MELBOURNE – One spring evening in 1997, when I was a mental-health researcher at the Australian National University in Canberra, I was discussing with my wife, Betty Kitchener, a registered nurse who taught first-aid courses for the Red Cross in her spare time, the inadequacy of conventional first-aid training. Such courses typically neglect mental-health emergencies, leaving participants poorly equipped to help people who are struggling with suicidal thoughts, panic attacks, post-traumatic stress, the effects of alcohol or drug abuse, or a diminishing grip on reality.