Local mental health council considers disbanding if recruitment fails

The Hill County Mental Health Local Advisory Council agreed Monday that if it can’t recruit more members and interest by March, it may disband.

“I definitely think we should focus on some of our goals or something with what work groups are on, if we are able to get people to volunteer,” LAC Vice Chair Sandy Derry said. “I feel like we meet and it’s the same people every time and we can’t make change with four or five of us sitting here.”

Derry added that to get any kind of work group going it needs to be more than just the regular members showing up every single time otherwise the group is just spinning their wheels and can’t do it all on their own.

The Hill County Mental Health Local Advisory Council Bylaws state the purpose of the LAC is to assist in the improvement of public mental health services in the local community and to review and make recommendations about local public mental health services as well as provide input and recommendations to the Mental Health Oversight Advisory Council and the Service Area Authority serving the community.

National Alliance on Mental Illness Havre President Crystal Laufer said the LAC’s bylaws have been the same since it started more than 20 years ago.

“It’ll be pointless to update the bylaws and the strategic plan, so first we need to recruit more people to have enough people in the room, then we should both update the bylaws and look at the strategic planning anyway,” LAC member Jasmine Carbajal said. 

The members at the meeting discussing the issue were Derry, Laufer, Carbajal, Bullhook Community Health Center Behavioral Health Manager Deidre Reiter, Bullhook Care managers Sara Strissel and Jake Strissel and Cindy Fitzpatrick of NAMI, all of whom agreed to recruit more members before its March meeting.

The group prepared an email for Reiter to send to people, who had previously attended meetings but have stopped coming, and to representatives of groups from which members would normally be recruited.

“The LAC is open to all in Hill County and we are open to meeting monthly in a different location if someone would like to host,” Reiter’s email says. “We will be evaluating the future of the LAC in the upcoming months. If you have feedback for the committee, please let me know and I can pass that on next month when we meet.”

The group agreed to try to recruit from the groups specified in the bylaws, but to widen the search to the community in general if enough can’t be recruited. They also agreed that if enough people can’t be recruited by March, to consider ending the council.

In other news, Laufer said NAMI Havre will have a board meeting at 6 p.m. Saturday at the NAMI office located in the 305 Building on Third Avenue in Suite 212.

NAMI Havre will also be doing Crunch for a Cause Thursday, Nov. 7 from 5 to 7 p.m. at Taco John’s — 50 percent of a customer’s entire purchase will be given to the organization if the person making the purchase mentions NAMI.

Coming up in December, NAMI will be having a friends-and-family class then a family-to-family class. The classes will talk about all kinds of mental illnesses and will be open to the public and free of charge, she said.

Laufer added that Havre NAMI still hosts their support group Tuesdays from 6 to 7 p.m. and has up to 16 people attending.

“If it gets any higher than that, then we are going to open up another class,” she said. “We have a lot of people that come in and talk about their mental illnesses and that is nice.”

Carbajal said the Suicide Awareness Coalition met Friday and discussed, the annual Suicide Awareness Walk which, overall went well with about 80 people showed up.

Carbajal said the coalition is thinking about not giving away shirts at the future walks because people are telling them that they really don’t want another shirt, so instead, the coalition may give tote bags next year because that might be a little more useful.

“We were also talking about having a speaker next year of some sort,” she said. “Also, everybody said they loved the play (performed at the walk), so we might do something like a closure type of thing after the walk.”

She added that the coalition will probably not meet again till January 2020 and they received feedback from about 10 people who would like to be involved in planning the suicide awareness walk.

The next meeting for the Mental Health Local Advisory Council will be Monday, Nov. 11, from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at Bullhook Community Health Center.