When Amber Bryant attended a youth mental health first aid training session Wednesday at the Green River Regional Educational Cooperative, she hoped to learn skills she could take back to her students in Owensboro.

Bryant teaches students with emotional behavior disorders in her Owensboro Independent Schools classroom, where all of her students have specific mental health needs.

By attending, Bryant said she hoped to get “more of an idea of how I can help them when they’re having a mental health crisis, like I see in my classroom quite frequently.”

Often, parents come to her for answers.

“A lot of the parents I have are like ‘Well, what do I do when they’re acting like this?’ ” she said.

Bryant was among a group of about 30 educators representing school districts throughout Kentucky. Together, they hoped to better understand common types of mental illness in adolescents – anxiety and depression, substance use and eating disorders, ADHD and even schizophrenia.

Educators spent the morning charting out youth mental health disorders and their symptoms and risk factors, and participated in other exercises before creating action plans to take back to their schools. The training was made possible by the state’s Advancing Wellness and Resilience in Education grant, also called the AWARE grant.

Lisa Logue, a consultant with GRREC, led the session. She specializes in positive behavioral interventions and supports, which teaches educators how to encourage good student behavior in their schools.

“We’re not learning to be the therapist,” Logue told the group, describing the role of mental health first aid.

Just like conventional first aid training, Logue said, youth mental health first aid “helps us to respond until we can get better medical help.” It helps school professionals understand the signs and symptoms of mental health disorders and “understand the importance of early intervention,” Logue said.

According to a definition of youth mental health first aid offered during Logue’s presentation, “first aid is given until appropriate help is received or until the crisis resolves.”

Through the evidence-based program, educators developed action plans they can use in both crisis and non-crisis situations. Educators also got resources to take back to their classrooms, including a manual they can refer back to with information about different mental health disorders.

Stacy Lindsey, one of three student success coaches from Warren County Public Schools, said she wanted to “build my toolbox to be able to offer that support for teachers.” WCPS has increasingly focused on promoting mental health, she said.

“Mental health is such a huge concern for us in Warren County. We’ve got to embed it into our practices,” she said.

Penny Tuttle, a fellow student success coach, said the training “gives us a common language to talk with mental health professionals about things that we’re seeing.”

“We’re with the kids more than they are, but then they will have like a lens to look through,” she said.

Loraine Lacey, also a student success coach, said educators are constantly asking themselves what they can do to step in early enough and prevent problems from getting out of control.

“Intervening early is the key,” Lacey said.