Students will be able to take a course on mental health starting this J-Term. Graphic by Elizabeth Wong.
For both the Winter J Term semester and the upcoming spring semester, a course that teaches mental health first aid will be offered to students at the University of Rhode Island.
This one-credit class will teach students how to identify, understand and respond to signs of mental illness and substance use disorders. It will run once a week for an hour and 15 minutes.
Upon completion of the course, students will receive national certification in mental health first aid, which is a certificate students can put on their resumes.
According to Dr. Lindsey Anderson, director of the Psychological Consultation Center, a mental health first-aid course first came to campus in 2017, after discussions began about the effort two years earlier. Anderson said that the course was initially offered as an all-day class that led to certification, but it was hard for students to attend due to the busy schedules they have.
“We got a lot of interest from students, but they couldn’t commit to the way we started to roll it out to faculty and staff,” she said. “Ultimately, it became very clear that it needed to be this way timewise and credit-bearing in order to get students enrolled in this way.”
The class will also teach the ALGEE action plan. This includes assessing for risk, listening non-judgmentally and giving reassurance and information. The final two stages are encouraging professional help and self-help.
The University will be offering two sessions of the course over winter break, and three sessions during the spring semester. Anderson said that the sessions are either full or almost full, with class sizes around 25 to 30 students.
Anderson said the University has been “tremendously supportive” in bringing mental health awareness to campus, but it was a mental health summit that faculty members attended which led to the idea of the class. She said they saw how other institutions rolled it into their schools, with one University requiring education majors to take the course as part of earning their degree.
URI is not limiting education majors as the only ones who can take the course. While it is listed as an education class in e-Campus and on students’ transcripts, anybody can take the class with no prerequisites required.
Junior Abby Jones is pleased to see how practical the class will be for students.
“I really like how the class is only once a week and for not that long,” she said. “Mental health is really important, so I would be interested in learning how I would be able to help my friends and other students.”
Anderson is excited about the potential impact the class will bring to students.
“We know from formal and informal discussions with students on campus that mental health is a concern that they have,” she said. “I think this is going to be an amazing strategy for them to be able to talk about it and help out other students in need.”