All right, we're gonna get started with today's presentation.

I'd like to welcome everyone to our September well session.

For September, we focused on suicide prevention awareness and resources, including how we can support someone who is experiencing a mental health struggle.

We hosted our first ever employee mental health first aid course here at the city, and we had 12 of our staff, city employees that earn the mental health first aid certification, which is wonderful.

Nationally, suicide is the second leading cause of death for those 10 through 44, with New Hampshire having approximately 35% higher rate than national ranking.

So that's a bit concerning.

Back from the 2020 New Hampshire Suicide Prevention Plan.

It stated that one person died by suicide every 31 hours in New Hampshire.

So that again was another statistic that was a bit staggering from that report.

Suicide clearly presents significant and growing public health concern, especially among our first responders, military, and veterans, those with substance use and mental health issues as well.

Today we have Amy Cook from NAMI here joining us.

Welcome, Amy.

Amy's with Ben is with the organization in the role of training director.

The National Alliance of Mental Health is often referred to as NAMI.

And that's a grassroot mental health organization working to improve the quality of life for all by providing support, education, and advocacy for people affected by mental illness and suicide.

So today, Amy's gonna walk us through NAMI's programs, and we'll turn it over to Amy.

Thank you.

And so you said you're recording, so I should use the microphone, yes.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

Just making sure.

So thank you, Christy, for having me here, and ladies for being my audience.

So I have a bunch of things that I wanna let you know about NAMI New Hampshire.

Um, originally in 1978, Peggy Straw, she from New Hampshire.

It all started at her kitchen table.

She had a daughter who is experiencing mental illness.

Um, and she worked at the community mental health center.

So she was in the field already, and around mid-70s, she went to a conference and heard that other people, other parents and other states were experiencing some of the same caregiving responsibilities and challenges that she was and getting that getting her daughter the help that she really needed.

And she heard that they were thinking of starting an alliance.

So she got involved and she convinced New Hampshire to be part of the NAMI National Alliance for Mental Illness.

So she really started our New Hampshire chapter.

Um and so it started all about families for families with families, which is which is wonderful.

We have a Peggy Straw conference room named after her.

So we often talk about her a lot because of what the impact that she had.

So it's a grassroots organization, like Christie said, um, and you saw Peggy Straw.

So it's really about support, education, and advocacy.

Those are our three pillars.

And we offer a lot of different services to families, to professionals around New Hampshire.

So this uh um this handout, and I can send any of the handouts you see clips of that are up there.

If you think that they're ones that you think would be great for staff, let me know because I can send them.

Um, so 221,000 adults in New Hampshire are affected by illness.

One in three report having had depression or anxiety since COVID.

So we often tell people that we're talking to you're not alone.

Unfortunately, there's a lot of people who are experiencing exactly what you're experiencing or what a family member might be experiencing.

Almost 57% of granite staters ages 12 to 17 who have depression did not receive any care in the past year.

So it tells us in the field of mental health that we have a lot to do still in terms of making sure that services are accessible to everybody.

So hope starts with with you as professionals, um, especially in that public health field, right?

You you experience the same thing that we do a lot, and even city employees, like in terms of being employed by the city, you're always, I'm assuming that you're always running into people who are experiencing some sort of crisis, um, whether that's a mental health crisis or a housing crisis, economic crisis that can certainly add to their mental health.

So these are our three pillars support, educate, and advocate.

We have an info and referral line that we also have Spanish speakers who answer as well.

So the info and referral line, I wish that our info and referral staff could do all of these presentations because they know everything.

They literally know everything.

So we have people themselves who need services, call the info and referral line, but we also have parents, we have teachers who aren't sure, you know, what they can offer to families, HR people looking for services to offer to their employees.

So the info and referral line is for absolutely anybody.

You can find either what services are available, you can find out where you can get to support groups.

They definitely know a little bit of everything.

So leading, there was a good transition into support groups.

Support groups is one of one of the biggest things that NAMI New Hampshire does.

We have support groups for the people who are affected by mental illness, so like a peer-to-peer support groups, but we also have a lot of family support groups.