I'll work to improve local mental health services and access

I'll work to turn around our region's lack of mental health resources, which have dwindled alarmingly during funding cuts

over the years.

Residents of Tioga and Bradford counties face mental-health challenges that are common across rural Pennsylvania but which are especially difficult in sparsely populated communities. People may live many miles from a psychiatrist, therapist, crisis center, or hospital offering specialized behavioral-health care, and transportation itself can become a barrier to treatment. Tioga County has been identified as a mental-health professional shortage area, and county planning documents have previously described long waits for outpatient services, difficulty recruiting providers, and the loss of local acute psychiatric care when psychiatric coverage could not be maintained. Bradford County also contains a federally designated mental-health shortage area for its low-income population. These are not simply inconveniences: when routine treatment is difficult to obtain, manageable problems can deteriorate until families must rely on emergency departments, law enforcement, or the criminal-justice system.

NAMI Keystone Pennsylvania could help fill an important part of this gap. NAMI can provide something that is often missing in rural areas: a local network that helps people understand mental illness, find available services, navigate the system, and learn from others who have faced the same problems. NAMI Keystone already offers free programs such as Family-to-Family, Peer-to-Peer, family and peer support groups, and mental-health education programs. Some support programs can also be delivered virtually, an especially valuable option where residents may otherwise have to drive an hour or more for assistance.

I support a Northern Tier NAMI effort that could be designed specifically around rural realities rather than simply copying a program developed for Pittsburgh or another metropolitan area. NAMI Keystone could recruit and train residents of Tioga and Bradford counties as peer-support and family-support facilitators, establish regular meetings in communities such as Wellsboro, Mansfield, Towanda and Sayre, and supplement them with online meetings for people living farther away. It could partner with county human-services agencies, schools, hospitals, primary-care practices, libraries, churches and community organizations to make people aware of services that already exist. Programs such as NAMI Ending the Silence could bring mental-health education directly into schools, while Family-to-Family could give parents and spouses practical help when a loved one is struggling. Just as importantly, a recognizable local NAMI presence could reduce the stigma that sometimes makes seeking mental-health care particularly difficult in small communities where people know one another.

NAMI could also give Tioga and Bradford residents a stronger voice in Harrisburg when decisions are made about behavioral-health funding. Pennsylvania has acknowledged a serious rural health-care workforce shortage, including shortages of mental-health professionals, and solutions will require more than simply tell

ing rural residents to seek treatment that may not actually be available nearby. NAMI could advocate for additional psychiatric and counseling capacity, telepsychiatry, provider recruitment and loan-repayment incentives, transportation assistance, stronger crisis services, and adequate reimbursement for clinicians willing to serve rural communities. Combined with locally organized peer and family programs, that advocacy could create a bridge between the services currently available and the much more accessible system the Northern Tier needs. For Tioga and Bradford counties, expanding NAMI would not solve the provider shortage by itself, but it could make the existing system easier to navigate while helping build the political and community support necessary to improve it.

The first step is to establish a board with motivated individuals willing to give  time and knowledge along with their own experience in dealing with mental  health crises and work to improve access and services.