It can be hard sometimes to recognize when a family member or friend is experiencing a mental health issue or crisis. Well, Bridgeway is offering a way for people to learn more about mental health, it’s risk factors, and warning signs to look out for. Bridgeway has offered Mental Health First Aid since 2009, but many people might not know about this tremendously helpful service in our area. Stacy Brown with Bridgway explains:
“Our stance is, everyone should take the training. We find at the end that people say ‘I can see where I would use this in my job because people come in here all the time, and we don’t understand what’s going on. But I have someone in my family that is experiencing things that you’ve talked about, so I think this will help me with my family as well,'” Brown said.
Brown likens the program to CPR classes, but for the mind. The class is approximately eight hours long, but she says it’s more hands-on than lecture-style learning. Mental Health First Aid also garnered endorsement from one of music’s biggest names:
“Mental Health First Aid was very lucky in this past year in that they had a great supporter actually in Lady Gaga. As she was touring around the United States, if there were Mental Health First Aid trainings happening in the cities she was in, she was giving out free tickets to concerts, and she really supported it. She definitely helped the movement by encouraging more people to get trained,” she said.
To learn more about these trainings, call Bridgeway at 309-344-2323 or email Luan at luani@bway.org.
written by Jackson Kane
