SLU Awarded $48,000 Grant to Expand Mental Health First Aid Training

12/14/2022

The Development Division’s office of Corporate and Foundations Relations has announced that Saint Louis University has received a $48,000 grant from the Patrick P. Lee Foundation in support of Mental Health First Aid training at SLU.

The funding will directly support the expansion of SLU’s Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) training program, a key priority for the University. MHFA training teaches participants to recognize the risk factors and warning signs for mental health and addiction concerns, strategies for how to help someone in both crisis and non-crisis situations, and where to turn for help.

Since the training course was implemented on SLU’s campus in 2019, the program has trained 10 instructors and more than 600 SLU community members, including more than 350 students. MHFA is managed and operated by the National Council for Mental Wellbeing and the Missouri Department of Mental Health.

“Mental health first aid has been an integral part of our community care model at SLU,” said Tori Harwood, wellness coordinator. “By training our students, faculty and staff to support someone through a mental health challenge, we are increasing the number of individuals who can care for others responsibly.”

The Lee Foundation grant will fund 33 training sessions over three semesters, with each class accommodating up to 30 people. The sessions offered will be both pre-scheduled classes open to faculty, staff and students, and classes offered on a requested basis for specific student groups or faculty groups/departments. Both in-person and virtual options are available; facilitators have found in-person classes to be more effective, however.

The Patrick P. Lee Foundation is a private, family foundation committed to achieving immediate and measurable impacts in the areas of mental health and education. Since its creation in 2007, the foundation has awarded over $20 million in mental health grants and scholarship funding for STEM students.

Given recent data from the CDC that shows increasing suicide rates among college-aged populations and in recognition of the COVID-19 pandemic’s effect on the mental health of college students, the Lee Foundation identified this as a critical moment to provide resources to schools to bolster their existing mental health services.

“Once we heard the concerns raised by our college partners about the need for expanded mental health services on campus, we were compelled to act quickly and provide resources to support these students” said Jane Mogavero, executive director of the Lee Foundation. “We know from our work with the Think Bigger Do Good advocacy initiative that targeted programming, such as those planned by our partner schools, can be an effective way of intervening before a crisis occurs and has the added benefit of increasing mental health awareness.”

“We are grateful for the Lee Foundation’s generous grant,” said Eric Anderson, assistant vice president for student well-being at SLU. “This grant assists our student well-being task force recommendation 4.2 by providing ongoing training opportunities for faculty, staff and students to enhance our community’s ability to support holistic well-being and to prevent and respond to mental health crises.”