It’s challenging to peer into the mental turmoil of a struggling youth and assess whether he or she is experiencing a crisis, but the lives of three Chester County youth may have been saved by a pioneering national Mental Health First Aid effort to help everyday community members do just that.

“It’s basic mental health first aid that gives the general public tools to respond if they see someone in an acute crisis,” Youth Mental Health First Aid Advisory Board Chair Linda Thompson Adams said in Brandywine Health Foundation’s 2015 Community Report published last month.

The pilot program, brought first to the Coatesville Area School District by the Brandywine Health Foundation with curriculum from the National Council for Behavioral Health, has attracted enough positive attention and funding that it will continue at least another three years.

“I was very impressed because of the very realistic goals they set: opening up human contact with troubled people and giving them someone to speak with,” said Dr. Richard Newman, a trustee of the supporting Marshall-Reynolds Foundation.

To date, the training and surveys have already helped double the number of attendees who accurately believe they “should ask a youth who tells you they are thinking about suicide whether they have a plan to do so” as well as bolster the number of trainees who reject the unfounded fear that “you should not ask someone if they are feeling suicidal in case you put the idea in their head.”

“This training empowers laypeople to know the signs and symptoms of a mental health crisis, then to act by knowing where to send those in need for help,” Thomas Scattergood Behavioral Health Foundation Grant-Making Director Alyson Ferguson added.

First Hospital and the van Ameringen Foundation are also part of the YMHFA funding collaborative.

“Our evaluation most definitely shows promising evidence that the YMHFA program improves the knowledge, attitudes and confidence of people to better deal with youths exhibiting mental health symptoms,” West Chester University Associate Professor of Graduate Social Work Stacie M. Metz said.

BHF Community Report 2015