Building mental health resiliency and crisis intervention strategies for central florida's first responder community - the project name is central florida's mental health awareness training (MHAT)

The population of focus is the first responder community in brevard, orange, osceola and seminole counties, central florida cares health system, INC (CFCHS) region. First responders include law enforcement officers, community resource officers, school resource officers, emergency (911) dispatchers, fire/rescue and emergency medical services (EMS) personnel. The 4 county region is diverse, spanning from rural to urban in population and includes the orlando metropolitan statistical area (MSA). The total population is approximately 2.9 million. The national alliance on mental illness (NAMI) reports that 5.2% of the adult population, 13.1 million, in our country experienced a SMI in 2019 and law enforcement agencies have reported that anywhere from 5 to 15 percent of their annual calls involve an individual struggling with mental illness. According to samhsa's 2018 first responders' behavioral health concerns, emergency response, and trauma EMS bulletin, firefighters, and police officers are at high risk for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression, anger, increased substance abuse, and higher rates than the general population of suicide and suicide ideation. The prevalence of suicide among first responders increased from 2018 to 2019, representing a 35% in suicide. In 2019 nationally, 228 officers died by suicide while 132 were killed in the line of duty. Florida ranked fourth nationally for police officer deaths by suicide in 2019. The MHAT program will focus on first responder's mental health education and DE-escalation techniques by implementing 4 evidence-based strategies on mental health awareness trainings for first responders. The MHAT program provides a wrap-around holistic approach to help first responders by 1) identifying persons experiencing SMI/SED; 2) identifying mental health needs within themselves; 3) identifying mental health among their peers; and 4) providing peer support. Broadly, MHAT project goals are: 1) provide crisis intervention team (CIT) training to first responders; 2) sustain CIT training and maintain support for trained first responders through CIT extension for community healthcare outcomes (ECHO); 3) utilize a train the trainer model to increase the number of mental health first aid for fire/EMS or public safety (MHFA-PS) trained instructors and first responders; and 4) increase the number of peer-trained first responders through university of central florida (UCF) restores recognize. Evaluate. Advocate. Coordinate. Track. (REACT) program, designed specifically for the first responder community. Annually, 300 first responders will be CIT trained for a total of 1,500 trained at the end of the grant. Eight instructors will become MHFA-PS certified with an additional 2 instructors certified in years 2-5 for a total of 16. In year 1-140 first responders will receive MHFA training, in year 2 - 350, year 3 - 420, year 4 - 420, and year 5 - 420 for a cumulative 1,750 MHFA trained first responders. In year 1, 120 first responders will be trained as peers through REACT, year 2 - 200, years 3 through 5 - 200/year, for a total of 920 peers trained. A project director and a CIT coordinator will be hired within 60 days of receiving the grant award.