High point treatment center's adult and youth mental health first aid training program for southeastern, massachusetts seeks to increase access to mental health first aid training and resources in…

High point treatment center's adult and youth mental health first aid training program for southeastern, massachusetts seeks to increase access to mental health first aid training and resources in order to better respond to the growing needs around mental health in the region. The population to be served through the proposed program includes youth ages 6-18 and general community members. The first goal will be to train those who interact with youth and the general community to recognize signs and symptoms of mental illness and safely intervene with the use of crisis DE-escalation techniques. The first objective will be to certify 16 local facilitators as youth mental health first aid (ymhfa) instructors by february of 2022. The second objective will be to have the ymhfa instructors train 300 unduplicated individuals by september of 2022. The third objective will be to have the ymhfa and mhfa instructors train a total of 600 unduplicated individuals by september 2023. The second goal of the proposed program is to strengthen the region's referral system to mental health agencies in order to better refer individuals with signs or symptoms of mental illness. Objective 1 will be to develop and launch a printed and online mental health resource directory that will be disseminated to approximately 10,000 individuals in the region by september of 2022. The third and final goal will be to educate the community about mental health issues and community resources. The objective will be to launch a social marketing campaign that will reach approximately 15,000 individuals through social media platforms by september 2022. The number of people to be served in the first year of the grant is 25,300 individuals and throughout the lifetime of the grant approximately 128,015 will be served.