Eastern Iowa police department will bring mental health resiliency training to Iowa first responders

The Mount Vernon-Lisbon Police Department will work with nonprofit Worldmaker Resilience Institute to bring mental health resilience training to first responders across Iowa, thanks to a $200,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice.

The grant was awarded to the Mount Vernon-Lisbon department in October as part of the DOJ’s Law Enforcement Mental Health and Wellness Act Program, which annually offers applicants up to $200,000 each for projects aimed at improving the mental health and wellness of law enforcement officers.

Nonprofit has history with local department

Worldmaker Resilience Institute is contracting with the Mount Vernon-Lisbon Police Department to provide the trainings. The police department has had a close relationship with the nonprofit since Worldmaker was founded in Mount Vernon in 2011, after three Mount Vernon teens died by suicide within months of each other.

It began as a volunteer community resilience project that was meant to last one year in response to the deaths, but expanded into a national nonprofit that offers a comprehensive program of mental health and resiliency trainings to first responders, veterans and other community leaders.

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“I had started this … thinking, one year, I would volunteer just to help stop this loss of life in Mount Vernon and to help our community heal,” said Mollie Marti, founder and CEO of Worldmaker. “We stepped into deep, unmet needs, and just kept getting called on by other communities, first within Iowa and then beyond.”

Marti has a PhD in personality and social psychology, and has worked with other experts in the field to put together a series of trainings called “Thrive.” The classes are designed to reduce stigma around mental health care, equip participants with stress management and coping skills, and create a culture in which people are willing to ask for help and can easily find the support they need.

Doug Shannon, the previous chief of the Mount Vernon-Lisbon Police Department who retired earlier this year, was among the officers who responded to the three suicides in 2010-11, and has been a part of the Worldmaker leadership team in the past. He started the process of applying for this grant before he retired, but the reigns of the project have now been taken by the new chief, Jason Blinks.

“This started with Doug Shannon having his hands, so deeply, formatively in this work,” Marti said. “Jason is a graduate, a Thrive alum, as is Doug Shannon, as is the chaplain from Mount Vernon. That’s really how this project came to be. A lot of the Mount Vernon-Lisbon Police Department had already graduated from the training and wanted to partner in this project to help others.”

Trainings will be determined by needs of Iowa officers

The $200,000 grant will provide for 13 Thrive trainings to be held around the state of Iowa over the next two years. Organizers are calling it the Iowa Thrive Public Safety Resilience Program.

The trainings will be offered to first responders, including police, firefighters and EMTs.

“We also have a mental fitness app to continue the training, and that can be extended from the participants to their circle, to their family members and their peers. So, we're helping them create this support system around them,” Marti said.

The 13 Thrive courses will include:

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“Sometimes you don’t even know that there’s trauma involved in what we’ve seen as first responders, but you take the course and you realize, maybe there were a few things that really have affected my mental well-being, and now I know how to cope with that better when I start to realize, when I’m starting to lose control, ultimately,” Blinks said of his experience with the program.

Worldmaker has worked with municipalities in multiple states to offer Thrive programming to first responders, military personnel, veterans and others, but this is the first time it will be offered statewide in Iowa.

The programming is adjustable to the specific needs of the groups being served, which is why Marti said the first step of the program is putting together a steering committee to develop details of the trainings, as well as where and how to offer them.

“It’s work we've been doing in other states, and here and there in Iowa. Part of our work is to do state by state focus areas and replication. So, this past year, we have expanded back into Iowa, which I had been advocating for, given that's where the work started and where I am,” Marti said. “Mount Vernon-Lisbon is showing, I think, tremendous leadership and innovation on this.

The steering committee will include mental health and law enforcement leaders throughout the state, including Brady Carney, director of the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy — who also will be able to help get the word out about the trainings to law enforcement agencies around the state. The first meeting of the committee will be scheduled in December, and Marti said she hopes to start offering the trainings by the first week of February.

Marti said that while the grant provides for two years worth of Thrive programming, she hopes to be able to continue the program through other funding sources.

“This is one grant. We continue to supplement. We have tremendous support here locally … a variety of local sponsors and individual donors who believe in this work,” Marti said. “This is a core piece, but we will just continue to build and build so that we can reach and support more people.

Comments: (319) 398-8328; emily.andersen@thegazette.com