Mental health can be a touchy subject for many people, but retired Troy Police Captain John Cooney is trying to change that. He brought his message to Hoosick Falls on Friday to teach mental health first aid to employees and first responders.

"Mental health and mental illness are parts of the functioning of the human brain," Cooney said. "We're just teaching people how to better understand and appreciate what may be going on with somebody in crisis."

The eight-hour course also focused on de-escalating crisis and management of personal trauma. Police Chief Bob Ashe says his department is seeing about two mental health cases a week.

"I think everyone can identify to the fact that, at some point, you've had some type of mental health issue within your family or friends or just your community itself," Ashe said.

Last month, two Hoosick Falls men were killed after a head-on collision in Schaghticoke. Ashe says that hit the town pretty hard, and it got him thinking about how many people were affected.

"It's not just sometimes it's isolated, it might be within a family," Ashe said. "But really it opens up to other people, too, and more people get involved in it."

That crash pushed Ashe to set a date for this training, to better prepare first responders and employees for those traumatic situations. Cooney says this training creates a whole new mindset.

"No longer do we look at trauma as something we're supposed to suck up and get over, 'deal with it, those are the common things we see,' " Cooney said. "No, now it is time for us to recognize it."

Cooney says this police department is the first agency in the area to bring this kind of training to its workforce. He hopes other municipalities will do the same in the future.