My current job is as a skills trainer in a residential mental health facility. Because I work with the highest acuity teens in the state, sometimes during moments of crisis these patients get physically aggressive or put themselves in danger. During these moments, staff put them in what we refer to as a “physical hold.” This is a safe way for staff to hold them until they emotionally re-regulate to the point where they can be physically safe. The trainings for how to do these holds are essential in keeping everyone safe in my workplace.

Before an employee can hit they floor, they participate in a 40 hour academy training week, where over half the time is spent focusing on these crisis situations where holds may arise. We call this portion of the week, Nonviolent Crisis Interventions (NCI). Every 6 months, staff are required to attend a refresher NCI course to keep their skills sharp. If employees are not compliant with attendance to these courses, they are immediately put on unpaid leave. This precaution ensures that everyone stays up to date, which I support. I personally have been hit in the head by someone else messing up in a hold, and they were even up to date on their training. I imagine incidents like these would skyrocket if refreshers were lacking in frequency.

If I’m being honest, in my job experience I haven’t really had any trainings that were unhelpful. While the excessive training at my current mental health job can be annoying at times, I understand it’s all necessary due to the high risk nature of it. At OSU if you’re involved in greek life you are required to attend an excessive amount of drug and alcohol workshops. I really don’t enjoy the intense amount of these. I think having students attend one upon arrival at OSU would be sufficient, however multiple workshops every year is a bit excessive. And it’s frustrating that not nearly as much effort is put into education about things such as sexual assault or consent.