When Gov. Mark Gordon came to Gillette last December for a town hall meeting on mental health, there was a standing-room-only crowd and optimism in the air. At last, it seemed, government officials were taking seriously a long-term problem that has caused our communities great harm and has never been dealt with.

An hour later, the meeting was over, along with our sense of hope. Instead, the room seemed full of anger. The first 20 minutes of the meeting had been taken up by bureaucrats introducing themselves, leaving community members with two minutes each to share, be heard and figure out solutions.

That left a grieving mother with little time to talk about her 12-year-old son killing himself. To limit her plea to prevent suicide — in a state with often the highest suicide rate in the nation — was offensive. Passionate people with the courage to share their family tragedies in hopes of sparing others the same pain don’t deserve this kind of treatment.

Watching the Legislature mere months later only deepened this sense of disappointment. While Wyoming lawmakers talk about the problem of mental health, it does not seem that they are really willing to do much about it, even as our neighbors, friends and families struggle with mental illness, substance abuse and suicide.

There was bickering and dysfunction during the 2024 budget session, as well as a focus on hot-button national issues that don’t really matter to most hardworking Wyomingites. There was little progress on what the governor has promoted as his major priority.

It is positive that the Legislature provided funding for Wyoming’s new 988 suicide hotline. The local call centers in Greybull and Casper have saved lives, including those of many military veterans. Thanks to some stable funding from this year’s budget session, they will continue to do so.

But no one should be patting themselves on the back too hard about making sure our emergency suicide hotline isn’t shut down for lack of money. It is really the bare minimum lawmakers can do, and it does nothing to confront the root problems that lead people to want to die by suicide in the first place.

The state government alone cannot solve our mental health crisis, but there are some obvious things it can do to help. At the governor’s town hall in Gillette, multiple people who did get the brief chance to speak demanded one of them: Medicaid expansion.

Tens of thousands of workers in Wyoming have no access to mental health care because they earn too much to qualify for current Wyoming Medicaid but too little to afford coverage from the Health Insurance Marketplace.

These people fall into the “coverage gap,” with no reasonable way to receive mental health care because they cannot afford it. Many are among our neighbors who struggle with mental illness, health disorders and substance abuse with no access to help. If they had health coverage through expanded Medicaid, they could receive the treatment they need.

One thing Wyoming does have are 20 behavioral health centers that offer care at a reduced cost. But they all share a common problem: a lack of staff members who are trained to deal with serious mental health issues. It is difficult to find mental health professionals in Wyoming, especially in rural areas, and the stressful work makes it challenging to keep them.

In order to train and retain quality mental health professionals, these centers need more resources. Expanding Medicaid would allow people who have never before been able to afford mental health care to get it. This would also provide the behavioral health centers a source of revenue they could use to hire and keep well-trained providers, because they would be seeing more patients.

Wyoming lawmakers express concern about mental health, but lack the courage to enact real solutions. Their unwillingness to act is literally killing people.

Fixing a broken mental health system isn’t rocket science. But it requires legislators and state officials willing to have an honest conversation about real-life, fundamental problems and solutions.

We can’t accept our leaders giving Wyomingites only a few minutes of their time when lives are at stake.

F. Mikel Carmon is a native Wyomingite with a masters in counseling psychology from the University of Northern Colorado Greeley. With 32 years of experience as a professional counselor, she’s passionate about suicide prevention. Growing up her family did pack trips into the Wyoming back country, and she continues to drive mules to this day.

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