Corey Knollinger, Author at West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Demystifying Mental Illness One Class at a Time

Most people are familiar with the idea of first aid — like what to do to when dealing with a cut or scrape — but not everyone knows what to do when their friend is showing signs of mental illness. There’s a class dedicated having a better mental health first aid response. One of these classes was recently held in the Northern Panhandle.

In a classroom on the West Virginia Northern Community College Wheeling campus, Greater Wheeling National Alliance on Mental Illness executive director Amy Gamble recently gave a first aid class to residents and city officials.

The first aid tips don’t help with physical ailments, but mental.

A New Approach to First Aid

Mental health first aid is a concept started in 2001 in Australia that has been spreading through the U.S. for about a decade.

The program demonstrates that even something as seemingly insignificant as a regular greeting upon passing by can have a significant impact on people who are struggling with mental illness.

Wheeling Police hostage negotiator and mental health first aid instructor Bryan Hails recounts one of his first calls dealing with a schizophrenic man who had been off of his medication for a little while.

“First time I got called out was not successful,” he recalled. “I watched a guy jump off of a fifth-floor balcony, and live. Then a couple years later I got called out for the same guy. In the time between the first incident and second incident after he got out of the hospital if I saw him, I made a point to just wave or say, ‘hey, how’s it going?’”

Hails explains that the little bit of rapport he was able to build in this way mattered a lot when he was called out again. At that point, legal paperwork called a “mental hygiene order” had already been filled out. It allows authorities to hospitalize someone against their free will if they are demonstratively a threat to themselves or others.

“I talked to him,” Hails recounted. “I got him to come downstairs. I gave him my last cigarette. And then we walked up to the hospital, which was in walking distance.”

Demystifying Mental Illness

The backbone of the eight-hour course is A.L.G.E.E.:

Assess for risk of suicide or harm,
Listen nonjudgmentally,
Give reassurance and information,
Encourage appropriate professional help,
Encourage self-help and other support strategies

Before you can do any of that, you have to be able to identify mental illness.

Participants in Wheeling’s Mental Health First Aid class draw what anxiety looks like to them.

Class participants drew what they thought anxiety looked like. Anxiety is the most common mental health issue in the country.

“His hair is all standing up, eyes are great big because he’s overwhelmed,” course participant Carrie Bennett described her drawing. “Cheeks all the way down the neck are a little flushed, muscles are tense, his feet are moving all the time because he feels like he just has to get out of here, and he’s wearing these great big comfy clothes trying to shield himself from the things that are stressing him out,” she explained.

Reaching Out

One of the goals of the program is to demystify mental illness in a way that makes it easier to recognize symptoms. Once you know the signs it becomes easier to reach out and help.

Marshall University student Isaac Bennett took the course so that he could be more helpful to classmates who can be easily overwhelmed with course work and new environments.

“Pretty much everyone I know struggles with mental health,” he said, “I want to be able to support my friends. Stuff like this puts more tools in my toolbox.”

Most mental health issues manifest before the age of 24 according to The National Alliance on Mental Illness. That alliance also notes that that one in five people in the country has a mental illness.

For more information about Mental Health First Aid Class, contact Amy Gamble: namigreaterwheeling@gmail.com.

'Spread the Vote' Intiative Gives More Than Just ID's

After West Virginia’s voter ID law went into effect last year an organization focused on increasing voter registration and voter turnout launched a new initiative in the state to help people gain proper identification. Spread the Vote now operates in nine states, and aims not only to give people a chance to vote, but also a better chance in life.

Voting, getting a job, buying a house, flying, staying in a hotel — all require some official, legal form of identification. That requirement might not seem like a big deal to most people, but not everyone has an ID.

As West Virginia Spread the Vote director Peshka Calloway points out, there are many reasons someone might not have an official form of identification.

“We work with clients who have experienced house fires, we’re looking to work with clients who have lost their documents in floods,” Calloway explained, “because we’ve seen a significant amount of floods here in West Virginia.”

Spread the Vote, which launched in West Virginia earlier this year, recently began a new initiative aiming to help those without ID’s obtain the documents needed to get a federal ID.

The initiative is called Project ID. There are six chapters in West Virginia. Clients get help figuring out what documents they need, and are guided through each step to acquire those documents. Project ID pays for the whole process.

Calloway is passionate about the work. She said she lost important documents once herself.

“I’m a survivor of domestic violence. I left my abuser and left mine and my son’s vital documents behind. So I know the difficulty of navigating the bureaucracy of trying to prove who you are,” Calloway said.

But the passion doesn’t stop with Calloway. More than 20 volunteers are working across the state as part of Project ID.

Attendees of the Northern Panhandle launch party pose for a selfie.

One of those volunteers is Rosemary Ketchum, the Northern Panhandle chapter leader. Ketchum loves the tangible difference she’s able to make working with Project ID.

“You can literally quantify in numbers the change you’re making,” Ketchum said. “You can say ‘I ordered fifteen birth certificates, and I have twelve I.D.’S on their way.’ And that’s real change in people’s lives.”

Calloway explained, if someone hasn’t had an ID for a while, getting one can be life-changing.

“I have a man who hasn’t had a photo ID since 2013, think about that life. Right, it’s 2019. Think about all the years and all the barriers,” Calloway said. “He told me he had difficulty opening a bank account in his name. He can’t get a Greyhound bus pass without an ID. You know this life without it, people don’t think about it until they lose it.”

Project ID will be expanding with the launches of two new chapters in the coming weeks.

A chapter in Huntington begins work on May 25th, and the Beckley chapter is scheduled to launch on June 3rd.

Joe Horzempa: The Pied Piper of Post-Secondary Science

Science can be a hard subject to understand, especially upper-level higher-ed science courses. A professor in West Virginia’s Northern Panhandle is…

Science can be a hard subject to understand, especially upper-level higher-ed science courses. A professor in West Virginia’s Northern Panhandle is creatively cracking the code to help his students understand tricky topics.

Joe Horzempa is an associate professor of Biology at West Liberty University, and he has what could be described as an unorthodox way of teaching science.

Horzempa uses his musical talents to help certain topics stick out in his students’ minds.

In the lab, Horzempa and his students study vaccines, which is a pretty demanding task, as Horzempa points out.

“There’s a lot of failure in the laboratory. A lot of experiments that you would call failure, but you learn something from every experiment.” Horzempa said. “There’s a construct, you work years on it, and it either doesn’t produce the protein correctly, you don’t get the antibody response you thought you were going to get.”

Science in Song

But in the classroom, you don’t have years to experiment with students to see what will get a response. While you may see some students again over their time in college, a professor generally only has one shot at getting information across.

That’s why Horzempa turned to an old pastime he and his friends would do to make themselves laugh to help students learn.

“I thought ‘wouldn’t it be cool to somehow to take my love of music and bring it into the classroom.’ When my friends and I were young, we would always, kind of like Weird Al Yankovic, make song parodies — we’d hear a song, we’d change the words to make each other laugh. So that’s what I do in the classroom,” he said.

Some of Horzempa’s hits include “American Pie-tosis” (cell division in the style of Don McLean’s “American Pie”), a song about bacterial byproducts in the style of “Piano Man”, among others, but he is always wary of the effectiveness of the songs themselves.

american_pie-tosis.mp3

Listen to one of Horzempa's hits: "American Pie-tosis".

“I don’t know if it helps them learn the material any better, I don’t know, maybe it does, maybe the song gets in their head, but I’ll tell you it does make them come to class more, and it does make them talk about science more.” he said.

But there’s an added benefit that Horzempa may be overlooking, as Junior Chemistry student MacKenzie Jacobs points out.

“Whenever he plays guitar and sings the songs in class, it really inspires me to be more creative about the topic. It really gets my wheels in my mind spinning like ‘oh wow there’s so many cool things you can do with the knowledge that you know’ and there’s so many ways you can help people with this,” Jacobs said.

Professor of the Year

Professor Joe Horzempa works in the lab with student, Umesh Nepali, who takes a tissue culture as part of his study of host-pathogen interactions.

Horzempa was recognized as the state’s professor of the year in 2017, but he says it’s not awards, but student opportunities that keep him going.

“Whenever a student comes to me and says ‘I made it to medical school, or I got into this grad program, I got a job working for this laboratory’ that’s the stuff that really makes me feel like I’m doing something right,” he said. “The Professor of the Year thing, not to take anything away from it, that was amazing, but that doesn’t change about the fact that I’m here to try to be an influence on these students and try to help them realize their potential.”

Helping students realize their potential seems to be going well for Horzempa, as Jacobs has just earned two grants through NASA to for summer research.

Parts of W.Va. Experiencing Great Growth, While Others Struggle, Economist Says

Economists at West Virginia University say parts of the state are seeing job growth after economic downturn, but other areas have a longer road to…

Economists at West Virginia University say parts of the state are seeing job growth after economic downturn, but other areas have a longer road to economic recovery.

Since 2017, eight counties have experienced large job growth compared to the rest of the state.

This includes Marshall, Monongalia, Harrison, Doddridge, Ritchie, Jackson, Berkley, and Jefferson counties.

While this is good news in those areas, West Virginia University Bureau of Business and Economic Research director John Deskins pointed out in a recent interview with West Liberty University television that the main goal should be to spread that growth throughout the state.

Deskins also mentioned of the nearly 20,000 jobs lost by 2016, the state has gained almost half of them back, mostly in the natural gas industry.

While parts of the northern and eastern panhandles have seen employment growths up to six percent, the southern coalfields of the state in the same time have experienced a 16 percent loss in employment.

Deskins believes investments in health and education throughout the state will help bring less localized state growth.

West Virginia Loses Population, Despite National Growth

West Virginia is one of only two states to lose population in the last 10 years, according to recently-released data analysis by the non-profit The Pew Charitable Trusts.

According to census data analyzed by the group, West Virginia has lost about 34,500 people since 2008. Over the last decade, the data showed West Virginia’s population dropped two-tenths of a percent each year on average.

Illinois, the only other state with a no population gain, showed a zero percent growth rate.

“A shrinking or slow-growing populace can be both a cause and an effect of weakened economic prospect,” the authors stated. “Though a smaller population can lead to a reduction in some types of spending, it also means there are fewer residents to help cover the costs of long-standing commitments, such as debt and state employee retirement benefits.”

The researchers said West Virginia and Illinois had little to no population growth in-part because of their location. For decades, people have been moving away from states in the Northeast and Midwest toward warmer regions with better employment opportunities and lower costs of living.

West Virginia is also distinctive in that the state sees more deaths than births, and “has recorded population losses for the past six years” according to the analysis.

Nationwide, U.S. population growth has slowed. The Census Bureau expects population trends to continue downward citing low birth rates, aging baby boomers and slowing immigration.

The fastest-growing states were predominantly in the West and South, with Utah topping the list.

Teachers Warily Celebrate Tabled Education Reform Bill

Teachers and service personnel in the Northern Panhandle joined picket lines this morning and were on their way home before a typical school day would have closed. Many teachers were relieved, but uneasy.

Teachers in Marshall County will return to their classrooms tomorrow, but Marshall County American Federation of Teachers President Josh Gary hopes the message of the short-lived strike is received by the public as well as legislators.

“The fact that teachers wanted the bill killed even though it included an over $2,000 pay raise for them should give people pause and understanding that it was a very bad bill,” Gary said.

There was a sense of relief that the House of Delegates tabled the sweeping education reform measure, but John Marshall high school teacher Joe Kuskey worries the celebration may be short-lived.

“I don’t feel like it’s a dead issue,” Kuskey said. “It’s probably going to come back to haunt us again, just like it did this year.”

Kuskey and other teachers expressed frustration that today’s disruption was necessary at all. He says concerns remain that the education reform bill could be revived before the end of the legislative session.