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USU students organize mental health workshop

The Herald Journal - 4/23/2017

Utah State University offered a day-long workshop on Saturday where key people on campus and in the community received training in how to help someone through an immediate mental health crisis until professional help can be arranged.

The class, Mental Health First Aid, focuses on both suicidal and non-suicidal behaviors with separate options for youth and adults as well as specific options for higher education professionals and first responders.

Last fall, students at Utah State University took notice of the need for more access to mental health services on campus, prompting discussion on how to respond to those needs.

Derrik Tollefson, head of the university’s Department of Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology, said there are two things that came out of that exercise: the launch of a minor in mental health and wellness and something that can be beneficial to people on a larger scale.

“The minor is great, but there are only a limited number of students that are going to take that,” Tollefson said.

Saturday’s workshop is the program his students chose to bring to the community, both on campus and throughout the valley. The primary goal was to have key people from the community and USU in attendance, he said.

The workshop was attended by teachers, school counselors, university professors and administrators, resident assistants from USU dorms and representatives from CAPSA and Bear River Mental Health.

“If it goes as I suspect, with people feeling like this was a valuable experience, we’ll work on that next step of ‘how do we make this a regular happening here,’” Tollefson said.

The Mental Health First Aid program was developed in Australia in 2001, and the course comes with a manual that provides information about various mental health challenges that people face and detailed ways to help people in specific situations.

The program centers around ALGEE, an acronym for an action plan that can be used by anyone: assess the risk of suicide or self harm, listen without judgement, give reassurance and information, encouraging a person to seek the appropriate professional help, and also encouraging them to utilize self-help practices and other sources of support.

While these principles are the same among youth or adults, the manner in which it is approached can be dramatically different, so the youth course addresses those differences head on.

That means understanding that a youth’s experience and perspective are not the same as your own, and that listening without judgement or interruption is critical.

“We’ve got to be able to master the skill of listening because that is how we are going to be able to get these youth the help that they need,” said Becky Austad, a school counselor in the Weber School District and also a Mental Health First Aid instructor.

As a parent, Austad said she learned this includes not only the words that are used but the body language as well — a realization that came after one of her children pointed out that she was saying the right things but she still had “angry eyes.”

While there is an actual manual on ways to identify people in crisis and provide compassionate care, Austad said reaching out and making a difference to someone does not necessarily require a large skill set.

“People think the help comes from doing these great big things, but the reality is the little things we do to offer help make the biggest difference,” Austad said.