Mental Health Matters: Community promotes awareness

With his family’s support, music and cooking, Ricky eventually learned how to keep going.

He learned the importance of mental heath and raising awareness in his community, and this knowledge followed him as he grew older.

“It hasn’t been the same since he passed,” Ricky said. “I think that mental health is important, but people don’t really take it seriously.”

For their senior project, he and his classmate, Alikah Connors, organized “These Boots Were Made for Talkin’” — an art show dedicated to boots and mental health and wellness. On Tuesday in the Buhl High School cafeteria, the two displayed student artwork and sold nachos, cowboy caviar and ice cream, all prepared by Ricky.

Throughout the night, writer Katie McCall Owen performed a selection of cowboy poetry. Proceeds from the event were donated to the Jae Foundation.

“Mental health is a big thing for me. A lot of people around me have suffered from mental health struggles,” Alikah told the Times-News. “The Jae Foundation is (all) about mental health, and I thought it would be a very good idea for an art show.”

Seventy-five years ago, Mental Health Awareness Month was established to increase awareness and celebrate recovery from mental illness and mental health struggles, according to Youth.gov. The national month is recognized every May.

As reported by the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare in 2021, suicide is the second highest cause of death in residents ages 10 to 24. That year, 132 school-aged children died by suicide. Thirty-four of those deaths were children 14-years-old or younger.

In recent years, mental health awareness has become an integral aspect in the way people lead their lives, and due to the COVID-19 pandemic, mental health awareness increased as people began experiencing feelings of isolation and loneliness on a larger scale.

Numerous organizations in the Magic Valley specialize in community outreach, therapy, and education.

Lori Stewart, president of Magic Valley Suicide Awareness and Prevention, has worked in victim services in Twin Falls County for the past 26 years. Having seen the aftermath of suicides in her work, she joined the local chapter of Suicide Prevention Action Network and eventually became president. In 2018, the group disbanded, and she started her current organization in 2019.

Stewart has noticed a recent boost in mental health and wellness regarding how people talk about it and their concern for a full range of health.

“Overall, the conversation about mental health and wellness has changed greatly,” she said. “In the past, if we were at an event, people would just do anything to avoid eye contact or walk away. It wasn’t anything anyone wanted to talk about. We’ve come leaps and bounds from that now.”

Her organization works to increase mental health awareness in schools and the overall community, and educate people about suicide prevention through various events. In Jerome, Stewart recalls, the organization led a rock painting project where students would create designs and write meaningful messages onto rocks. The organization also creates care packages and invites national speakers to present during school assemblies and community events.

One of the challenges with seeking mental health resources is that there’s a long wait time for counseling and therapy centers, she says.

To provide a solution, Magic Valley Suicide and Awareness partnered with local therapy provider Aspen Grove to pay for walk-in appointments, which cost $75. Last month, the organization paid for 29 appointments, providing a resource for those people to talk about their mental health struggles and receive help.

Flourish Therapy, a nonprofit counseling resource based in Utah, offers subsidized teletherapy appointments for Twin Falls residents. The organization focuses on the LGBTQ+ community, understanding the challenges that those members face in a conservative area.

Clinical Director Lisa Hansen PhD, LMFT, founded the organization in 2017. Since then, Flourish Therapy has expanded—they now have 16 therapists that are trained to provide quality care geared toward the LGBTQ+ experience.

The organization has also worked to include people of color and members of other marginalized communities in their leadership and range of care.

“As a society, we are a liability for LGBTQ+ people as well as many other groups of people in the intersectional way that we are not good to marginalized people. That felt like a place where I wanted to work and focus,” Hansen said.

Flourish Therapy offers 500 free appointments every month and organizes events that educate the community about LGBTQ+ experiences and diversity, equity, and inclusion practices.

Both Stewart and Hansen mention that there are stigmas that surround mental health and wellness which can keep people from talking about their challenges or what they’re going through.

As for the LGBTQ+ community, Hansen says there are socio-cultural traumas, which can occur when a person lacks mentors who share their own identity and struggles to see themselves represented in society, such as in government.

“The major challenge is to feel like you’re an essential part of the community if you don’t have the same opportunities to be a part of leadership or a part of the fabric (of society) as other people,” she said. “That, of course, trickles down into families who often are not as excited to have a trans, non-binary, gay, lesbian, or pansexual family member because they don’t see them as being part of the eternal family sort of unit.

“Socio-cultural trauma goes all the way, as we say, from here to eternity.”

Another challenge is that when people experience a mental health crisis, they usually don’t know what resources are available to them. The idea of coming forward and talking about their thoughts can be intimidating, Stewart says, because people are afraid that they’ll be called out or hospitalized against their will.

There’s a lack of knowledge about mental health resources and what happens when someone reaches out to one, and this issue dissects into gender roles.

For instance, men tend to hide their emotions because they want to seem strong, but there are times when they can’t handle their mental health struggles by themselves, Stewart explains.

“I think that we’ve done a pretty good job of bringing the awareness to the forefront, but I think that we’re also talking about generations of living this way… That’s not going to change overnight,” Stewart said.

Dixie Tate, LSW, is the president of PAuSe Mini-Cassia. For seven years, the organization has worked to increase mental health awareness and education in the community, like Magic Valley Suicide Awareness and Prevention.

“Our outreach is on a macro level, meaning that (changing) the culture about mental health and mental wellness takes time,” Tate said. “We’ve been at this for seven years, and I feel like we’re starting to make a difference and people are starting to view mental health the same as physical health.

“I think when you have a paradigm shift in your community, that’s definitely a step in the right direction.”

Through their actions, these organizations chip away at societal issues day by day, and sometimes, the work is challenging.

“I don’t have a particularly huge story of impact and change,” Stewart said, “but I know it’s out there. I think that maybe is a part of why it’s hard to keep doing this work sometimes… Statistically, it’s hard to even gauge what kind of change we’re bringing about, but I can tell you that there were no suicides in Twin Falls County in April. That doesn’t happen often… (We just have) to keep going and have blind faith that something’s happening.”

Additionally, Hansen has seen a positive shift in her work. For her patients, suicidal ideation decreases within five sessions and PTSD in about five months. She explains that providing a space that prioritizes the needs of the LGBTQ+ community has boosted her patients’ mental health in general.

Tate told the Times-News that the first step to enacting a change in the community is by educating the members within it. People can also work towards this change by checking in on their loved ones, organizing and attending community events, and advocating for mental health and wellness.

Once people can talk about issues and understand them, she says, then the culture that surrounds mental health will transform for the better.