By Dave Ranney
KHI News Service
HUTCHINSON — The latest in a series of grassroots conversations on mental health issues will be from 7 to 9 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 25, at the Hutchinson Public Library.
“Mental health is an issue that we tend not to talk about very much publicly because there’s such a strong stigma,” said Thea Nietfeld, a facilitator with the Institute for Civic Discourse and Democracy at Kansas State University.
“So what we’ll be doing is taking a look at it in a very structured way so that people concerned about privacy can have their say, people who think there should be more in the way of community services can have their say, and those who are concerned with the interface between law enforcement and mental health can have their say,” said Nietfeld, who also is a Unitarian Universalist minister.
The conversation, she said, will be structured in a way that ensures that “everyone at the table has an equal voice.”
Earlier conversations have been held in Manhattan, Wamego and Abilene. Another is scheduled Oct. 15 in Salina.
The sessions are part of a national initiative first proposed by President Barack Obama during the National Conference on Mental Health meeting in 2013.
In Kansas, the conversations are being coordinated by the Institute for Civic Discourse and Democracy, the Kansas chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and local civic and church groups.
Anyone interested in joining the conversation at the Hutchinson library, 901 N. Main, is encouraged – but not required – to review “Addressing Mental Health Care: A Handbook for Discussion and Deliberation.”
“This is a deliberative discourse,” said Myles Alexander, project coordinator at the institute.
Attendees, he said, will be put into discussion groups that will be led by trained facilitators. Toward the end of the two-hour session, all groups will share their conclusions and discuss “action steps.”
“We do not advocate,” Alexander said, referring to the institute. “We are nonpartisan. Our mission is to help strengthen democracy through deliberative discourse.”
The institute, he said, will host a similar discussion on issues having to do with managing the state’s water supply – the Ogallala Aquifer, especially – at 3:30 p.m. Sunday in the Cottonwood Court building at the Kansas State Fair in Hutchinson.