Mental health awareness training grant - our proposed mhat project will provide mental health (MH) awareness training in miami dade county, florida

One of only a few counties in the US with a racial/ethnic "minority majority" population, miami dade's 2,830,500 residents represents a vibrant mosaic of race, ethnicities, and cultures (69% hispanic/18% black; 13% white/other - miami dade demographics, 2020/miami matters). Our population of focus is individuals of all ages exhibiting signs or symptoms of mental illness to include school-aged children, veterans, children with a serious emotional disturbance, adults with a serious mental illness (SMI), individuals with CO-occurring disorders, and the general public. Miami dade is home to the largest percentage of people with SMI, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression, of any urban community in the US (https://WWW.JUD11.flcourts.ORG/criminal-mental-health-project). Moreover with 346,090 of our local residents testing positive for covid-19 and 4,630 of these lives lost (as of 1.20.2021, one of the highest rates in the US), this pandemic has taken a crushing toll on individual and collective mental health (MH) in our country. Our mhat project will be implemented by jewish community services of south florida, INC (JCS). Founded in 1920, JCS has provided behavioral health and social services to our miami-dade community for more than 100 years. JCS provides a single high-quality standard of care for all clients seeking services independent of race, religion, identity, and gender. For the past 3 years, we have successfully implemented a samhsa mhat grant with mental health first aid (MHFA) training (including the youth model ymhfa) that expires on 9/29/2021. While we exceeded our project goals, for this current grant we now see at the end of this cycle a GAP in training especially with our first responders and front line workers that has been intensified due to covid-19. We also have an opportunity with this new grant to strategically place ourselves at the heart of organizations like the coral gables police department and miami-dade fire rescue and hold these trainings at their facilities. The need is supported by an internal survey done of 753 miami dade police officers where nearly 5% indicated clinically significant elevations on the trauma scale (mdpd's psychological services section, october 2019). After extensive planning and discussion, we are proposing to leverage our successful experience and outcomes to implement a more agile, 3 tiered MH awareness training approach by adding QPR (question, persuade, and refer), and asist (applied suicide intervention skills training) to our existing MHFA and ymhfa portfolio. Over the 5 year project period, we will provide MH awareness training to more than 3,000 individuals /MH first aider trainees to include school personnel, law enforcement, veterans, armed services members and their families, the general public, and for the first time for US, emergency first responders, to recognize the signs and symptoms of mental illness for our diverse population of focus. This approach will operationalize our project's overarching goal to: increase MH awareness safe and appropriate responses among individuals who interact and come into contact with persons who may be experiencing or exhibiting symptoms of a mental disorder. Individuals identified as in need of mental health crisis and non-crisis will be referred to one of nine mental health programs for which longstanding referral agreements are in place orour own mental health trauma program.