Genesee County commissioner wants to spot mental health - ABC 12 – WJRT – Flint, MI

(03/13/13) - A former Mid-Michigan school teacher says she's alarmed at the behavior of some children in the classroom. She wants teachers to be trained to recognize mental health issues and get problem children the help they need.

Genesee County Commissioner Brenda Clack was a teacher for five years. Educators still on the job tell her student behavior has declined considerably since she was in the classroom.

"No teacher should have to deal two-thirds of the classroom time dealing with misbehavior. This has to stop," Clack said.

So she has asked the staff at Genesee County Community Mental Health to offer its expertise.

"The key to this is training teachers who don't recognize what is going on with those children, who need to be in a position to make the best decisions at the moment they see the misbehavior," Clack said.

"The teachers are on the frontline. They see this every single day just like our clinicians do. We want to try to provide the services, whatever we can to help them," said Danis Russell, Genesee County Community Mental Health CEO.

Russell spoke to Flint Community Schools administrators about what he called mental health first aid - the ability to spot problem behavior before it becomes a major issue.

"It's being touted on a national level as something lots of people should have. It's a great training and we would be happy to provide that to the schools," Russell said.

He will meet again with administrators to talk about specific services CMH can offer and when they can be implemented.

"We can't fix everything, but if we can catch something early on that is going to stop bad things from happening in the future and from that problem getting much worse," Russell said.