When disaster strikes, there is also a mental health toll to consider.

Students at SUNY New Paltz are learning about disasters. This isn’t a traditional college curriculum, but the professors said it’s an important offering at the school’s Institute for Disaster Mental Health, or IDMH.

“It feels very relevant for the students. This is a generation that has known disasters their entire lives, either directly or through media, and so it feels very real to them,” said Karla Vermeulen, deputy director of IDMH and associate professor of psychology at SUNY New Paltz. “I think it's very, I hope, empowering for them to kind of get a sense that they are able to actually support others in these really difficult times.”

Vermeulen went back to school to study psychology after living in Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001.

“The focus on mental health as part of disaster response, it went from being kind of very sidelined or an afterthought to really substantially having a seat at the table now,” Vermeulen said.

Omar Graves, a senior psychology student and taking Vermeulen’s disaster psychology course, is pursuing a career in disaster and trauma therapy.

“I love that I can have the skills that can help me like support people on campus. I find myself even like in my personal life, using some of the skills to help with my own stress or the stress of people around me, and it's definitely useful,” Graves said.

Along with taking classes and assisting their peers on campus, the students in the disaster studies program get hands-on training at disaster-related sites in the community. They work with local, state and federal agencies to learn how to properly assist those dealing with mental health struggles.

“They want to help other people. They want to change the world. They're deeply concerned about things like climate change and school shootings,” Vermeulen said. “I feel like anything that I can do and that the institute can do to help give them a little more of a sense of control or of empowerment or just giving them some tools and some skills that they can apply in these areas feels very rewarding.”

Aside from IDMH at SUNY New Paltz, Amy Nitza, the executive director, said she is only aware of one other program like this at a university in South Dakota. She said hopes these will be used as examples for other schools considering adding disaster mental health courses or disciplines.