May is Mental Health Awareness Month.
At a work session Monday, the Galesburg city council heard from several organizations that want to work together to improve mental health and substance abuse issues in the community.
“As everyone knows, we have challenges, as do all communities,” said Mayor Peter Schwartzman. “We’re here tonight to share in those and to see if there are ways the city can participate and move in positive directions.”
Reducing stigma and early intervention were recurring themes in the wide-ranging discussion that covered issues from addiction and suicide to poverty and foster care.
“It’s not scary to go to a counselor or therapist, and everybody should do it if they have the opportunity or they need it,” said Stacy Brown, vice president for behavioral health services at Bridgeway.
Bridgeway is a non-profit formed in 1993 by a merger of several other community health organizations in west central Illinois. It now has 600 employees and serves 10,000 people through a variety of mental health, human service, and substance use programs.
“We meet with people who are just struggling with life decisions and life issues clear up to people who are experiencing PTSD and schizophrenia,” Brown said.
She said many people aren’t aware that Bridgeway exists and what it provides – and likely aren’t getting the help they need.
“Stigma is huge. It’s very real. Unless we really start talking about mental health and substance use and realize that it happens in our community and our families, people we know, people we work with, we’re never going to move forward and work on getting people the help they need,” Brown said.
One of the challenges in the Galesburg area is lack of local psychiatric hospitalization options, with people having to travel to Peoria, Chicago, and beyond.
With the closure of Cottage Hospital last year, the community lost a geriatric psychiatric unit.
While Bridgeway operates the Recovery Oriented System of Care and other substance use programs, Brown said the closest in-patient substance abuse treatment facility is 50 miles away.
“So our peer recovery support specialists, who are people with lived experience, people who have experienced this in their lives, work every day driving people to treatment needs,” Brown said.
There are positives in the Galesburg area, such as the Knox County 708 Mental Health Board approved by voters in 2017, through which a slight property tax increase funds grants for organizations providing mental health services.
In addition, through United Way of Knox County, the community has a 211 hotline for information on all health and human services programs.
Brown said poverty, mental health, and substance abuse issues go hand in hand.
Organizations like CASA of West Central Illinois are there to advocate for the children who end up in foster care as a result.
But there is a need locally for more volunteer advocates.
Currently CASA is only able to serve about half of the children in foster care in Knox, Warren, Henderson, and McDonough counties.
Stephanie Brockett, a social worker for the Center of Youth and Family Solutions in Galesburg, said in addition to addressing the mental health and substance abuse issues that force children into foster care, families need childcare and children need adequate opportunities.
She said one possibility to address such gaps in Galesburg is a proposed community center.
“I think that’s an excellent opportunity to think from a different perspective,” Brockett said. “Rather than saying I now have a kid who is in foster care, what do I do with them, if I think about a community center, I can say how can I support this family so that the system is never involved in the first place?”
Representatives from Out of the Darkness and Foster's Voice, two suicide prevention organizations, also spoke to the council about their efforts.
Foster’s Voice was founded by the parents of a Quad Cities teenager who committed suicide in 2017.
Foster Atwood was 19 when he died and had been on a waiting list to get the help he needed.
His father Kevin Atwood said the mission of Foster’s Voice is to end stigma by improving conversations about suicide.
“Understand, first and foremost, it’s not talking about suicide that leads to suicide. That’s the first thing you have to understand. Talking about suicide does not lead or cause someone to contemplate suicide. It’s just the opposite,” Atwood said.
Foster’s Voice operates a club at Galesburg High School.
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