The Mental Health Association has offered first aid training to more than 500,000 people.
If a friend or loved one were in an accident - suffering a broken arm, say - chances are you'd know enough basic first aid to stop any bleeding, immobilize the limb and watch for signs of shock until expert help arrived.
Similarly, you'd likely know how to react to a cut, a burn, even a possible heart attack if the need arose.
But what if the emergency involved not physical but mental health?
The Mental Health Association is betting you'd have no clue what to do, and it's mounting a well-needed statewide campaign to expand awareness of the risk factors and warning signs of mental illness.
Summit advocates mental health training
About one in five New Jersey residents experiences a mental health problem each year, the association says - nearly 60 million in the country as a whole.
Tragically, the vast majority never receive care due to stigma, lack of understanding and system inadequacies, advocates note.
That was the urgent message participants at a recent gathering at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in Princeton heard.
Dubbed the Mental Health First Aid for New Jersey Partners Summit, the event was designed to cut through the fog of denial that keeps many of the state's residents from getting the help they need.
The Mental Health First Aid course launched in 2008 uses role playing and demonstrations to introduce ways of assessing and responding to the risk of suicide or harm among mental health problems.
The course is offered to a wide range of audiences, including hospital staff, business employees, members of faith communities and law enforcement groups. Instructors come from the ranks of the New Jersey State Police, the Department of Human Services' Division of Mental Health and Addiction Services and The College of New Jersey, among other sources.
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It's particularly important that police officers undergo this type of training, given how frequently they encounter violence-prone or suicidal individuals on the job.
Not everyone with mental health or behavioral problems is violent, of course - far from it. But equipping law enforcement agents with the skills and the sensitivity to deal with the mentally ill is an important step in reforming the nation's justice system.
In its 2016 Mental Health Reform Act, Congress authorized $15 million in grants for mental health awareness programs for each of the next four years. The bipartisan bill was unanimously approved by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee earlier this month.
Since its inception, more than 500,000 people have taken the Mental Health First Aid course, and the group wants to see its "graduates" become as numerous as those who undergo CPR training.
It's an admirable goal and - we hope - an attainable one.