Early on September 30, 40 community leaders from Kent and Ionia Counties met for breakfast at The Grand Agricultural Center of West Michigan to talk about strategies for organizations to address mental health challenges in our counties. There were elected officials, first responders, educators, farm service agency and MSU Extension representatives, non-profit leaders, and the Michigan Farm Bureau President Ben LaCross.
They gathered to hear from Ian Hill, a mental health advocate and founder of the You Make THE Difference initiative aimed at training and empowering County Fair Boards. He brought his new initiative, Empowering Minds, to West Michigan to shine a light on what organizations and ordinary people can do to defeat isolation and improve mental health outcomes.
Hill said his presentation would not be a plea for more counselors or more beds in treatment facilities, but a roadmap for how all levels of county organizations can work together to build a society of well human beings.
He began by highlighting the tough numbers: 210 people in Kent County died by suicide between 2021-2023. The direct and indirect economic impact to the community is at least $200 million, not to mention the emotional trauma for their families and loved ones. He said, “In manufacturing there’s an acceptable rate of failure. There is no acceptable rate of failure when it comes to people’s lives…. We are grateful for the service of first responders, but we want to mitigate their use.”
There are three benchmarks that organizations can use to measure how their community builds those well individuals: alignment, connectedness, and engagement.
Are Your Organizations Aligned?
Have your education, government, non-profit, and economic sectors met to talk about what their community needs from their future citizens? Hill says that step one is to get organizations together to align around the common mission of building their future citizens. Once a community knows what it is building towards, then each sector and each organization can identify which attributes and skills they are building—after all, no one group can do it by themselves.
For example, which organizations are building resiliency? Which are building a moral code? Which are aiming at working well with others? Ability to win well and lose well? Volunteerism? Civic engagement? The idea is for all those organizations that are doing good work in the community to expand out of their silos and be intentional about building the citizens of tomorrow together.
Are Your Citizens Connected?
Are there enough places where people can get plugged in to meet with other people? Hill said, “Get as many organizations connecting people as possible to make sure people feel seen and heard. Isolation leads to depression which leads to despair which leads to suicide. Make sure every citizen is connected to something.”
Here, it is the role of government and business to invest in revitalizing and building up connector organizations, even teaching them how to attract new members. He said, “Government doesn’t connect people well, but it can commit to developing as many community organizations as possible by lowering fees, giving them access to resources.”
Are Your Citizens Engaged in Solving Problems?
The problem Hill focused on was rural mental health. Kent County Farm Bureau brought him to Kent County because rural citizens are 60% more likely to die by suicide than urban citizens, and farming as a profession has one of the highest suicide rates.
At the First Identifier Training to be held on the evening of September 30, Hill will give regular people the tools to help their friends and neighbors when they struggle with mental health. He said, “It is easier and cheaper to have regular people closest to the problem step in. People don’t need the answers, they need to know how to help people feel seen and heard—80% listening, 20% talking—and where to direct people for help.”
Can we get an all-out commitment?
He noted that there have been society-wide campaigns for regular people to learn CPR, to reduce drunk driving, that have been successful. Hill encouraged the people at the breakfast to imagine what if Kent County had an all-out commitment to becoming aligned as a community, to connecting citizens to something so they’ll feel seen and heard, and to engaging regular citizens to be a mental health solution.
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Kent County Farm Bureau is grateful for all who were there, but especially appreciative that Michigan Rep. Gina Johnsen and John Volk of Michigan Sen. Mark Huizinga’s office made it during this week of budget negotiations. We hope Ian Hill’s talk planted lots of seeds for good work to come!