Let’s say you’re at the gym, playing in your weekly pickup basketball game. Another player complains of chest pain, feels dizzy and heads to the bench. Chances are someone in the game or at the gym knows basic first aid and can help the player until a professional health care provider arrives.
Now let’s say you’re at work, and a co-worker complains of lack of focus, lethargy and feeling down in the dumps. Chances are, no one in the office knows how to help this person in any practical way. But they could learn what to do by taking a mental health first aid course.
Mental Health First Aid USA, operated by the National Council for Behavioral Health, or NCBH, is a program that offers an eight-hour course that teaches participants the risk factors and warning signs of mental health issues, fosters a deeper understanding of their impact and presents common treatments. Through role-playing and simulations of realistic scenarios, the course teaches participants how to assess a mental health crisis, provide initial help and direct someone with a mental health issue to professional, peer and social supports and to self-help resources.
“As the name implies, the training is about first aid. It is not to be a clinician or diagnostician,” says Betsy Schwartz, vice president for public education and strategic initiative for the NCBH. “It’s like with CPR, you are not teaching cardiology.” She says that research shows that people who take the training have increased literacy on behavioral problems and are more comfortable having a conversation with someone having a mental health problem. “The training is effective because it is experiential,” she says. “It is not eight hours of presentations. It is very much interactive and based on problem solving.”
[See: Am I Just Sad — or Actually Depressed?]
Teaching Concrete Skills
The concept of mental health first aid was created in Australia, in 2001, by a nurse and her husband. She had experienced major depression, and the couple wondered why there wasn’t a mental health equivalent for first aid and CPR, Schwartz says. So they created a course curriculum, rooted in scientific evidence. “They made sure every word was solidly based on research,” Schwartz says.
In 2007, executives at NCBH learned about it. “Based on the name alone, they thought it needed to be brought to the U.S.,” Schwartz says. So they did, in 2008, acquiring the copyright to offer the course here. (It is now offered in a total of 25 countries around the world.) To date, more than 1 million people in the U.S. have been trained through a network of more than 12,000 certified instructors. Participants include health, human services and social workers; employers and business leaders; faith community leaders; college and university staff and faculty; law enforcement and public safety officials; veterans and family members; and persons with mental illness and addictions and their families.
But the “vast majority” of participants are members of the general public, Schwartz says. “Part of the reason the trainings have taken off is because everybody knows someone with a mental health or addiction problem. People want to do the right thing, but it is not common sense to know what to say and do. Mental health first aid has resonated in a powerful way. It teaches very concrete skills, and eases people’s confidence and comfort levels.”
[Read: Mental Health Experts Recommend Their Favorite Depression Books.]
Those skills include recognizing the signs and symptoms of specific illnesses like anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, eating disorders and addictions. The program offers practical answers for those who want to know, “What can I do?” and “Where can someone find help?” Instructors provide local and national mental health resources and support groups, and they also suggest validated online tools for mental health and addictions treatment and support.
A newer program focuses on mental health first aid for preteens, teenagers and young adults. It teaches parents, teachers, peers and caring community members how to help a youth or teen who is experiencing a mental health or substance use challenge or is in crisis with anxiety, depression, substance use, psychosis, disruptive behavior disorders (including ADHD) and eating disorders. The NCBH has partnered with Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation and recently announced that 150,000 people were trained in mental health first aid as part of a joint effort to promote awareness of and help for those with mental and behavioral health issues.
Skills Known as ALGEE
James Radack, a certified mental health first aid instructor, says that participants learn to follow a set of skills known by the acronym ALGEE:
— Assess: Assess if the person is in crisis and at risk for suicide or harm and needs emergency attention or not.
— Listen nonjudgmentally: Listen to the individual talk about his or her feelings using verbal and nonverbal skills such as open body posture, comfortable eye contact and other strategies to engage in nonjudgmental conversation.
— Give reassurance and information: “We delineate between assurance and advice,” Radack says. “Sometimes advice gets into our own experiences or trying to cure or fix the problem, but that is not our role. Our role is to listen and reassure.”
— Encourage appropriate professional help: If the person is seriously impaired by a mental or behavioral health issue, encourage him or her to seek professional help and show where that help can be found.
— Encourage self-help: Tell the person that actions like exercise, meditation, support groups and self-help books can make a difference in their mental health.
“We teach participants to stay in your lane,” Radack says. “We are not trained to diagnose or treat these issues,” in the same way knowing CPR does not qualify someone to diagnose or treat cardiac arrest.
[Read: How to Help Someone Else Who Has Depression.]
“It’s nice knowing I am contributing toward something that is helping millions of people,” Radack says. “I get that feeling all the time. I see lightbulbs going off as people see things differently in relation to mental health. I hear people talk about how that night or that week they came across a situation and had a better sense of how to address it.”
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What’s Involved in Learning Mental Health First Aid? originally appeared on usnews.com
