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Behavioral Health Training Programs

The Behavioral Health Training Programs are designed to equip residents, community leaders, and advocates with the knowledge, skills, and confidence to address complex challenges with empathy, cultural responsiveness, and practical tools for action.

Curriculum

Participants will engage in 3-hour sessions that are interactive, therapeutic, and skill-building, designed to foster resilience, strengthen advocacy, and promote safety, wellness, and equity.

Each session integrates trauma-informed practices, hands-on learning, and culturally grounded approaches to ensure participants can effectively support their communities while prioritizing their own well-being.

The overall goals of the curriculum are to:

  • Build leadership capacity to respond to community needs with confidence and compassion
  • Strengthen mental health awareness and reduce stigma through culturally responsive education
  • Promote safety, trust, and resilience in both personal and community contexts
  • Expand access to resources through practical navigation, referral, and advocacy skills
  • Encourage long-term community impact by aligning leadership with shared values and sustainable solutions

Training Options

Training option details are listed below. These sessions are each three hours and open to all community members and organizations including residents, service providers, and grassroots leaders.

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Understanding Grief & Loss with Substance Misuse, Naloxone Dispensing, and Fentanyl Training

  • This session supports resilience in both communal and individual grief while preparing participants to prevent, identify, and respond to substance use and overdose.
  • Participants will gain language and strategies for navigating the experience of loss, building coping strategies, and offering or receiving support.
  • The training also provides hands-on instruction in harm reduction tools, including Naloxone and fentanyl test strips, with guidance on compassionate, nonjudgmental approaches to supporting individuals with substance use challenges.

Moving Through Grief to Gratitude

  • This session facilitates emotional healing through the cultivation of gratitude and meaning-making following grief.
  • Participants will explore personal and communal experiences of loss, while building tools for resilience, reflection, and reconnection to purpose.

Coping with Emotions and Creating Routines for a Healthy Lifestyle

  • This session helps participants recognize and understand the role emotions play in enhancing self-awareness while learning how to design daily rhythms that support health and well-being.
  • Participants will build skills to manage stress, strengthen coping mechanisms, and create routines grounded in joy, consistency, and self-compassion.
  • By aligning emotional regulation with practical daily practices, participants will foster resilience and sustainable wellness.

Physical and Psychological Safety

  • This session explores both internal and external aspects of safety, guiding participants to deepen their awareness of how safety is experienced in the body and mind.
  • Through interactive activities and reflection, participants will learn to identify safety needs, recognize triggers, and practice self-regulation techniques.
  • The training also emphasizes relational and environmental protective factors that help create spaces where individuals feel physically secure and emotionally supported.

Cultivating Resilience Through Self-Compassion

  • This session focuses on building resilience by learning to recognize early warning signs of stress in the body and intentionally activating joy as a foundation for coping.
  • Participants will explore how self-compassion can transform stress responses, reduce burnout, and promote long-term well-being.
  • Through guided reflection and practice, they will learn to incorporate self-kindness into daily routines as a tool for resilience.

Understanding Suicide: Risk, Diagnosis, and Prevention

  • This session demystifies suicide by exploring Suicidal Behavior Disorder, identifying warning signs, and using trauma-informed, culturally responsive strategies for prevention and care.
  • Participants will learn how to initiate supportive conversations with individuals at risk and practice postvention strategies to help communities heal after suicide loss.
  • The training emphasizes understanding social, cultural, and emotional contexts of suicide to foster compassion and effective intervention.

How to Know if Someone is Depressed or Sad: How to Identify and Support

  • This session explores the differences between sadness and clinical depression through a biopsychosocial lens.
  • Participants will learn to recognize early warning signs, practice supportive communication, and respond with cultural awareness.
  • Emphasis is placed on reducing stigma, building trust, and connecting individuals to care in ways that honor identity and lived experience.

Domestic and Intimate Partner Violence: Signs, Symptoms, and Support

  • This session raises awareness of emotional, physical, and psychological abuse while building participant skills to identify intimate partner violence (IPV) across contexts.
  • The training emphasizes trauma-informed, survivor-centered responses and equips participants with tools for safety planning and referrals.
  • Cultural awareness and empathy are integrated to ensure that support honors the dignity and autonomy of survivors.

NYC Social Service Map and Ethical Referrals to Care

  • This session introduces participants to NYC’s wide network of public services—from housing and food access to behavioral health—while providing a framework for making referrals in a respectful and person-centered way.
  • Participants will practice navigating the NYC Social Service Map to locate resources and learn strategies to ensure referrals align with needs, values, and consent.

Compassionate Conversations and Motivational Interviewing

  • This session combines empathic listening and reflective communication with Motivational Interviewing (MI) techniques to build trust, navigate sensitive conversations, and support positive behavior change.
  • Participants will practice asking open-ended questions, affirming strengths, and exploring ambivalence to strengthen motivation for healthier choices.

Fostering Community Connections and Advocacy

  • This session equips participants to lead grassroots efforts that strengthen community bonds and address shared needs.
  • Using participatory methods, including Participatory Action Research (PAR), participants will learn to identify community priorities, build shared goals, and co-create solutions.
  • The training emphasizes inclusivity, resident-led leadership, and collaboration across diverse stakeholders.

Daily Functioning and Legacy Building Workshop

  • This session encourages participants to reflect on how daily actions shape identity, well-being, and long-term impact.
  • By aligning routines and relationships with core values, participants will develop a sense of purpose and intentionality in their personal and community lives.
  • Activities emphasize creating habits that support growth, wellness, and meaningful contribution.

Building an Online Professional Portfolio

  • This session offers a supportive, therapeutic space for participants to create resumes and digital profiles that highlight their skills, training, and lived experience.
  • Participants will reflect on their personal and professional journeys, translate them into strengths, and build profiles such as LinkedIn that convey confidence.
  • The process is framed as self-advocacy, empowering participants to reduce anxiety about self-presentation and expand career opportunities.

Health Inequities & Social Determinants of Health

  • This session introduces participants to the concept of Social Determinants of Health (SDoH) and how non-medical factors—such as housing, education, income, safety, and discrimination—shape well-being across the life course.
  • Participants will explore how inequities arise when groups face greater barriers, and how these differences are both unfair and preventable.
  • The training connects SDoH to health outcomes, highlights the role of racism and chronic stress, and integrates trauma-informed principles to understand the cumulative toll of inequity.

Health Inequities and Nutrition: The Hidden Determinant

  • This session examines the powerful role nutrition plays in shaping academic performance, physical health, mood regulation, and behavior.
  • Participants will explore how diet-related inequities—such as food insecurity or reliance on low-nutrient, high-sugar options—affect both individuals and communities.
  • The training emphasizes nutrition as a key social determinant of health and provides practical strategies to increase access to health-supportive foods.

Training Requests

All trainings are offered either in person or virtually, and we can deliver sessions in every NYC borough. Whether you're joining for personal growth, professional development, or community healing, we welcome your voice and leadership.

  • Sign up for one or more trainings using the Behavioral Health Training RSVP Form.
    • You may sign up to join an existing training or request a private session for your staff or community group.
    • Select as many topics as you’re interested in—we look forward to learning and growing with you!