The University of Houston-Clear Lake will begin to offer training courses from the Mental Health First Aid program to faculty, staff, students, partnering school districts and eventually area residents over the next three years.

Cindy Cook, counseling services director and licensed psychologist, and professor of counseling Cheryl Sawyer applied for assistance to fund the training and received a three-year $375,000 grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Cook and Sawyer hope to train at least 200 individuals every year on campus and in the community, according to a UHCL press release.

"The grant requires us to train a total of 600 people so we want to train about 200 a year," Cook said to Community Impact Newspaper.

The Mental Health First Aid program offers courses designed for individuals to become trained instructors and teach participants how to identify and help people displaying signs of suicide and mental health problems.

“The program is more than just suicide prevention and mental health awareness,” Cook said in the release. “It’s aimed at reducing stigma and helping identify mental health issues early on and getting people into treatment."

Instructor training will be administered to interested counselors, the college of education faculty and an officer from the UHCL police department. Participants will receive a certificate of completion from the National Council for Behavioral Health, Cook said.

Trained instructors will teach the UHCL faculty and staff, teachers and administrators from participating schools, education majors and local first responders, according to the release.

Efforts to offer a training program are in response to an increase in youth suicide and addiction, child abuse and school violence, according to the release.

Most teachers aren’t trained to deal with children who show signs of depression, abuse or suicide. Counselors are overwhelmed, and although they try, they are unable to tend to the 400-700 students they receive. This program will train teachers to identify and help students, Sawyer said in the release.

The training course is not required, but Sawyer encourages employees to participate.

“We strongly believe that every single staff member on campus has the capacity to see something that somebody else doesn’t see. We’re hoping that all volunteer,” Cook said in the release.

In 2017 the Texas legislature passed a law requiring education majors to receive mental health awareness and prevention training, according to the press release.

"Students are required to have training, and by the time the student finishes the [Mental Health First Aid] program they will meet the requirement, but it isn’t a course credit," Cook said to Community Impact Newspaper.

The Mental Health First Aid program was created in Australia in 2001 and operates in 25 countries. The effort to bring the training program to campus is a collaboration between UHCL’s counseling services, human resources, the college of education, the college of human services and humanities, police departments, veteran services, area school districts and the Odyssey Academy-Galveston and Innovative Alternatives, according to the release.

For additional course information or to register click here. UHCL plans to offer training to the community as early as January 2019. Interested residents can contact Dr. Cindy Cook at 281-283-2595 or [email protected].