Oswego State’s Student Association Volunteer Ambulance Corporation, commonly known as SAVAC, is beginning to provide mental health first-aid training. This only adds to the life-saving techniques and approaches used to enhance campus life safety.

Mental health first-aid training is meant to help communities better understand not only mental illnesses, but substance abuse disorders as well.

Approximately 1 in 5 Americans have a mental illness or are victims of substance abuse and many are reluctant or unaware of how to seek help.

Mental health first-aid training is an eight-hour course that provides individuals with the skills to pick out, identify and approach signs of a mental illness. Ultimately, the training better suits students to be able to provide initial support to those who they suspect or know have a mental illness or substance abuse disorder. The training leaves students, parents, teachers, and anyone else who takes the course, with the means to contact and connect with those able to really help someone with a mental illness or substance abuse disorder. At the end of the training, one will be able to answer the questions “What do I do?” and “How can I help?” when helping someone who is suffering from a mental illness. They will be equipped with the tools to recognize signs of an illness and assist in helping deal with the illness at hand.

  SAVAC is an immensely important corporation on campus. They aid students every day and assist with a variety of medical emergencies. While SAVAC helps with issues regarding physical health, alcohol mishaps and injuries has proven worthwhile, mental illness among college students was often overlooked. College students are ridden with numerous unfortunate medical issues, many of which SAVAC volunteers are trained to provide assistance for. Mental illnesses were not among those illnesses, until now.

Students walk around campus every day, harboring a mental illness that likely next-to-no one is aware of. Students have mental breakdowns and panic attacks as the result of stress, overwhelming amounts of work and life in general. Students will face these issues and no one will be readily available to help or at least there was no one readily available and trained to help. Having staff and students who are in fact trained to help students with these illnesses could increase student morale and decrease effects of said illnesses. Panic attacks leave students in a state of crippling fear, resulting from abrupt, crippling anxiety. Students feel helpless in these situations, experiencing one of many effects of anxiety.

Mental illnesses are so severely overlooked as needing medical attention, it is no wonder so many students keep them private instead of seeking help. While it is exceedingly important that SAVAC is trained to and able to help with medical emergencies as they are, it is even more important that they are also able to help in the event of panic attacks. Training SAVAC members to assist in mental illness issues will to only make the campus safer and SAVAC more effective.