CPO mental health awareness training project - the CPO mental health awareness training (MHAT) project will saturate missouri's greene, taney and howell counties with persons trained in mental…

CPO mental health awareness training project - the CPO mental health awareness training (MHAT) project will saturate missouri's greene, taney and howell counties with persons trained in mental health first aid (MHFA), youth mental health first aid (YMHFA), signs of suicide (SOS), and crisis intervention team training (CIT), who will in turn serve the population of adults and youth ages 12-18. The proposed project activities will increase mental health literacy of adults, policy makers, and administrators to meet the identified needs and gaps of adults and youth experiencing mental health crises, challenges or disorders. This will be accomplished through three groups of activities, including infrastructure development, training and technical assistance, and community outreach and education. Infrastructure development will provide base structure for the implementation of the grant, including capacity building of grant staff, collaborating with partners on grant implementation, developing an evaluation plan, securing mous from numerous organizations on this project, and coordinating data collection activities and collaboration with the chosen evaluator to implement the evaluation plan. Training and technical assistance involves selecting appropriate persons to attend MHFA, YMHFA, and SOS instructor training, coordinating with instructors to plan and facilitate numerous MHFA/YMHFA/SOS/CIT trainings in the three counties, providing additional technical assistance to instructors and first aiders through monthly newsletters, quarterly webinar trainings and an annual mental health summit. Community outreach and education involves media messages, community presentations, a mental health training and resources website and other outreach activities intended to raise community awareness of the need to increase mental health literacy among adults and how to access MHFA/YMHFA/SOS/CIT training in the counties. The goal of this project is to build the capacity of residents in these counties to detect persons who are experiencing behavioral health issues (including serious mental illness and/or serious emotional disturbance) and connect them to appropriate services and resources. Objectives include increasing mental health literacy of youth and adults who interact with youth and adults, increasing awareness of and promoting positive behavioral health, linking individuals with behavioral health issues to appropriate services and resources, and increasing collaborative partnerships. This project will serve at least 12 new MHFA/YMHFA instructors and train 3,350 attendees in MHFA/YMHFA, 40,000 youth in SOS, and 150 law enforcement officers in CIT throughout the five-year project. The success of this project will be determined by successfully training these 43,500 individuals resulting in over 20,000 referrals of youth and adults to resources and services by instructors and persons trained.