Hoping to avert tragedies like the Virginia Tech shooting, Maryland officials are beginning to teach a first-aid approach to mental health.
The new program, which begins next week, will try to teach Maryland citizens to see the gravely mentally ill the same way they would see someone with a serious physical injury.
The initial training will be for a group of around 20 mental health professionals who will then take the training to colleges and universities, workplaces and community organizations.
Brian Hepburn, Maryland’s director of mental health, compared the need for mental health first aid to the need for basic first aid such as CPR. As opposed to the response to a physical emergency, he said, the response to a socially disturbed person is to avoid him or her.
“If you have more confidence in dealing with someone acting strangely, then you won’t avoid them. And the less avoiding there is, the more likely we’ll avoid the tragic results, the more we can work in the direction of treatment,” Hepburn said.
An estimated 26.2 percent of Americans ages 18 and older, or 57.7 million people, suffer from a mental disorder, according to the Bethesda-based National Institute of Mental Health. About 6 percent of the country, or 1 in 17 people, suffer from a serious mental illness.
Sharon Friedman directs the Mental Health Association of Montgomery County and will attend the training, to be held in Towson.
“This is a great model for prevention because it looks at the issue from a community-wide perspective,” she said.
The seed money for the trainings comes from a $13 million grant awarded to Maryland and six other states by the federally funded Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
According to Hepburn, Maryland has been rated by various mental health advocacy groups as among the top-five states in the nation for dealing with mental health issues.
