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JULIE: OK. And I'm going to mute
my mic here in a second. OK, so hello and
welcome, everyone. Hopefully everyone can hear. Welcome to today's
public librarians chat. Our guest presenter
is Jeremy Wilson. He's the project coordinator for
the California State Library's Mental Health Initiative. And during today's
webinar, Jeremy will be describing his efforts
in obtaining the initiative's goal, which is to offer
mental health training opportunities to all public
library staff in California. That's a very ambitious
goal, and they've done a lot, and we're excited
to hear about it. So thank you Jeremy. JEREMY WILSON: You are welcome. Thank you for having me. Are we OK to go ahead
and get started? JULIE: Yes. JEREMY WILSON: Perfect. So welcome everybody. Thanks for taking your time. As Julie mentioned, one of
the goals of the Mental Health Initiative was to look
at a variety of ways to provide training
around mental health and ensure that there
were different ways for public library staff
to receive these trainings. So some of them were
in person, some of them were webinars like ours
that have been archived, and then others were videos
that are online as well. So making sure that, regardless
of the size of the library, the hours of the library,
the staffing of the library, these opportunities were
available for public libraries staff to receive as training. So to give you a broad overview
of year one of our Mental Health Initiative-- we
are currently in year two. The major part of our
in-person trainings was the Mental Health
First Aid trainings. These trainings are provided
through National Council, and there's two levels for
Mental Health First Aid trainings. One is that we host Mental
Health First Aid instructor certification programs, so
this is a training of trainers. There's 30 individuals,
it's a week long. After they are trained, they
go back into their community and have a year to provide three
8 hour Mental Health First Aid trainings, which we refer to as
the local Mental Health First Aid trainings. In order to accomplish
this, we fully funded their travel, the
cost of the training, their meals for the week. We also paid for their backfill
during that week of training, as well as when they were
providing those eight hour trainings and the
cost of the manual. So we really look to
eliminate any barriers. So if they were off the
circulation desk providing this training, there wasn't
been a missing person at the circulation desk. They could provide backfill
and bring in other staff. We also utilize the essentials
at the library training. This is a training provided by
a partner here in California. It's a nationally
funded training. And this training is in
person from four hours long, and this is an overview of
mental health, mental illness. And then also it provide
you with online resources. So you have to have
a computer lab set up so that people
at the training can get online, check
out different web sites, different resources
that are out there, so that when you're helping to
refer individuals to resources, you've seen them, you're
familiar with them, or you can at
least refer to what you received in the training. JULIE: Excuse me, Jeremy. I think we may have a question. JEREMY WILSON: Uh-huh. Oh. JULIE: Is there
a question from-- I saw hand up just a
minute, and I wasn't sure if there was a question
from one of our members. If you do have a
question, please use the chat box,
and then Jeremy can look down and
answer them as needed. If you're having a
question with technology, can you send me an
email, just privately? That would be great. OK, I'm going to
mute myself again. JEREMY WILSON: No, no. That's fine. Yes, please. I welcome questions. The webinars-- I'll go
over the topics of those. We provided six
different webinars. We also produced seven different
videos that are on YouTube. And then the other two
aspects that we did is when libraries sent someone
through the Mental Health First Aid instructor program,
the trainer of trainers, it's a big commitment. And even though we paid
for all of their travel, and their backfill,
and all that, that's still a big commitment. So the incentive there was that
we provided those libraries with money for
collection update. It was a small
amount, but they were able to purchase new books,
new online resources, DVDs, whatever it may be that their
library and their readership wanted that would help
to get rid of the older books and materials
that they had that were either out of
date or may even portrayed mental illness in a stigmatizing
way, as well as just updates. So they had new children's books
on why is mommy sad sometimes, to a topical book on bipolar,
to just overall wellness and how-- it might be on
mindfulness or meditation. So that they had leeway
there but as long as it related to mental health
and updated their resources. So that was an
incentive for them sending their staff to
a week long training and then that staff providing
at least three 8 hour trainings to their fellow librarians
and library staff, as well as their
community members. And then the last piece,
which was an opportunity to provide seed money
for 12 libraries to hire health care
workers, whether that's a licensed therapist, that's
a psychiatric nurse, that's someone who is a social
worker, a variety of ways, as long as that individual
had professional experience supporting individuals
affected by mental illness. And then those
health care workers were stationed
within the libraries. And those health care
workers provided one-on-one with patrons. If there was a patron
who was being disruptive or needed support,
that health worker was able to connect with them,
help them identify resources or services in the community. That health care worker was
able to provide many trainings at staff meetings, as well as
have office hours where staff could pop in and say, "The other
day I was at the circulation desk, and a patron came up. They were disruptive. This is how I approached it. This is what I did,"
and get feedback on how they were
working with that patron and if there was another
way that they could help. And then some of these
health care workers also helped strengthen or even
establish the library's partnerships with organizations
in their community that served mental health,
provided mental health services. The goal was that the seed money
would leverage local dollars, and unfortunately, none
of the 12 libraries were able to, in this
year, leverage long term funding, so sustainability. But what we heard from
many of our libraries that had these integrated
health care workers is that it really raised the
awareness for the decision makers, the city council,
the board of supervisors, those governing boards. When they heard the success
that the libraries were having, when they heard from the
mental health organization saying how helpful it was,
because the library had health care workers there,
so they didn't always have to find out
their crisis staff. So people said it
helped plant the seed and that they do
believe that they'll be able to secure funding. It just may take
a year or two just depending on the
local funding cycle. So with our Mental Health
First Aid training, again, we had three
instructor programs and those were those week long. So of those individuals that
were trained as trainers, they went out and provided-- we had 73 of them trained-- those 73 individuals went and
provided 57 local Mental Health First Aid trainings,
and that resulted in 851 people being trained
on Mental Health First Aid. A large majority of those are
library staff and volunteers, but they did open it up to their
community partners as well. So overall, counting our 73
instructors and 851 people, we have 924 people now trained
in Mental Health First Aid. And these statistics are
as of the end of September. And I know some
of those trainers have continued
providing training, so those numbers would
be a little bit higher. The essentials at the
library, as I mentioned, that's the in-person
four hours, where you're in front of a
computer and you're going through some resources. We had one at our annual
California Library Association Conference as a
pre-conference session. And then we provided
two in Redding, which is a rural area,
so northern California, and then Oxnard and Glendale
are southern California, more urban. But we had 105 individuals that
were trained and participated in that training. So here are our seven webinars. I said six, pardon me there. We had 325 individuals who
participated in those webinars. These webinars are
archived online, so more views have
probably occurred. But at the time of the webinars,
who actually signed in and was on there for the
entire webinar, that's where we received that number. But we did a variety of topics. One was on veterans
and mental health, just in terms of suicide
prevention, signs to look for. We had learning
about PTSD, so how does that impact
someone who has served? When they come
back, how does that impact them when
they're integrating back into the community, in life? We had one on teen
mental illness 101. So just talking about how a
lot of behaviors for teens can be just developmental, it
can be part of adolescence, but it can also be a sign
that there may be something else going on and how often. And research shows
that there's actually onset in adolescent years of a
mental illness or mental health challenge, but
that's not diagnosed until 22 to 24 age, usually
college or post-college. So there's a huge gap there in
terms of onset from treatment. So what can team
librarians and librarians be aware of in terms of a sign
that a teen may displaying that something is going on? We did a one on teen
suicide prevention, how to listen, assess,
and then connect them to the local resources. Our teen webinars were
extremely popular. We had actually only
planned on having two, but we decided to
add them because they had a high attendance,
and the field was saying, "These are really good. We need more on teen
mental health training." So we looked at becoming
a trauma informed and looking at resiliency. So when teens are born into
or moved to a community and there's a lot
of risk factors or environmental factors,
how do you build up that community resiliency? When understanding
trauma, then you can understand how it can
change brain and the brain development. How it can change behaviors, how
it can be a generational thing that it encounters. So really, that
understanding that for some of these young
people or these families, they don't know how
stressed they are. They don't know
that they shouldn't be that anxious all the time. And then how to actually use the
community of resiliency model to support those youths. And then the last one was
we got a lot of questions about the autism
spectrum disorder, and it is not a mental
health diagnosis. Oftentimes, it may be treated
by a mental health professional and while they're also
treating a mental health challenge or diagnosis. So we use this
opportunity for people to better understand what the
autism spectrum disorder is compared to a mental
health disorder, and then some very hands on tips. What can a librarian
do to support that a patron, who's on the
autism spectrum disorder, or that family
member, who is there during story time with a
child has an autism spectrum disorder. So it was really a lot of
webinars of this is the topic, and then how does that
apply to libraries? One thing that we
have maintained through this initiative is,
while increasing library staff knowledge and skills
around mental health and supporting that patron
with mental illness, also making sure that
library staff stay within their professional scope. We're not asking librarians
to become social workers or therapists but have
enough understanding and be able to then say,
"OK, this is what I think. This is how I could
support that person. Here's some information. Let me refer you." Our video training series-- and I failed to
update this number. This number was when I
presented back in November, but we launched these videos
in the end of September. And since then, the
videos have actually been viewed 22,244 times. These videos are up on YouTube. There's six of them. You can treat them as
individual episodes, you can treat them as a series. The way that these
videos came to be is that we first surveyed
over 400 public library staff, asking them what behaviors
have they countered, that they would like to learn
how to better respond to. Are there topics? We ask them a variety of,
"How would these trainings be relevant to you? What around mental
health do you want to know so you can better
serve your patrons?" And then one of the
things that we also did is after we did the surveys,
we came up with a list, and we narrowed it down. And then mental
health professionals were interviewed
for these videos. We also had library staff
that were interviewed and some patrons, some
teens, some parents. So we got that real world
perspective in these videos. There are themes, or
there are scenarios that are all based off of what
librarians said in the surveys and interviews, as
well as those patrons. So the scenarios you'd
see in these videos came from librarians
saying, "I don't know how to respond when X happens. I don't know how I should
approach patron when they're displaying these behaviors." So we really wanted
to make sure that it was true to the experience of
the librarian, what they've encountered, as well making
sure that we didn't portray librarians as
helpless, that they didn't know how to respond to
somebody who may be yelling and responding to voices. We didn't also want
to portray patrons who are affected
by mental illness in a way that would
further a stigma. So we made sure
that the scenarios were really balanced and
portrayed people fairly, as well as were still
true to what librarians had said in these interviews
and these surveys of experiences they've had. Our training series-- we had
a welcome and introduction. We had one on establishing a
positive staff cultural around mental health, do's and don'ts
of interacting with a patron. So those scenarios where
you're not really sure, we showed the
"don't" perspectives in terms of how someone
might respond and then ways that we believe are
more helpful and would be a more positive outcome. How to establish that
positive relationship with that disruptive patron. Exploring compassion fatigue. So it's very common in
all helping professions, whether that's a mental
health professional, whether that's a librarian,
a teacher, a nurse, anyone who's helping individuals. You start to kind of get a
little worn down at times. So how do you
address it, but also how do you make it
OK for a staff member to say, "Wow, that
person really got to me," or, "Whew, I am needing a little
break from circulation desk. I need to go stock
shelves because I'm experiencing something"? So the mental health side of
it, but also for that staff, so that they understand
it's OK and it's normal. I mean, you're going to
experience compassion fatigue at some point. How to successfully address
other patrons complaints about the patron affected
by mental illness. "Why do you let that
patron in here?" And that patron being
the homeless man. So it's a public library. As long as they're following
the rules, people are welcome. So how do you respond
in a way that's honoring to that
person's complaint and also honoring
to that patron who's affected by mental illness? We have a teen mental
health video that is still under development. That would be our
final video, which is about to launch this
week or early next week-- is new approaches, so how
libraries are collaborating with mental health providers
and systems in the state, so whether that's a
more integrated project or there's just some
collaboration on a task force or for different events
throughout the year. I talked about the health
care workers, that's how many hours they served. They were awarded their
funding for those health care workers in May, and it
went through September. So a few short
months, but we had a lot of individual
served during that time. And I went over these
bullets already. This is my contact information. And before I wrap
up, I just want to let you know that we are
in the process of developing this year's videos and webinars. We have five video topics that
we're currently developing. We're doing one that will
focus on the challenges and perspectives
that are unique, in terms of mental
health challenges, for the LGBT community
and their families and what libraries can do to
support those individuals. We're going to do a
video on bullying. A lot of it will be focused on
teens and that cyber bullying, we just can't escape the
playground bully anymore. With social media and texting
and online technology, bullying can truly be 24/7. But also, as adults,
when there's a bully and how that impacts behavior
and how you can support patrons. JULIE: Excuse me, Jeremy. JEREMY WILSON: Yeah. JULIE: We have a question-- JEREMY WILSON: Oh. JULIE: --from Sherry. And Sherry, I'll go ahead
and unmute your mic. Can you talk? JEREMY WILSON: Hi, Sherry. SHERRY: Oh, gosh. Hello? JEREMY WILSON: Hi, Sherry. SHERRY: Hi. I think I made a mistake
by raising my hand. I apologize. JEREMY WILSON: It's OK. Well, hello. SHERRY: Hello. Bye. JEREMY WILSON: Bye. JULIE: OK, do we have any
other questions for Jeremy? And please, if you feel
comfortable texting or chatting your question, or if you want to
ask him directly, that's fine. If you are able to use your
mic, go ahead and use it. JEREMY WILSON: Cassidy--
and just you all know that the videos and the
webinars from year one Julie's going to send out with
the slides in a PDF. And it has the webinars,
their topics, and the link. So you can just click on the
link, go on to the webinar and view it, as well
with the YouTube videos. If you searched for the YouTube
videos Mental Health Library, they'll most likely pop
up with just that search, but we're also
going to send you-- there's a document that has
the webinars on page one, page two has the videos, the
episode titles, the length, and then the link. So we can get those
to you shortly. The other videos that we're
going to be doing this year are how libraries respond
to person-caused and natural-caused disasters,
especially into the community. How do you support the
community in that moment as they're healing,
and then also how do you support each other? We are going to have
a variety of topics, from wildfires
here in California have been worse than usual,
rain, flooding, mudslides, can mean something evacuated,
can mean something devastated, and also unfortunately,
mass shootings. So how do you
respond to each other but also to your community
in those moments and after? We're going to do one
on homelessness, which homelessness is not a
mental health issue, but oftentimes, that's
where people turn. So how do you understand the
mental health perspective for individuals who are
experiencing homelessness may have? So it's a pretty
complicated topic, so we're just hoping to
kind of broach the subject. And then looking at
trauma, that will be a variety of adverse
health and experiences, also known as ACEs. So when a child is born
into an environment that has a lot of community violence,
generational factors that can contribute to trauma, PTSD
for our military, our families who live in certain communities,
law enforcement, as well as trauma that cultural and racial
communities and populations experience or have experienced,
and that they're now part of our community. And then the webinars
for this year, we're looking at verbal
de-escalation tactics. So this is a way that crisis
workers, first responders, use certain techniques to help,
hopefully, just de-escalate that individual, who might
be manic, yelling, shouting, whatever it may be, just
to calm them down, and then be able to work with them and
refer them out, or get them more support, or hopefully
resolve that scenario. But how do you just help them
kind of bring it down a level? Addressing postpartum
depression, as well as the stress and anxiety and
mental health challenges that new parents
are experiencing, especially those
families who are coming for storytime or they're
bringing their families. How do you support that mom
and maybe even that child? How do you effectively market
mental health activities at your library? So how are you reaching
out to other providers in your community? Also what are you
doing so people know, "Oh, we can go to the
library, and they're having a book club in the summer
for teens on mental health." The book has a mental health
theme to it or a character that that's part of the plot. And that's a way to kind
of work with your teen and get them connected
to other people who might be experiencing that
or interested in that topic. How do our libraries who've
provided these Mental Health First Aid trainings
move beyond that? So how do you use that Mental
Health First Aid training to leverage other support
in your community? And then the final
one is a webinar that is two parts, one
on educating the library field on secondary trauma. So when you are working with
someone, when you're supporting someone who's coming
into your library, all helping
professionals at times will experience
secondary trauma. You're experiencing their
trauma that that person you're working with. And what that means
is there's something about their experience that
is traumatizing to you, maybe not the level
it is for them. And so how do you acknowledge
why it may be that? It's because you
relate to something. My brother's a fireman. Every time he goes on a medical
call that involves children-- he's a father-- that's what gets him. All the other calls
he can handle. So when there's a medical
call that involves children, he has someone that he talks to
at work that helps him de-brief that. So similar to that. And then the second
part to that webinar is how does library
management set up a system that helps
staff be able to address why that incident, why that
patron, is affecting them? So it normalizes it. It might be in
staff meetings, it might be setting
up in supervision, it might be bringing
in trainers, but how do you then,
once it's addressed, allow staff to know
that that's normal? It goes kind of back to the
compassion fatigue, people who respond, flight
crews, medical crews, military firemen, they have
this in their profession because they're experiencing
some pretty traumatic stuff. Many of our librarians
and library staff are also experiencing
some pretty tough stuff because they're working
with these patrons and they're seeing what
they're going through. JULIE: Excuse me, Jeremy. We do have a question,
and the question is, "What training was
provided to the mental health workers about library
environments and library goals to serve them? In other words, did librarians
develop a webinar for them?" And I think this question has
to do with the mental health workers who are
working in the library. JEREMY WILSON: That's
a great question. We did not have a
formalized training for all of the health care workers. They were short term, and each
library did it a little bit different. So some libraries already had
a health care organization that was bringing one
of their therapists or their peers, individuals
who have lived experience, to the libraries on
a semi-regular basis. So this funding allowed
them to increase that. We had some libraries who worked
with their local public mental health system. And we had a few libraries
who had hired their own. Because it was so unique
and it was seed money, it was up to those the
libraries to provide that training and that structure
and identify what would work best for their locality. Some local governments would
not let libraries receive short term money to hire someone
because it would be considering you add it to the
budget, and then you're laying somebody off. So that's when they created
a memorandum of understanding with a local partner,
and said, "If we give you this chunk of money, just
send your staff here more." JULIE: OK. Thank you. JEREMY WILSON: Yeah. JULIE: Do we have any
more questions for Jeremy? If not, we're going to
change gears a little bit, and he will be switching
the roll over to me. JEREMY WILSON: Yes. I believe I did it
correctly, hopefully. JULIE: OK. So it's a right
click on my name, and it's "change
role to presenter". JEREMY WILSON: Oops. I gave it a different Julie. So Julie, if you're
out there, you can-- JULIE: Julie. Yes, Julie. If you would please
click on my name, and change my role to presenter. JEREMY WILSON: Uh-oh. JULIE: Hmm. See if I have the
ultimate power. No, cancel. All control of this meeting. OK, so Jeremy, can
you click off of her? Since you clicked on her,
I wonder if you can click-- JEREMY WILSON: I don't know. Maybe Julie's not at the desk. No, I can't-- Well, actually, let me try that. JULIE: OK, I got it. JEREMY WILSON: Oh, you got it. Perfect. JULIE: I am now the presenter. OK-- JEREMY WILSON: Whew. JULIE: -- great. All right. OK. So thank you very much, Jeremy. JEREMY WILSON: You're welcome. JULIE: I really appreciate
all the hard work and effort that you have done to implement
California's Mental Health Initiative. And I'm so grateful that
the California State Library is sharing all of these training
resources with other libraries across the United States
and, apparently, the world. You know, 22,000 people are
accessing these webinars, so you're probably having
a worldwide impact. JEREMY WILSON: Hopefully. JULIE: So Alaska does
differ, obviously, from California in climate
and geography and population density, but our library staff
do share similar experiences of coming into
contact, especially in our large urban libraries. They often come in daily contact
with individuals exhibiting signs of a mental illness. So this training is really
valuable for our staff as well. I'm sure you're aware, Alaska
is a really large state in which nearly half
of our residents live in the Anchorage bowl,
and the rest of the residents are dispersed in really sparsely
populated and often isolated communities. And that's why I had that
picture of Tenakee Springs. That's a community of
100 people in the summer, and in the winter that
the population gets down to under 50 people. Unfortunately, Alaska has some
real serious mental health issues that need
to be addressed, as you can see from
the statistics reported in the 2016 Alaska score card. Key issue impacting
Alaska mental health trust beneficiaries. Alaska's suicide rate is
more than double the US rate, which is really quite
shocking when you think of our population size. And even a sadder statistic-- this isn't new-- so like
between 2006 and 2015, the age adjusted rate of
death by suicide in Alaska averaged nearly
twice the US rate. So we are consistently well
above the US rate for suicides. And even sadder is that the
age adjusted suicide mortality rate for Alaska natives
was nearly twice that of white Alaskans. So our native population, this
is a serious, serious issue. And it seems like the
younger population, Alaskans age 15 to 24. So it's our young, and
I think it might also be our young male native
population, primarily. And then I wanted
to include this one. It's not just that Alaskans
are committing more suicides, or even thinking about suicide,
more often than the US rate. And again, this is particularly
true for Alaskans 18 to 25 years of age. So our libraries are
definitely coming into contact with people experiencing
mental illness. And that's why I think this
training is so incredibly important. And I think it's
important that we, as the libraries
across the state, we really spend time and
energy educating everyone on our staff. And a lot of our
staff has volunteers working in our libraries, and
so they should not be excluded. If you have volunteers
coming into your library, this training's just
as important for them. You might even want to share
it with your library board members, just so you can get
this conversation really going. At the Alaska State
Library, we worked our way through the entire
series of the six videos during our weekly meetings. It was a slower approach,
but it allowed us more time to discuss this topic. And it allowed more time for the
topic to be at the forefront, so that when you were out
there dealing with the staff or with the public, that you
were thinking about what you had just heard at the
most recent staff meeting and thinking about how you are
interacting with the people that are coming
into the library. And I think it was really a
beneficial way to do that. It allowed staff
to get comfortable talking about a
subject that many of us find it difficult to
talk about, to talk about stigma, the stigma
of mental illness, think about our own
attitudes, people experiencing mental health. So I think the training
was incredibly useful. We also allowed us to do a
review of our library conduct policies and our procedures
for dealing with staff, particularly when things
get kind of uncomfortable, you know, when you have
those occasional amplified things that can happen. Is everyone handling the
situation in a similar manner? Who are you supposed to
call when you really-- like Jeremy talked
about-- like you feel like you need to
get away from the desk because your heart
rate has increased and you're feeling
like you just need to step away from a situation. So here are some things for
our libraries here in Alaska. Watch the videos as
a group as we did. Watch them
individually, encourage people to do it
individually, and then meet to discuss them as a group. Hopefully you have library
conduct policies and procedures in place. If you don't, maybe it's
time to think about those. Provide your staff with
a list of local and state mental health resources. I think it's so helpful if
you can provide a person that comes into your library
with a list of resources, or if you can refer to those
resources and say, "Hey, did you know that you can get
a warm meal here on these days, at this time? Those resources are
available to you." In our library, we
have quite a few people who are experiencing
homelessness, sometimes, as Jeremy mentioned,
the two go hand-in-hand. So it's really
important for staff to have access to those
resources when they need them, but also make them readily
available to people in the community so
they can pick them up when they need them. They don't have to ask
you for that information, it's out there. And as Jeremy mentioned,
partnering with other agencies is super critical. We've developed a
Mental Health Resource LibGuide for librarians. There's information on there,
there's tutorials and videos. We've linked to the California
State Library's video series. There's podcasts, there's
crisis information. So it's a great
resource for librarians to use to get familiar
with state resources that are available to them. And again, it's important
to know what those are, but it's also more
important to know what's available in your community. And I know in some
of our communities there just may not be anything
locally available, really. I was recently in
Tenakee, and I'm not sure that there is an emergency
shelter in that community. So you live in your community,
you know what available. And if you could just create
a half sheet or something with those resources and
have that stuff available to your patrons, that
would be fantastic. We recently had training on
the Mental Health First Aid, and that's something that
Jeremy talked a lot about. This is super, super
important training. I'd like to see them come
and do a pre-conference, maybe at the next-- not the upcoming conference
but maybe the one following. I think this is information
that all librarians should have access to. They covered the risk
factors and the warning signs of mental health
concerns, provided really detailed information on
depression and anxiety and trauma and psychosis
and all of that. They talked about the
five step action plan, or LG I think the acronym is. And I think the first one is-- let's see. I think the first
step in LG is assess for risk of suicide or harm. And one of the things I
learned during the training is it's OK to ask someone if
they're thinking about suicide. That's something I
would have never have thought about before. I also learned that,
I think it's 46%-- in the United States, almost
half of adults, 46.4%, will experience a mental
illness in their time. So this is something that
will affect all of us because we'll either be in
contact with other people who are experiencing mental illness,
or we may be even suffering from depression or anxiety. So they listed the five steps. And again, the
first one was assess the risk of suicide or harm. The second step was
listening non-judgmentally. Third step was give a
reassurance and information, and that's why I keep mentioning
come up with some resources locally, local and state
resources, to provide people. Encourage the person to seek
appropriate professional help, and encourage self-help and
other support strategies. So in order to schedule
Mental Health First Aid training in Alaska, you want
to contact the Alaska Training Co-operative, Jill Ramsey. She was the person-- her and another
colleague came to Juneau, and they did the
training for us. If you're thinking about
scheduling that training, invite other agencies in
your community to attend. We opened up the
training, and it was really interesting to see
all of the various other state agencies that attended
that training. So something you might want to
collaborate with other agencies on. And that's my
contact information. And again, I just really want to
thank Jeremy and the California State Library. As a librarians, we
have the privilege of interacting with a wide range
of community members every day. And it's important that we make
everyone feel welcome and safe in our libraries. And the mental health videos
at the California State Library are a valuable tool
that we can use to ensure that we're providing
the equitable and compassionate service that everyone in
our community deserves. So any questions for
Jeremy or me before we go? Jeremy, I see a question. "Is there a checklist
to help an individual identify signs of
compassion fatigue?" JEREMY WILSON: Yes. I can look for that
and send it to you all. But there is definitely
some tell-tale signs in terms of compassion fatigue. In general, it's
things like when you see that certain
individual coming up to you, it's like you're like, "Yep,
here comes Jeremy again. He always is causing
me issues," to not really caring if you're
rude or disrespectful, finding yourself agitated,
finding yourself even maybe angry at that individual. So I can follow up with some
compassion fatigue signs, but that's typically it. It could even be
where you're not having that same excitement,
motivation for going to work, that you typically do. If this is a passion for you,
professionally and personally, and you're thinking,
"I really don't want to go in there
because I don't want to have to deal
with--" fill in the blank. But I can definitely send
something more for you guys. JULIE: OK, thank you. "Thank you. This will help us establish a
spectrum for library staff." So this person's
library staff, they may be dealing with a
large number of people, either the homeless or people
experiencing mental health issues. So folks, I just added the link
to the Alaska State Library's Mental Health LibGuide. Again, that's
available from Alaska-- what is it? Library.alaska.gov under
the For Librarians tab. It's listed with our
other online LibGuide. JEREMY WILSON: Yeah. JULIE: OK, Jeremy. Anything else you'd like
to add before we sign off? JEREMY WILSON: One thing that
I would encourage you all to do is, I know how stretched
public sector staff are. If you already have
regular meetings, whether they're weekly, monthly,
quarterly, with your staff, if there's ways to
incorporate mini trainings, watching one of these videos,
having a little article that you read is a group, that
will help normalize addressing these issues with staff. So staff then starts
to feel that like, "Oh, maybe I do have a little
bit of compassion fatigue, and I should talk
to my supervisor." Or it normalizes
it, so people feel more comfortable because mental
health still has that stigma. And some of us may
be affected by it, whether as an individual
or a family member or a loved one or our neighbor. And so there's still
that fear for many of us, even if we're familiar
or comfortable with it. So ways to integrate it into
already-happening meetings and small trainings
will definitely open up the doors
for larger learning opportunities as a team.
