Upcoming Trainings

Mental Health First Aid is a course that teaches you how to identify, understand and respond to signs of mental illnesses and substance use disorders. This training focuses on ages 18 and older. The training gives you the skills you need to reach out and provide initial help and support to someone who may be developing a mental health or substance use. Topics covered in this training include anxiety, depression, psychosis, and addictions.

Youth Mental Health First Aid (YMHFA) is directed towards identifying the signs and symptoms of mental illness in adolescents. Adolescence and early adulthood are developmental stages that are associated with greater risk of the onset of mental illness. Help-seeking behaviors among this group are often lower compared to adults.

Preliminary evidence suggests the effectiveness of delivering YMHFA in school settings and finds YMHFA associated with improvements in trainees being able to recognize when to assess for suicidality, how to listen non-judgmentally, and refer young people to professional help.

QPR stands for Question, Persuade and Refer. QPR teaches individuals to recognize warning signs, question suicidal intent, listen to problems, and refer to appropriate professional health.

Furthermore, a recent study found positive long-term effects in QPR training related to knowledge, self-efficacy, and help-giving behaviors.

Older adults have high rates of late-onset mental health challenges, like anxiety and depression, and low rates of identification and treatment. Mental Health First Aid is a course that teaches you how to identify, understand and respond to signs of mental illnesses and substance use disorders. The training gives you the skills you need to reach out and provide initial help and support to someone who may be developing a mental health or substance use. This course will give you the confidence to have the conversations that will allow older adults to live as comfortably as possible.

Thank you for signing up for a Mental Health First Aid course.
Below is a breakdown of what you can expect regarding this training:

Before the date of the training

• Set up an account on the MHFA Connect platform (connect.mentalhealthfirstaid.org).
  This is where you will take your final exam after the course and have access to the certificate.
• You should have received an email from MHFA Teams with a link to sign in. Please reach out to abrackenridge@placesforpeople.org if you have any questions.
• About 1 business day after you set up your account, you will be able to view your course on Connect.
• Complete the first 9 modules, which include a welcome module, a pre-evaluation survey and an opinions quiz.
• This should take you about 2 hours total. (*If your pre-work is incomplete, we will not be able to include you in the in-person part of the training next week. It is a requirement that 100% of the prework is completed before you can attend the in-person part of the training. )
• Answer an Illume pre-training survey.On the day of the training
• Attend the full day of training.
• Parking Information will be emailed the day before or day of the training.After the training
• Complete Modules 11-13 on MHFA Connect.
• This includes the Final Exam & Post-Evaluation questions.
• You can download your certificate straight from Connect.
• Answer a post-training & feedback survey.
  This is the email you signed up for the course with. If you prefer to receive information regarding this training through another email, let us know.

If you have trouble accessing MHFA Connect or accessing the internet in general, let us know at least a few days in advance and we will do our best to work with you.

If you can no longer attend this training, please email so we know not to continue emailing you regarding this course.

Mental Health First Aid trainings are full-day trainings.

Both Adult Mental Health First Aid trainings & Youth Mental Health First Aid trainings have 2 hours of self-paced pre-work, that must be completed at least one business day prior to the training. If you did not complete your pre-work, you will not be able to join the Mental Health First Aid training.

Instructor-led sessions for Mental Health First Aid is 8-hours in total, including breaks in the morning and afternoon, as well as a 1-hour break for lunch. This training starts at 9:00 am Central Standard Time.

Our Suicide Prevention Training, QPR, is 2 hours long.

For both Adult Mental Health First Aid and Youth Mental Health First Aid there is pre-work.

Pre-work covers roughly 2 hours of video, readings and knowledge checks. This will help prepare learners for their course. This does not need to be completed in one sitting. You can complete the pre-work in multiple sittings.

There are 9 Modules in MHFA Connect system that you will need to complete before the training. Once the pre-work is completed, it will show up on your Connect Course Bar as 69% completed.

In order to receive credit for Mental Health First Aid training, you must have missed less than 30 minutes of the total training/instructor-led session.

Also note, Mental Health First Aid learners will get breaks throughout the day, including a 1-hour break for lunch.

No, for virtual Mental Health First Aid trainings, learners must each be logged into individual devices due to activities such as breakout groups, etc.

We have both in-person versions and virtual versions of Adult Mental Health First Aid and Youth Mental Health First Aid.

The virtual versions of the trainings are designed to be as interactive as the in-person training. The virtual training needs participants to have camera, audio and will ask participants to be interactive in their chats throughout the training. This is because this training includes small group discussions, large class discussions, and screen shares that ask for annotations/comments.
Consistent communication and individual participation from learners are important and required.

Illness Management and Recovery (IMR) is an evidenced-based practice designed to provide mental health consumers with knowledge and skills necessary to cope with aspects of their mental illness while maintaining and achieving goals in their recovery.

Motivational Interviewing is a framework for understanding an individual’s motivation and resolve ambivalence by enabling people to recognize their own patterns, own their personal outcomes and understand the means by which they will achieve those goals. Clinicians and behavioral health staff utilize motivational interviewing to attend to clients and staff needs in a person-centered way.

The Trauma Recovery and Empowerment Model (TREM) is an evidence-based, facilitated group approach to healing from the effects of trauma. It combines elements of social skills training, psychoeducational and psychodynamic techniques, and emphasizes peer support. It focuses on consumers age 18 to 55, male or female, with severe mental disorders, and/or substance use disorders. It also addresses a broad range of trauma symptoms.

Seeking Safety is a relatively modern evidence-based treatment model that treats co-occurring posttraumatic stress disorder and substance abuse. The model can be used in group or individual counseling. It was specifically developed to help survivors with co-occurring trauma and SUD and, crucially, in a way that does not ask them to delve into emotionally distressing trauma narratives. It helps clients envision what safety would look and feel like in their lives; and helping them learn specific new ways of coping.

Cognitive processing therapy (CPT) is a specific type of cognitive behavioral therapy that has been effective in reducing symptoms of PTSD that have developed after experiencing a variety of traumatic events CPT is generally delivered over 12 sessions and helps individuals learn how to challenge and modify unhelpful beliefs related to the trauma. In so doing, the patient creates a new understanding and conceptualization of the traumatic event so that it reduces its ongoing negative effects on current life.

Community Reinforcement Approach (CRA) is a psychosocial intervention for individuals with alcohol and other drug use disorders that has been adapted for several populations, including adolescents (the Adolescent-Community Reinforcement Approach; A-CRA) and family members of individuals resistant or reluctant to enter treatment (Community Reinforcement and Family Training; CRAFT).

Wellness Coaching is a deliberate, intentional process, using a set of techniques designed to focus on achieving and maintaining wellness, particularly in the physical dimension. It includes a combination of communication skills, motivational strategies, and coaching principles to be utilized in a personal and time-limited format in collaboration with persons served in ordered to evaluate motivation, desire to change, needed resources, and barriers to success, while creating actionable steps, and identifying natural supports to promote positive behavior changes.

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy is an Evidence based therapy modified from CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) originally designed to treat borderline personality disorder, now adapted to help regulate a range of emotional behaviors such as eating disorders and substance use and sometimes PTSD.

BREATHE Trauma Treatment is a three-session intervention developed for individuals with SMI and PTSD. It provides psychoeducation around trauma and PTSD combined with some simple breathing retraining and CBT exercises

Our instructor teaches the evidence-based Question Persuade Response (QPR) model for suicide prevention. Key components of the training include how to Question, Persuade and Refer someone who may be suicidal. How to get help for yourself or learn more about preventing suicide. Your staff will learn the common causes and warning signs of suicidal behavior, and how to get help for someone in crisis.

Foundational Trauma Training is a 3-hour training will begin with more trauma informed care (TIC)/culture training for staff to provide a basic understanding of trauma within your population. This will provide a good clinical and TIC cultural foundation for the trauma treatment and any evidence-based practices that your staff utilize.

Mental Health First Aid is a course that teaches you how to identify, understand and respond to signs of mental illnesses and substance use disorders. The training gives you the skills you need to reach out and provide initial help and support to someone who may be developing a mental health or substance use problem or experiencing a crisis.

Decades of research has shown that Prolonged Exposure (PE) is a highly effective treatment for PTSD that gradually confronts trauma-related memories, feelings, and situations while learning healthy coping mechanisms.

This training will assist with understanding how to prevent situations from escalating and becoming potentially violent. Our instructor will inform how to best work with individuals who are agitated or aggressive. This training is ideal for individuals looking to maintain safety in volatile situations.

Join us to explore ways to increase our coping skills and resilience. We will discuss a variety of tips and techniques focused on everything ranging from improving our sleep to working from home. We will practice some techniques for coping with stress and anxiety and will learn effective ways to communicate with and provide support to our friends and family.

A wellness intervention that promotes individual skills and strategies to support workplace well-being. It is delivered in a session lasting six hours. Additional follow up is available to help the intervention stick. Because it targets individual skills, factors that operate primarily on the organizational or team/departmental level might not be addressed. On the other hand, changes in individual behaviors may contribute to positive changes in different parts of the organization and on team/departmental dynamics.