FAIRMONT– May is mental health awareness month and Public Health and Human Services of Martin and Faribault Counties (FMCHS) is working to put out relevant material in order to reach more people and raise awareness.

Caroline McCourt, SHIP (Statewide Health Improvement Partnership) Community Specialist, said each year in May they try to do more for mental health awareness month.

“It’s helpful that some organizations have made it more of a priority to share resources. There’s Mental Health America’s Mental Health Toolkit and the Minnesota Department of Health’s Mental Wellbeing and Suicide Prevention Units have created a toolkit that has several weeks of activities and posts to help share a similar message,” McCourt said.

Each year, more and more resources come out and McCourt noted that they’re often resources for different audiences.

“There are resources available in Spanish and you can talk to someone in Spanish and they answer you in Spanish. It helps remove those barriers,” McCourt said.

The 988 hotline also has options for a Veterans Crisis Line and a LGBTQ+ Youth and Young Adult Line.

“Each community views mental health in a different light. Even though we’re all humans, we can all be impacted by the biological impacts of mental health,” McCourt said.

She said they’re working to make mental health as easy to talk about and as important to deal with as physical health.

“You need check ups and to do things daily to stay well. When you’re not well and you do have a condition to manage, you need to take it seriously and get those available resources whether it’s therapy or medication,” McCourt said.

She noted that mental health is not one size fits all as everyone has different struggles and different routes that will help them. That’s one of the reasons why mental health awareness month is so important because there’s a push to acknowledge it and talk more about it.

“(It’s) making it easier to talk about with your family and people you care about,” McCourt said.

She said that while the Covid-19 pandemic was hard and strenuous, it did provide an opportunity to put mental health at the forefront. She said more people were able to talk about mental health without it being such a taboo topic.

This month, FMCHS is working on a few relevant projects. McCourt said in the past they have offered mental health first aid training. However, as a whole day training, she said it was hard to ask people to give up a full eight hours of their time unless it was required by work.

“This year we’re sharing some of our Covid-19 impact survey data that asked about mental health care,” McCourt said.

FMCHS is also promoting some of the resources available, such as the mental health client assistance program. McCourt said there is funding available for people who qualify for it. She encouraged anyone interested to reach out to their health care provider or human services.

“You can qualify to receive counseling sessions and an assessment,” McCourt said.

In the past Public Health has shared a mental health toolkit that focused on stress management and resiliency training with area schools and McCourt said she plans to send that information out this year again.

“We are currently working with schools in our tri-county area to offer and embark on a journey of learning more about trauma responses… we’re about halfway through with that. It doesn’t mean the work is going to be done after that, but it’s the first initial learning process because there’s so much information out there about trauma,” McCourt said.

She said many schools are already doing PBIS (Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports) which is a form of trauma response and practice.

“Understanding stress and how adverse childhood experiences impact students and staff is one major aspect of trauma response,” McCourt said.

She said that Kinship of Martin County has also been participating in this to see how it can help its mentors and mentees.

“They’re really focusing on that resilience piece,” McCourt said.

On May 18, there will be a workshop on how to handle crisis in which strategies for deescalation will be talked about.