Political Quotes

“today I rise to introduce a very important piece of legislation--the Mental Health First Aid Higher Education Act. The bill authorizes a nationwide demonstration program that treats Mental Health First Aid like the first aid training offered by Red Cross chapters across the United States. Mental Health First Aid teaches the warning signs and risk factors for schizophrenia, major clinical depression, panic attacks, anxiety disorders, trauma, and other common mental disorders, crisis de- escalation techniques, and equips college and university staff with a 5-step action plan to help individuals in psychiatric crisis connect to professional mental health care. One in four adults and 10 percent of children in the United States will suffer from a mental illness this year. We know what to do if someone has a heart attack, but how do we react to someone having a panic attack? Why do we wait for a tragic event to take notice and then bring out emergency measures? When I was Mayor of Anchorage, we worked with the local NAMI organization to train our police in Crisis Intervention Teams, great when responding to a crisis by police officers, but now we need to go further. Mental Health First Aid is for the financial aid workers, the dormitory resident advisers, coaches, and faculty members, to name a few. These are the front-line folks who will learn the warning signs and risk factors before tragedy strikes.…”