until it becomes a reflex:
- Approach the person, assess the situation, and assist if they are in crisis.
- Listen actively, without judging and without solving the problem for them.
- Reassure and give reliable information about what helps.
- Encourage them towards an appropriate professional.
- Reinforce other sources of support: family, peers, internal resources.
Around that plan, the course covers the most common conditions, depression, anxiety disorders, substance use disorders and psychotic disorders, not so that participants can name them in someone else, but so that they stop being frightened of them and know which signals should prompt action. It also covers crisis situations: suicidal thoughts, panic attacks, reactions to a traumatic event.
Two days, in person, in a small group, with a great deal of role play. What changes by the end is not academic knowledge. It is that people no longer freeze at the first sentence. “How do I raise it without being clumsy?” is by far the question I get most often when I run a session, well ahead of any question about the conditions themselves.
A first aider signposts, a first aider does not treat
This is the point I never soften. A mental health first aider signposts, and does not treat. They make no diagnosis, give no therapeutic advice and stand in for no health professional. A company that trains first aiders believing it has now dealt with mental health has picked the wrong instrument, and puts its volunteers in a difficult position.
A first aider is a first link whose whole job is to make the next link exist. That next link is mapped before the training, not after: the occupational health service (in French), the person’s own doctor, a psychologist, an internal helpline. Since the order of 17 June 2026 (in French), the public scheme Mon soutien psy also opens 12 sessions a year with a registered psychologist, directly accessible, 60% covered by the French health insurance system (directory: monsoutienpsy.ameli.fr).
Where my role stops. I am an HR professional and a trainer. I am neither a doctor nor a psychologist. Nothing I write here replaces professional advice, and I never intervene in an individual case. The right people are the occupational physician, the treating doctor or a psychologist. In case of immediate danger in France, call 15. And 3114, the national suicide prevention line, is free and open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Who to train first
This is the real question, and almost always the last one I am asked. When I work inside a company, what I mostly see are lists built at head office: the names are settled in an HR meeting, without anyone asking the teams who they already turn to. Two answers come up spontaneously, “everyone” and “HR”, and both seem wrong to me, for different reasons. The table below sums up what I recommend by size and structure. The numbers are my practitioner’s recommendation, not a standard: no French rule sets a ratio of mental health first aiders.
| Context | Who to train first | Why | Suggested order of magnitude |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 20 employees, single site | Whoever carries HR, plus one volunteer from another function | Nobody takes a personal difficulty to the company owner | 2 people |
| 20 to 100 employees, single site | The HR manager, plus two or three volunteers from other departments, at least one of them non-managerial | A spread of functions matters more than the headcount trained | 3 to 4 people |
| Multi-site company or branch network | One contact per site, never head office only, including willing members of the staff committee | Proximity is everything: a first aider 300 kilometres away is not a resource | 1 per site, plus 1 at head office |
| Shift work, night work, field-based staff | First aiders present on the same slots as the teams concerned | A scheme aligned on office hours covers neither the night shift nor the road | 1 per rota |
| All sizes, cutting across | Line managers, volunteers only | Managers see the signals first, but their hierarchical role complicates confidentiality | As volunteers come forward, never by assignment |
Why not everyone
Training a whole workforce produces a counter-intuitive effect: when everyone is a first aider, nobody is. No identified name to go to, no role anyone owns, no follow-up, and a budget spent in one go.
Collective awareness raising has its place, but it is a different object. That is why I also run a workshop to talk about mental health at work: it reaches an entire team in half a day, where mental health first aid trains a few people in depth.
Why not HR alone
HR should obviously be trained. But if HR is the only function trained, the scheme is lopsided: an employee in difficulty rarely goes there first, because the same function also carries contract and disciplinary decisions. In the companies I work with, the person people talk to first is almost always a colleague nearby.
The criterion that decides: volunteering
A first aider appointed without ever asking for the role will do the minimum, and will not be approached. I would rather have four convinced volunteers in a company of 200 people than fifteen names assigned from above. The second criterion is real availability, because the role takes twenty minutes out of a day that is already full.
What changes inside a team
When I come back to a company several months after a session, what I find is not a flood of revealed situations. The first effect is a matter of vocabulary: the words exist, and someone can say “I am not doing well at the moment” without the conversation stopping dead. The blockage is real: in its absenteeism study of 9 June 2026, Malakoff Humanis reports that half the employees concerned do not dare raise the subject at work.
The second effect is time. The same work shows that mental health has become the leading cause of long-term sick leave: psychological disorders, depression and burnout in particular, were the stated reason for 37.8% of sick leaves longer than thirty days in 2025, against 30.3% in 2020. A first aider does not bring those figures down single handed. What they shorten is the time a person spends alone with it.
The third effect is quieter: many managers avoid the subject for fear of opening a door they will not know how to close. Knowing where to hand over removes that fear, which is also why the limits of the role matter as much as its content.
Finally, a training course is not a prevention policy. Article L. 4121-1 of the French Labour Code (in French) requires the employer to take the measures necessary to protect the physical and mental health of workers, article L. 4121-2 sets out the nine general prevention principles (in French), and article R. 4121-1 requires the risk assessment to be recorded in the single risk assessment document. Mental health first aid sits inside that framework, it does not replace it, and psychosocial risk prevention is where the framework actually lives. What I write here is a general marker: on a specific case, have it validated by an employment lawyer or by your occupational health service.
Three mistakes I see often
- Training in silence. First aiders whose names nobody knows are of no use. The internal announcement and the posted contact details are part of the scheme.
- Appointing people. Without personal commitment there is no first aider, only a line in a training plan.
- Planning nothing afterwards. With no time for first aiders to talk to each other and no updating of the referral list, the people trained are left alone with heavy situations, and the scheme quietly dies.
What I recommend after every session: an internal announcement naming the first aiders, an up-to-date sheet of referral routes, and a collective review twice a year, never about individual situations, only about how the role is being experienced.
What this article does not cover
- Your particular situation: how first aiders should be spread depends on your real structure and your industrial relations history.
- Funding arrangements, which vary with your training fund and your skills development plan.
- The employer’s legal obligations on psychosocial risks, fitness for work, harassment or return after long-term leave. Each deserves the view of an employment lawyer or of your occupational health service.
- What to do about one specific person: nothing here replaces medical or psychological advice.
FAQ
How long is the course?
The standard format is two days (Egora, 24 April 2026). They can run back to back or a few days apart, which is what I usually recommend: the gap gives people time to digest the role play. What matters is continuous attendance, because the learning is cumulative.
Does a first aider need a particular profile?
No. There is no prerequisite of qualification, function or seniority. What counts is volunteering, genuine availability and an ability to listen without trying to fix. I have trained production operators, executive assistants and company directors. The ones people turn to afterwards are almost never the ones anyone predicted.
Is this training compulsory for the employer?
No French rule requires an employer to train mental health first aiders. Article L. 4121-1 of the Labour Code creates a duty of care covering physical and mental health, but no training obligation follows from it. On what your own situation actually requires, have it validated by an employment lawyer or your occupational health service.
Can managers be trained, or is that counter-productive?
They can, and it is often useful, on two conditions: volunteering rather than appointment, and clarity about roles. A trained manager is still a manager, with authority that limits what a team member will confide. So I recommend training people with no reporting line over them in parallel.
What happens if a first aider faces a situation beyond them?
That is anticipated, and it is the heart of the programme: a first aider signposts, and does not treat. Faced with a serious situation or a doubt, their role is to hand over to the occupational physician, the treating doctor or a psychologist, and to call 15 in case of immediate danger. 3114 exists for them too.
Where I would start
In your position I would do three things before looking at any course dates: identify the people employees already turn to today, check that the referral list is current, then ask who volunteers, with no pre-selection.
If you want to talk it through for your own organisation, look at the mental health first aid training I run and write to me through the contact page. I will tell you frankly whether the scheme fits, and where to start if it does not.
Sources
- “La barre des 300 000 secouristes en sante mentale formes en France franchie”, Egora, 24 April 2026. Read the article
- Absenteeism study 2026, press release, Malakoff Humanis, 9 June 2026. Read the release
- Order of 17 June 2026, Mon soutien psy scheme, Journal officiel, text JORFTEXT000054273988. Read the text
- Directory of registered psychologists, French health insurance. Open the directory
- French Labour Code, article L. 4121-1, duty of care covering physical and mental health. Legifrance
- French Labour Code, article L. 4121-2, general prevention principles. Legifrance; article R. 4121-1, single risk assessment document.
- INRS, general prevention principles, key points. inrs.fr
- French Ministry of Labour, occupational health services. travail-emploi.gouv.fr
