Every wave starts with a ripple. Suzanne Weete, a Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) Instructor in Dover, New Hampshire, started a ripple that saved the life of a high school student several states away.
Weete was finishing up teaching a teen MHFA course at a local high school when a student approached and told her he was worried about a friend.
The student said his friend went to a different school in a different state, but had started showing symptoms of a mental health crisis like those they had discussed in the class. The student knew his friend was going through a tough spot with other friends; he hadn’t been responding on Snapchat; he quit his hockey team; and he wasn’t online to game like usual. Putting another teen MHFA lesson into action, the student reached out again and asked his friend, “Are you thinking about killing yourself?” He hadn’t received a response.
“It was so brave for this kid to step forward,” Weete said. “He was clearly concerned; I could see it on his face.”
Weete and the student went to the school guidance office, where he again shared his concerns. The guidance counselor started working on getting in contact with the other boy’s school.
“Community mental health centers or private practices, they’re so jam-packed and booked with people, there’s just not enough clinicians out there. The idea is to get this information out into the community so that anyone who takes the class can learn to be a support person and help someone, bridge the gap until they’re able to actually see a therapist.”
Reducing Stigma, One First Aider At a Time
Weete serves as Community Education and Engagement Manager for Community Partners New Hampshire, a community mental health center. She is also a founding member of a local community-driven grassroots coalition called the Dover Mental Health Alliance, dedicated to mental health education, awareness, stigma elimination and suicide prevention.
She first took Mental Health First Aid after a series of tragic incidents in her town. Within three years, three boys died by suicide.
“It was just a profound loss, and no one knew how to talk about it,” Weete said. “I was just frustrated by that. I didn’t know how to talk about it.”
Weete realized Mental Health First Aid was the kind of education that could spread widely through her community, giving them the language and skills to help each other. Now, she is a certified Instructor for Adult, Youth and teen Mental Health First Aid, and is a strong advocate for community mental health education through Dover Mental Health Alliance.
“Community mental health centers or private practices, they’re so jam-packed and booked with people, there’s just not enough clinicians out there,” Weete said. “The idea is to get this information out into the community so that anyone who takes the class can learn to be a support person and help someone, bridge the gap until they’re able to actually see a therapist.”
One of Weete’s favorite things about Mental Health First Aid — and one of her main goals in teaching it — is that it reduces stigma. Still, mental health and mental health challenges are too often taboo, she said. And often, a person experiencing a mental health challenge just needs a friendly conversation to start the recovery process.
“It’s a human thing,” she said. “We’re human. We should be looking out for one another. But if people don’t understand what mental health challenges are, what mental illness is, then they’re going to be fearful and they’re going to turn their back. We need to really normalize that mental health is just health.”
The place to really start unraveling that stigma, Weete said, is with young people. They’re more open to having conversations about mental health, but they’re also often facing many challenges of their own: no school has ever told her that their students aren’t in need of mental health training. But Weete sees their engagement, she said, when she teaches teen Mental Health First Aid to 10th graders.
“They’re 15, and they can be tough. Rolling their eyes, sitting with their heads down. But they’re listening. Their ears are turned on. I’ve had numerous comments from teachers who say, ‘that person never speaks in class, and they just asked four questions’ or ‘that student never raises their head and now they’re paying attention.’”
Community Partners New Hampshire received a Mental Health Awareness Training grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which allowed for Weete and her team to open up MHFA to her community and beyond. She said the grant lets them offer MHFA classes for free, which is crucial for community members who may still feel that mental health is a taboo topic: people who are hesitant, Weete said, will be much more likely to join if the course is offered free of charge.
The grant allowed Weete to teach MHFA in local schools, which might not otherwise be able to afford it.
“It’s a huge win for the school districts because schools are so squeezed in their budgets and they’re clamoring for more resources,” Weete said. “There’s only so much you can put on a teacher’s shoulders. So, if we can come in from the community and do this, it takes some of the burden off them. They find that their guidance officers, their school counselors, become really busy during the time we’re delivering the [teen MHFA] training. It’s a good problem to have. They’re reaching the kids that need help.”
But sometimes, the people who need help might not seem in reach, like the friend of Weete’s student, who lived in a different state. After going to the guidance office with the student, Weete returned to teach.
The Ripple Becomes a Wave
Toward the end of that day, a teacher told Weete the guidance counselor had successfully gotten in touch with the other school, who then found the student.
“He had a plan to kill himself that day,” Weete said. “They were able to stop it.”
Weete’s ripple was her love for her community, and the wave reached beyond.
Become a Mental Health First Aid Instructor and start your own ripple today. Together, we can make mental wellbeing a reality for everyone.
