Children's Research Triangle's (CRT) Mental Health Awareness Training: Enhancing the Identification and Referral of High-Risk Urban Youth is a training program serving the Metropolitan Chicago area. During the 3-year project, CRT will provide Youth Mental Health First Aid (YMHFA) training to at least 3,000 individuals serving high-risk youth in low-income, minority communities facing disparities in mental health identification and treatment. The target training population for the project are providers working in a range of fields that have frequent contact with youth who are at significant risk of developing mental health disorders, including child protective agencies, faith-based organizations, gang violence prevention groups, youth mentoring agencies, teen parenting programs, schools and educational institutions, domestic violence shelters, juvenile and family court, medical providers, and military-serving organizations. The high-risk youth, ages 12-18, served by these agencies include youth exposed to community violence; youth from homes with domestic violence; youth who have experienced child maltreatment; youth in foster care; children of military service members; and youth who have experienced prenatal substance exposure. The overarching purpose of this project is to increase the capacity of training participants to recognize the signs and symptoms of mental illness and employ crisis de-escalation techniques, identify community resources for youth with mental illness, and effectively refer and connect marginalized high-risk youth to mental health resources and services. Specific goals and objectives for the program include: conducting YMHFA training with professionals and paraprofessionals serving high-risk youth (i.e., training at least 1,000 individuals per year from a variety of youth serving agencies while identifying at least 10 new training sites per year); increasing the ability of training participants to identify and respond to youth with mental illness (i.e., training participants will show an improvement in knowledge, ability to identify appropriate responses to youth exhibiting signs of mental illness, show an improvement in their attitude about mental illness, and use skills learned in the training); and expanding referral mechanisms to increase the ability of the individuals trained in YMHFA to refer and link the populations of focus to mental health resources and services (i.e., develop a website, telephone referral line, and mobile app to provide mental health information and referral sources for high-risk youth while increasing participants’ use of the online resources). Goals will be tracked and measured through a series of surveys, knowledge tests, and tracking forms to determine the efficacy of the program and to ensure that all goals and objectives are met.