Oneida, NY: Training teachers on Youth Mental Health First Aid

Sept 23, 2017, Oneida (NY) Daily Dispatch: Mental health program aims to help youths http://www.oneidadispatch.com/general-news/20170923/mental-health-program-aims-to-help-youths The Youth Mental Health First Aid program is designed to teach those looking to learn how to help younger people who are suffering from a mental health crisis or challenge in their life. And anybody can become trained in this program; teachers, coaches, pastors and police officers alike seek to put this skill under their belt. … “I have a lot of hats, to be quite honest,” Colleen Wuest, director of Early Childhood Education at Madison Oneida BOCES said. “Even though it sounds like it’s just early childhood, Youth Mental Health First Aid is underneath me as well.” Wuest explains that she deals with students with mental health issues weekly, if not daily and on several different occasions, has had students come to her and explained that they have issues going on and asked for help. As director, it’s her job to navigate them towards the right people and as a national trainer for the Youth Mental Health First Aid program, she’s met many. “The last few years, it seems as if a lot more teachers and coaches or anybody who works within a school setting are trained so that if a student does come to them and has concerns, we’ll know what avenue to guide them down,” Wuest said. And programs like this don’t just exist for middle school and high school. “Pyramid Model is designed for anybody working with kids from zero to five. It is a proactive, preventative model and used across New York,” Wuest said, being a state trainer for the Pyramid Model. … Pyramid Model at its simplest form is a way of teaching and interacting with children that are just starting to learn and teaches them in a positive way and reinforces good behavior through positive reinforcement to better help their development through the years. …Through a grant totaling $97,750 obtained through the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMHSA for short, they were looking to train at least 250 people across the community. Instead, they managed to trained 326 in the Youth Mental Health First Aid Program. In today’s day and age, social media and the prevalence of the internet has helped destigmatize mental health as Wuest suggests and it has made it much easier for people to get a hold of the information they need to find the help they want. “It’s a lot easier than it was in the past,” Wuest said.