It’s been a minute since Whitney M. Young Jr. Job Corps Center started its first-of-its-kind partnership with the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

But with some time and cooperation, NAMI and Whitney have managed to make some excellent strides in bringing better mental health resources to the campus, and in creating a blueprint for other Job Corps centers to follow.

The alliance started with a student driven on-campus chapter of NAMI in March.

“we’re going to slowly allow them to use their creative energies to become the leaders of the group, and then we slowly pull away…six months or a year from now, the group will be student-led entirely,” said NAMI Executive Director Nancy Brooks shortly after the creation of that group.

Since then, it has expanded both as a result of the group’s initiatives and a continued relationship with NAMI. Lately, they’ve been partnering with Whitney to offer classes on mental health – to both staff and students, with a recent seminar on suicide prevention and a few more coming soon.

“The nature of our partnership with Job Corp is to bring awareness and end the stigma behind mental illness among the youth and young adults,” said NAMI Stigma-Free Outreach Coordinator Briceson Jones.

And the need is there, Jones added.

“Young adults aged 18-25 years had the highest prevalence of AMI (any mental illness) (30.6%) compared to adults aged 26-49 years (25.3%) and aged 50 and older (14.5%),” he said.

And Job Corps students fall right into that 18-25 year old window, giving NAMI a chance to work with one of the most vulnerable groups. That’s one of the best things about the partnership, Jones said.

“[It allows] us to address those mental health topics to their youth and young adults in a way that makes them feel open, honest, and comfortable about any feelings they may experience,” he noted.

In the future, NAMI hopes to establish a Green Bandana program and add support groups within the Job Corps community – and more trainings are already scheduled after the first one proved a roaring success.

“The impact that I felt from that training is something I will remember for the rest of my life,” Jones said.