Mental health awareness training - child & family resources, INC. (CFR) will provide the mental health awareness training program to adults working with youth, specifically educators and teen peers,…

Mental health awareness training - child & family resources, INC. (CFR) will provide the mental health awareness training program to adults working with youth, specifically educators and teen peers, to recognize signs and symptoms of mental illness in youth with a potential for serious emotional disturbance (SED). Programming will be offered throughout arizona, in high-risk communities in pima county and the south east arizona counties of cochise, graham, greenlee and santa cruz. CFR plans to increase mental health awareness with the goal of early detection, intervention and linking youth with support and treatment services thus providing youth with the opportunity to gain coping mechanisms, lead full and productive lives and develop a healthy emotional outlook on life. CFR will address service gaps by increasing public awareness among high-risk communities and directing mental health programming efforts to address early detection and intervention among youth ages 12-18. CFR's multifaceted approach to increase mental health awareness throughout arizona will implement three evidence-based curricula youth mental health first aid (ymhfa), mental health first aid (mhfa), and teen mental health first aid (tmhfa) with specialty modules on cultural and environmental factors specific to communities to build capacity and reach youth with mental illness. Programming will increase public awareness, early detection and intervention by training participants to identify, understand and respond to signs and symptoms of mental health or substance use disorders and DE-escalating techniques to defuse crises without compromising safety. Programming includes referring and linking participants with community resources for support and treatment services. Programming will reach a minimum of 100 adults and teens in the catchment areas, a minimum of 500 over the lifetime of the project. The mhat program plans to increase mental health awareness and education among adults working with youth and teen peers in target communities by implementing evidence-based programming including recognizing the signs and symptoms/onset of mental illness among youth by training 500 adults and teen participants in ymhfa, mhfa and tmhfa with community specific specialty modules in pima and rural counties. The mhat program will reduce mental health related problems by training law enforcement working with youth in mhfa with public safety to recognize signs and symptoms of mental health and DE-escalate without compromising safety. Additionally, the program will strengthen prevention capacity at the community level by training service providers in curricula to increase public awareness, early detection (recognizing signs and symptoms) and intervention within target communities by training participants and providing them with community resources.