At Meridian, we have certified instructors, who are trained in providing Mental Health First Aid training for both the youth and adults. Certified instructors attend a three-day training and once certified the teach the course at least three times per year to maintain their certification. Upon hire, Meridian staff is placed in either one or both trainings as it relates to their specific patient/client population. Topics include depression and mood disorders, anxiety disorders, trauma, psychosis, and substance use disorders. Mental Health First Aid teaches about recovery and resiliency – the belief that individuals experiencing these challenges can and do get better and use their strengths to stay well. 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. Mental Health First Aid takes the fear and hesitation out of starting conversations about mental health and substance use problems by improving understanding and providing an action plan that teaches people to safely and responsibly identify and address a potential mental illness or substance use disorder.

Meridian Health is happy to support this family-fun community event in Hartford City. Be sure to check it out!

This country’s soaring mental health crisis is manifesting in the worst possible way. Our children are committing suicide at a higher rate than ever. Depression, self-harm, and suicide are rising among American adolescents. This from the New York Times: In 2019, 13 percent of adolescents reported having a major depressive episode, a 60 percent increase from 2007. Emergency room visits by children and adolescents in that period also rose sharply for anxiety, mood disorders and self-harm. And for people ages 10 to 24, suicide rates, stable from 2000 to 2007, leaped nearly 60 percent by 2018, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. September is Suicide Prevention Awareness Month and no better time to talk about these haunting statistics and the fact that so many suicides result from a single, desperate moment brought on by mental health issues. Talking about it helps remove the stigma of mental illness. Start the conversation in your home.