Center for Professional Growth at Pitt-Greensburg to offer Mental Health First Aid Certification

The Center for Professional Growth at Pitt-Greensburg, in collaboration with Westmoreland Case Management and Supports, Inc., will offer a two-session Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) Certification program on Tuesday, July 24, and Thursday, July 26. The program will run from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Westmoreland Case Management (770 East Pittsburgh Street, Greensburg).

Registration is $55 per person or $35 per peer/family member. Access the registration form at http://tinyurl.com/wcsi-MHFA.Participants interested in receiving 12 CPE credits will pay an additional $25.

Taught by Michel Keller, coordinator of Education and Training for Westmoreland Case Management and Supports, Inc., the MHFA certification program is designed for nurses, social workers, and teachers.

This 12-hour interactive certification course introduces participants to the risk factors, warning signs, impacts of mental health problems, and overviews of common treatments. Participants learn a five-step action plan encompassing the skills, resources, and knowledge to help an individual in a psychiatric crisis connect with appropriate professional, social, and self-help care. The course also helps participants learn the prevalence of various mental health disorders in the United States. MHFA is designed to fight the stigma associated with mental illness and to address the real desire to help someone who is struggling.

Westmoreland Case Management and Supports, Inc., is a nonprofit organization that operates as a base service unit for the Behavioral Health and Developmental Services Program of Westmoreland County. They work to assist clients in assessing services and to provide ongoing service coordination, monitoring, and support to ensure that clients receive the most appropriate and effective services available to meet their individual needs.

The Center for Professional Growth at Pitt-Greensburg provides high-quality, relevant educational courses, programs and services designed to meet the needs of professionals seeking to start, advance or maintain their professional status, while providing career development, training and consulting services that help organizations, businesses and corporations prepare effective leaders and create productive work environments.

Founded in 1963, the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg is a publicly assisted, four-year, liberal arts college in southwestern Pennsylvania. Pitt-Greensburg offers 24 baccalaureate degree programs, including new majors in Education and Spanish, as well as 19 minors, and numerous relocation program options to the Pittsburgh campus. Fifteen percent of Pitt-Greensburg’s full-time faculty—the highest percentage of any University of Pittsburgh campus—have received the prestigious University-wide Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award.