Interested in learning more? Many programs exist to help build on your knowledge of mental health problems so that you can better identify signs and symptoms in yourself and your loved ones. Most of the below courses come from SAMHSA’s National Registry of Evidence Based Practices and the Suicide Prevention Resource Center’s Best Practice Registry.
What is SAMHSA’s National Registry of Evidence Based Practices?
Per SAMHSA’s website, The National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices (NREPP) is a searchable online database of mental health and substance abuse interventions. All interventions in the registry have met NREPP’s minimum requirements for review and have been independently assessed and rated for Quality of Research and Readiness for Dissemination.
Mental Health First Aid
Mental Health First Aid is an 8-hour certification course originally designed in Australia. Just as CPR helps you assist an individual having a heart attack, Mental Health First Aid helps you assist someone experiencing a mental health or substance use-related crisis. In the Mental Health First Aid course, you learn risk factors and warning signs for mental health and addiction concerns, strategies for how to help someone in both crisis and non-crisis situations, and where to turn for help. MHFA has several supplemental courses including youth and adolescents, military and veterans, older adults, Spanish, public safety, and higher education.
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Research Summary on MHFA Effectiveness
Active Parenting (4th Edition)
Active Parenting (4th Edition) is a video-based education program targeted to parents of 2- to 12-year-olds who want to improve their parenting skills. It is based on the application of Adlerian parenting theory, which is defined by mutual respect among family members within an authoritatively run family. The program teaches parents how to raise a child by using encouragement, building the child’s self-esteem, and creating a relationship with the child based upon active listening, effective communication, and problem solving. It also teaches parents to use natural and logical consequences and other positive discipline skills to reduce irresponsible and unacceptable behaviors.
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Alcohol Literacy Challenge
Alcohol Literacy Challenge is a brief classroom-based program designed to alter alcohol expectancies and reduce the quantity and frequency of alcohol use among high school and college students. Alcohol expectancies are an individual’s beliefs about the anticipated effects of alcohol use, including those that are positive (e.g., increased sociability, reduced tension) and negative (e.g., impairments to mental and behavioral functioning, increased aggressiveness or risk taking). Some of the most desired effects–the arousing, positive, and prosocial effects–are placebo effects rather than pharmacological ones. ALC aims to correct erroneous beliefs about the effects of alcohol, decreasing positive and increasing negative expectancies. These shifts in expectancies have been shown to predict lower levels of alcohol use.
Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST)
Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST) comprises five progressive components in which trainees gradually build comfort and understanding around suicide and suicide intervention. ASIST participants learn to 1) understand attitudes about suicide; 2) provide guidance and suicide first aid to a person at risk; 3) identify the key elements of an effective suicide safety plan and the actions required to implement it; 4) appreciate the value of improving community suicide prevention resources; and 5) recognize important aspects of suicide prevention, including life-promotion and self-care.
Question, Persuade, Refer (QPR)
Question, Persuade, Refer (QPR) — the 3 simple steps anyone can learn to help save a life from suicide. Just as people trained in CPR and the Heimlich Maneuver help save thousands of lives each year, people trained in QPR learn how to recognize the warning signs of a suicide crisis and how to question, persuade, and refer someone to help. Each year thousands of Americans, like you, are saying “Yes” to saving the life of a friend, colleague, sibling, or neighbor. QPR can be learned in as little as one hour.
Counseling on Access to Lethal Means (CALM)
Counseling on Access to Lethal Means (CALM) – Access to lethal means can determine whether a person who is suicidal lives or dies. This course explains why means restriction is an important part of a comprehensive approach to suicide prevention. It will teach you how to ask suicidal patients/clients about their access to lethal means, and work with them and their families to reduce their access.
Connect
Connect trains professionals and community members to prevent and respond effectively to suicide across the lifespan. The public health, socio-ecological model emphasizes collaboration between service providers. Best practice protocols are provided for each service provider discipline. The training can be customized to meet the needs of a community or organization.
Sources of Strength
Sources of Strength is a comprehensive wellness program that uses the combined power of peer and caring adult relationships to improve social norms, enhance coping and social support, and increase help-seeking behaviors in order to reduce conditions that give rise to suicide and other risk-taking behaviors. Trained teams of adult advisors and a diverse group of peer leaders attempt to impact their local teen and young adult cultures through conversations within their friendship groups and by delivering a series of “Hope, Help, and Strength” messages via classroom presentations, public service announcements, posters, videos, the internet, and text messaging. The program is strength-based and promotes eight critical protective factors that are linked to overall psychological wellness and reduced suicide risk. The program can be implemented in schools or colleges, as well as in faith, cultural, and community-based settings.
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Kognito
Kognito drives positive change in health behaviors through the use of immersive learning experiences with virtual humans. Each conversation experience simulates the interactions and behaviors of practicing health professionals, patients, caregivers, students and educators in real life situations. Kognito offers a variety of different learning scenarios, including but not limited to At-Risk on Campus for Faculty & Students, At-Risk in the ER, LGBTQ on Campus for Faculty & Students, Start the Talk: Underage Drinking, and Veterans on Campus: Peer Program.
Working Minds: Suicide Prevention in the Workplace
Working Minds: Suicide Prevention in the Workplace program toolkit features a facilitator’s guide, trainee workbooks, and supplemental materials designed to help workplace administrators and employees better understand and prevent suicide. The program helps workplaces appreciate the critical need for suicide prevention while creating a forum for dialogue and critical thinking about workplace mental health challenges. The program builds a business case for suicide prevention while promoting help-seeking and help-giving. Several interactive exercises and case studies help employers and their staff apply and customize the content to their specific work culture. The training is delivered in a 2 hour version or 4 hour Pro version.
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Umatter for Schools Youth Suicide Prevention
Umatter for Schools Youth Suicide Prevention is a two-day training program that provides school teams with the knowledge and skills to develop comprehensive, asset-based approaches to suicide prevention in their schools. Teams may include teachers, administrators, counselors, and other staff, and are encouraged to bring a representative from a local mental health agency in their area. The program includes gatekeeper training with an emphasis on building assets and protective factors for all youth, developing school protocols, learning to use a student curriculum, and making an action plan to implement suicide prevention strategies in the school community. Umatter also includes a public information campaign with the central message that adults matter because they can act as gatekeepers for youth who are suicidal. The campaign emphasizes that young people who are depressed or suicidal also matter because they are needed by their families, friends, and communities whether they feel that in the moment or not.
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Survivor Voices: Sharing the Story of Suicide Loss
Survivor Voices: Sharing the Story of Suicide Loss is a two-day training designed to teach those bereaved by suicide how to speak safely and effectively about their experience and loss. Through the sharing of personal stories, survivors of suicide loss provide insight that goes beyond traditional suicide prevention training. These insights can promote healing for those who are newly bereaved, educate the public about how to support survivors of suicide loss, and increase awareness and understanding of risk factors and warning signs for suicide.
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Late Life Suicide Prevention Toolkit
Late Life Suicide Prevention Toolkit is an educational program developed for use by front-line providers, medical and mental health care clinicians, and health care trainees. It focuses on how to identify suicide warning signs, establish rapport and assess suicide risk and resiliency factors, and manage immediate and ongoing risk for suicide among older adults.
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Veterans Self Help Training Courses
A resource for military and veterans with self-help courses such as Anger & Irritability Management Skills, Moving Forward, Veteran Parenting, and PTSD Online Life coach.