Giving Compass' Take:

• Many rural states are struggling to reduce stigmas against individuals who have a mental health illness. However, Virginia is working toward policies that help to decriminalize mental illness and make patients feel better about their conditions. 

• One reform that is successful in Virginia is providing alternative transportation for mentally ill patients to go to the hospital so they don't have to be handcuffed or taken in by police. How does this reform contribute to reducing stigma?

• Read about what mental health campaigns are trying to do to reduce stigma around mental illness for youth in particular. 

Greg Sturgill had been working as a nurse in Central Appalachia for 15 years when he was diagnosed with bipolar II disorder in 2006.

Six years later, while working at a Kentucky hospital, Sturgill hit a rough patch in life in which he separated from his wife and his father was diagnosed with severe incurable health problems. He decided to check himself in for treatment. When he returned to work, he saw that the stigma surrounding mental illness remained strong, even among hospital workers.

Sturgill later moved from his longtime home of eastern Kentucky across the state line to Wise, Virginia, to be closer to his employer and to escape the ostracization he’d been experiencing.

Today, Sturgill sees a therapist regularly. Finding additional treatment can be challenging, though. Rural health care providers have struggled to remain open.

“Obviously there’s that stigma,” Sturgill says. “Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m afraid that’s one thing that’s keeping people from coming. It’s more culturally accepted here to be a drug addict than to be mentally ill. If you get addicted, it’s because someone prescribed you something, and if you can come out through rehab to the other side, you’re a champion. But if you struggle with mental illness, you’re just crazy.

Experiences like these are what’s driving the state of Virginia to reform its mental health care system. Those efforts have been helped along by a state legislator who knows firsthand how the system can fail the people.

One potentially transformative reform was the launch of a program that expands and standardizes what services are offered by Community Services Boards, which make up the backbone of Virginia’s mental health care system. The 40 CSBs located across the state manage the delivery of mental health, developmental, and substance abuse services to people who need them, and used to be available only for nonemergency situations.

Read the full article about mental illness by Mason Adams at YES! Magazine