First lady visits Montrose

Robert Allen

Daily Press Writer

MONTROSE — First lady Jeannie Ritter came to town Thursday, meeting with local groups to discuss mental health issues on the Western Slope.

“My initiative is I’m stepping out on behalf of mental health, and naturally suicide bubbles to the top from that when you start talking about mental health,” Ritter said.

After sitting in on a Midwestern Suicide Prevention Coalition meeting, she toured Montrose mental health facilities. She also attended a forum luncheon and discussed issues faced by several Western Slope communities.

She said this is her first opportunity to “venture out” and learn of mental health problems facing local communities.

“For me, coming from an education background —10 years in public schools — it would have been easy for me to align myself with literacy or childhood development,” Ritter said.

However, she said she intends to spend most of the year traveling through the state learning first hand of mental health issues from groups such as the suicide prevention coalition.

Colorado ranks seventh in the nation for the number of deaths by suicide, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. A lack of finances has made it difficult to assuage this problem.

“We are rock bottom for funding mental health,” she said. “Yeah, it’s abominable.”

But she said the way local communities have approached mental health is impressive.

“You don’t talk about these issues without the words ‘coalitions, cooperations, partnerships.’ You guys have a really special thing out here where you form partnerships.” Ritter said. “It’s not just mental health people grooving on this.”

She said the teamwork among law enforcement, social security, mental health professionals and others create an environment in which groups cooperate, rather than compete, for grants.

The suicide prevention coalition began in 2004 through the help of three years of grants from Colorado Trust. The grants were distributed among 10 communities. March 30, the grant term ended, Mental Health Association of Colorado CEO Jeanne Rohner said.

“The board of trustees (Colorado Trust) has been so excited about these 10 communities and the projects that they’ve decided to award to each community $20,000 a year each year for three years, with the caveat that we raise $20,000 a year to match it,” Rohner said.

The coalition’s projected budget for 2007 is $61,900. Much of its financing comes through donations from local businesses and grants, such as those from Midwestern Colorado Mental Health Foundation.

The coalition is unique in that it’s the only one in Colorado to offer a men’s support group, Rohner said.

“It’s not easy to crack the code on that and get men to step forward,” Ritter said.

Ritter visited Grand Junction before coming to Montrose. She said she learned that half the suicides in Grand Junction are committed by male construction workers.

“(There are) men who have stepped out for good paying jobs and a lot of times they leave their own support communities, their own families, and they have risky jobs,” she said. “They have work that isolates them and it just kind of comes and goes. If they take an injury on a lot of these job sites they’re out of work, out of income.”

At each meeting, the coalition breaks out into groups focusing on teens, men and older adults. The groups strategize angles for reaching out to their demographics and report their results afterward.

Ritter spent time in discussion with the men’s group. It is important to convert suicide from a taboo to a mainstream topic, similar to Viagra, she said.

After touring local mental health facilities, Ritter attended the forum luncheon. Sheriffs, town board members, other officials and mental health professionals from Gunnison to Delta were present to discuss several hot-button topics.

One quandary that nearly everyone agreed needs to be addressed is the fact that a person loses Medicaid benefits upon incarceration. This burdens the agencies with having to find ways to provide necessary medications to the people in their jails.

Coping with methamphetamine addiction in local communities was discussed as well.

Ritter collected lists of attendees at both the meeting and the forum.

“I don’t have a budget. I have to go after my own funding,” Ritter said.

She said illustrating the array of interested parties could help to gain more support from the Capitol.

Contact Robert Allen via e-mail at roberta@montrosepress.com