Last month, Evanston announced the Mental Health First Aid training series, which will be free to all Evanston residents. The program is designed to educate residents on how to recognize and respond to mental health or substance abuse crises.
In the first two days following the announcement, about 100 people filled out the interest form, indicating they would like to be part of the training series, said Kristin Meyer, the management analyst of Evanston’s Department of Health and Human Services. Currently, the program is only accessible to certain priority groups that include first responders and other city employees, but public training sessions will begin this summer.
“This is one of the greatest health challenges that Evanston faces right now,” Meyer said.
The 2024 Community Health Needs Assessment, a study conducted by the NorthShore University HealthSystem that assesses public health needs, had a group of Evanston residents rate their greatest concerns within the community. The focus group ranked mental illness and suicide as their top two concerns.
In 2022, Evanston received approximately $43 million from the American Rescue Plan Act to compensate the community for economic, health and infrastructure losses during the COVID-19 pandemic.
To determine how to use the money, Evanston developed a participatory budgeting process, allowing city residents to vote on how the money should be used. MHFA received the most votes, and $50,000 was allocated for the courses.
“We want to create a more compassionate, informed and stigma-free community, where we are looking to support individuals who are struggling, where we can recognize that all behavior has meaning,” said Tracy Levine, the executive director of the Naomi Ruth Cohen Institute for Mental Health Education, the organization guiding Evanston’s MHFA courses.
The Naomi Ruth Cohen Institute has worked with the city for a few years, providing youth MHFA training for park district staff and teens participating in the Mayor’s Summer Youth Employment Program.
The MHFA program does not make participants mental health professionals and is instead similar to a CPR training class, giving people skills to help in emergency situations, Levine said. MHFA focuses on identifying signs and symptoms of mental health conditions, understanding substance abuse and teaching what to say to someone experiencing a mental health crisis.
MJ Graboys, a health intervention specialist at Evanston’s Department of Health and Human Services, described practicing asking someone if they were thinking of suicide. Graboys said, “It’s a question that not many of us have practiced before, and it does get easier the more you ask it out loud.”
Graboys was part of the first group to receive MHFA training on March 28. Graboys said they enjoyed the training and were encouraged by the number of city employees that were determined to help people struggling with mental health in the Evanston community.
Before the session starts, participants are expected to complete an online component, which assesses the participants’ knowledge of mental health conditions and asks why they wanted to take the course. After that, the instructor reviews the responses to the online component before launching into a full day of training.
The training teaches participants how to identify the early signs and symptoms of a mental health crisis. They also get to practice how to respond to different situations and are guided through discussions on how to support their community.
This training will be accessible through 2026, according to Meyer.
“One of the things that I wasn’t expecting, though, was to want even more time,” Graboys said. “Wanting more time for discussion, more time to practice was a real surprise to me. But the conversations that we were all having were so rich, it felt like they could have gone all throughout the evening.”
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