Stony Brook Among SUNY Campuses Receiving Mental Health Training Grants

SUNY announced on Jan. 8, 2026, that 27 campuses, including Stony Brook University, have been selected for the Mental Health First Aid Grant Program. Each eligible campus may receive up to $8,000 to expand Mental Health First Aid training for faculty, staff and other non-clinical campus personnel. When fully implemented, the systemwide initiative is expected to support training for nearly 3,000 campus personnel.

If every campus receives the maximum award, systemwide funding would total as much as $216,000. That level of support translates to roughly $72 per trainee under the program’s target scale, a modest per-person investment designed to broaden the number of campus community members able to recognize and respond to students in distress, undertake prevention and early intervention, and connect students to clinical services.

For Suffolk County, Stony Brook’s participation has several immediate implications. Expanding training beyond counseling centers — to include residence life staff, academic advisors, campus security and administrative employees — increases the number of everyday campus contacts equipped to spot warning signs and initiate referrals. That can reduce the frequency of acute crises requiring emergency-room care or police involvement, potentially easing demand on local hospitals and county behavioral-health services.

From a policy perspective, the grants reflect a broader shift toward prevention and capacity-building on college campuses. Small, focused investments in front-line training can be cost-effective if they reduce downstream clinical burden and improve student retention and well-being. The program’s emphasis on non-clinical personnel aligns with strategies that treat mental-health support as a campus-wide responsibility rather than the sole domain of counseling centers.

Longer term, the initiative could strengthen the campus safety net by creating standardized pathways for identifying concerns and connecting students to care. Key measures to watch locally will include how many staff complete training, the number of referrals generated by trained personnel, and any measurable changes in crisis calls or emergency mental-health visits tied to campus incidents.

Implementation is now underway. Stony Brook officials have stressed prevention and broadening training access as central goals. For Suffolk County residents, teachers, parents and students, the program promises more points of contact for early help and a potentially lighter burden on emergency services as campus communities gain greater mental-health literacy.