NEWBERRY — During the Halloween season, we’re all looking around for that perfect mask. As a husband, I try to toe the line between scary, but not so bad the wife throws a rolling pin at me … again.
We wear the old school mask with the rubber band around the back, or the full pullover with glassy eyes and a demon grin, or maybe we just paint on a few scars or blackened eyes.
It’s all fun and games for us and is easy to peel off once Halloween is over. But some folks wear a different kind of mask.
According to the Newport Institute, which works to remove stigma from mental health issues, mental health masking means camouflaging or suppressing your mental health symptoms so you fit in with others. People mask their mental health symptoms because they want to maintain their relationships, keep their jobs, and be socially accepted.
It can be hard to identify mental health masking because people who mask behave as if they don’t have a mental health issue. Long-term masking can increase stress, anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts and behavior, especially among those with autism.
To help people peel back the mask, Westview sponsors a program called Mental Health Awareness Training, also known as Mental Health First Aid.
“This is powerful stuff and it is saving lives,” said U.S. Army veteran and Mental Health First Aider Toushe Paxton-Barnes. “So many people are out there wishing for something better, hoping that help will show up.”
Mental Health First Aid is an 8-hour mental health literacy program in which laypeople learn the signs and symptoms of behavioral health problems and crises, ways to support those who are facing a crisis, and where to refer for appropriate professional care.
Participants are trained to detect and respond to mental illness among veterans, law enforcement officers, and others. Participants are taught how to assess for risk, how to listen, how to provide reassurance and support, and how to connect those who are at risk with the appropriate professional services.
The five general steps in mental health first aid are:
1. Assess risk of self-harm or suicide
2. Listen without judgment
3. Give reassurance and provide helpful information
4. Encourage professional support
5. Encourage self-care techniques
Just under 20 percent of adults, either currently or at some point in their life, will experience a serious mental disorder. That number rises to right at 20 percent for law enforcement officers and jumps to 28 percent of veterans. As more people, and particularly youth, experience mental distress, there is a need for increased mental health literacy and basic mental health training for the public.
Ingrid Donato, Chief of the Mental Health Promotion Branch in SAMHSA’s Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS), likens the program to physical health first aid. Instead of helping people understand how to identify the signs of a heart attack or to stabilize a broken bone, they are taught how to identify and triage behavioral health issues.
“The goal is to train as many people as we can in Mental Health First Aid,” Ms. Donato says. “For youth, we want to not only reach the teachers, we want to get the school bus drivers, we want to get the juvenile justice folks, the police, the firefighters, the nurses — anyone who comes into contact with children. We want everyone to be able to understand when a child is in distress and to be able to understand how to appropriately intervene and provide support.”
“That’s what Mental Health First Aid is – it is help to get people connected to care and ultimately to get them to a better place,” said Paxton-Barnes. “Just like CPR is mandatory in many settings, I absolutely believe that Mental Health First Aid should be required for our boots-on-the ground community leaders, like teachers and law enforcement officials, to be able to recognize mental illness and substance abuse.”
For more information on participating in the Youth Mental Health First Aid training offered by Westview, contact Kathy Cinnamond at 276-5690.