Mental Health First Aid

This two-day class helps prepare community members to respond to a mental health crisis

By Anna Faller | Dec. 23, 2023

If you witnessed a medical emergency—someone with a broken leg for instance, or a co-worker choking on their lunch—most of us would know just what to do: call an ambulance, administer the Heimlich, and maybe even start CPR.

But, would you be able to pinpoint a person struggling through an anxiety attack? A major depressive episode? Would you know how to help?

One in five adults will experience a mental illness in their lifetime, a statistic that could well be higher, as many mental health struggles go unreported. Experiencing poor mental health doesn’t mean that you’ve failed or that you’re not a good person. “It just means you might be undergoing some challenges,” North Country Community Mental Health Training Coordinator Leslie Elrod explains.

Much like a traditional first aid course provides the skills to support the sick or injured, Mental Health First Aid classes through Northern Lakes Community Mental Health Authority (NLCMHA) and North Country Community Mental Health (North Country CMH) teach participants how to best support a person experiencing a mental health crisis.

(A quick note: NLCMHA serves Crawford, Grand Traverse, Leelanau, Missaukee, Roscommon, and Wexford counties. North Country CMH serves Antrim, Charlevoix, Cheboygan, Emmet, Kalkaska, and Otsego counties.)

“It’s all about having enough knowledge to step in and offer a listening ear,” Elrod says. “Knowing that they’re not going through [that struggle] alone is so important.”

Australia, First Aid, and ALGEE

So, what is Mental Health First Aid? In short, exactly what it sounds like.

The curriculum was founded in Australia in 2001 by health education nurse Betty Kitchener and Anthony Jorm, a mental health literacy professor. (Together, the pair run the training and research nonprofit Mental Health First Aid Australia). Since arriving stateside in 2008, the program has graduated more than three million “first aiders” from all 50 states and territories.

Launched in Traverse City in the early 2010s, the courses are administered by the National Council for Mental Wellbeing and are geared toward equipping community members with the skills to both recognize and respond to mental health and substance abuse difficulties. “There’s been a lot of positive support to put this in place for mental health,” says NLCMHA Community Provider Relations Coordinator Cindy Petersen.

Mental Health First Aid courses are focused on supporting both youths and adults. The newly-updated teaching materials include two days of instruction divided into 10 content segments. Courses are available in face-to-face, online, and hybrid formats and can be reserved through the respective community mental health groups’ calendars. Private courses for larger groups can also be organized by special request.

The course’s content starts with defining a variety of mental health challenges—including illness and substance abuse—as well as the signs and symptoms of each and how a person experiencing those issues might present in real-time.

Then, they dive into the role the first-aider plays, which, as Petersen stresses, is never to treat. Instead, the goal is to help connect that person with the resources they need using a five-point action plan known as ALGEE: Assess for risk of suicide or harm; Listen nonjudgmentally; Give reassurance and information; Encourage appropriate professional help; and Encourage self-help and other strategies.

Thus the program’s “first aid” framework. “Your job is not to counsel or try to ‘fix’ a person in crisis,” says Elrod, but rather get them to safety and help connect them with the appropriate resources.

“I liken it to encountering a person experiencing cardiac arrest,” she adds. “I’m not medical personnel; I can’t fix that. But I can notify the people who can and hopefully get that person to a better place.”

As such, a key piece of the course is knowing how to connect those in crisis to local professional resources. Each attendee takes home a jam-packed Participant Processing Guide: a folder containing class notes, along with lists of nearby agencies, contacts, and clinics and the mental health services they provide.

Stigmas, Connections, and Community

No matter how prepared you are, approaching a mental health emergency can still feel awkward—and that goes for both the first aid responder and the person in crisis.

“Admitting that you’re not doing well [in the context of various cultural norms] can be an uncomfortable conversation to have,” says Amy Kotuski, the director of Club Cadillac, a community for people with a diagnosed mental health issue.

To help mitigate stigma, a key Mental Health First Aid objective is to provide attendees with the tools to broach uncomfortable interactions. Active listening is key—in fact, just stepping into the situation and understanding the individual’s need is about 90 percent of the first-aider’s role, trainer Clarisse Hartnett-Manny explains. “Taking a breath and saying, ‘Okay, I’m here and I’m listening,’ is huge,” she adds.

Within the program, the process of dismantling stereotypes begins by chipping away at the negative tags around mental health through a combination of activities, role play, videos, and notes, as well as by forging connections between group members.

“By the end of the day, we’re a community, because everybody shares out,” Petersen explains. “There’s value in that, because no one wants to feel like they’re different. Here, we’re forming skills [from those experiences] that can be carried throughout the community.”

Kotulski says that today, an increasing number of Mental Health First Aid graduates work in public service (e.g., medical personnel, case managers, policemen, firefighters, and the like), a population whose training impacts the outcome of crisis situations. She adds that when we look at social issues like suicide rates and overcrowding of jails—many of which are directly related to instances of mental illness—increasing trauma education in those sectors could prompt better long-term solutions.

To get there, though, we all have to join the growing movement toward mental health dialogue and awareness, and a first aid class is a great place to start.

“We listen to everyone that walks in our doors,” concludes Petersen. “We want them to leave with the skills to be fully present and know that they can make a difference.”

To learn more about Mental Health First Aid or to register for a course, visit northernlakescmh.org or norcocmh.org.