Behavioral Health Initiative

Sections

In the sum­mer of 2021, the Com­mu­ni­ty Foun­da­tion sought to bet­ter under­stand the behav­ioral health needs of our com­mu­ni­ty. As a result, FSG was hired, a glob­al non­prof­it con­sult­ing firm that part­ners with foun­da­tions and cor­po­ra­tions to cre­ate equi­table sys­tems change. Under FSG’s guid­ance, the behav­ioral health needs sur­vey was con­duct­ed in part­ner­ship with PRC and the Katz Ams­ter­dam Foundation.

In Novem­ber 2021, the data from the sur­vey was ana­lyzed and an action plan with rec­om­men­da­tions was pro­vid­ed to the com­mu­ni­ty. From win­ter to ear­ly spring of 2022, the Steer­ing Com­mit­tee start­ed work­ing towards the rec­om­men­da­tions and for­mal­ized the Teton Behav­ioral Health Alliance. The back­bone leader start­ed in Sep­tem­ber 2022. 

The Need

The 2021 Teton Coun­ty Behav­ioral Health Report uti­lized sur­vey data from over 1,000 Teton Coun­ty res­i­dents to illus­trate the deep lev­el of need in our community.

  • Near­ly half (48%) of com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers and over half (54%) of behav­ioral health ser­vice providers report that their men­tal health has wors­ened since the begin­ning of the pandemic 
  • Over half (55%) of the com­mu­ni­ty report­ed it was not easy to talk about men­tal health 
  • Com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers report on aver­age that their men­tal health was not good for one week (6.8 days) of the past month; high­er than both the most recent nation­al aver­age (4.3 days in 2019) and the most recent Teton Coun­ty aver­age (3.3 days in 2018) 
  • Over half of peo­ple in Teton Coun­ty report being lone­ly, sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er than the nation­al aver­age before the pan­dem­ic (24%) 
  • Teton Coun­ty has the high­est rate of exces­sive drink­ing in Wyoming (44%), and is sig­nif­i­cant­ly above the nation­al aver­age (27%) 
  • One in every two men in Teton Coun­ty, regard­less of race or eth­nic­i­ty, report­ed drink­ing excessively 
  • 40% of com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers (almost dou­ble the nation­al aver­age) report being neg­a­tive­ly affect­ed by their own or some­one else’s sub­stance use 
  • Cri­sis calls in 2021 includ­ed calls regard­ing sui­ci­dal ideation in com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers as young as 9 years old 
  • Abil­i­ty to access care is more chal­leng­ing across spe­cif­ic pop­u­la­tions: 28% of peo­ple age 65+, 31% of Latine com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers, 41% of LGBQ+/gender-diverse indi­vid­u­als, and 56% of peo­ple with very low incomes were unable to get the behav­ioral health ser­vices they needed 
  • About one-third (31%) of the com­mu­ni­ty cites cost as the main rea­son for not get­ting behav­ioral health ser­vices. Over half (58%) of the Latine com­mu­ni­ty and 54% of peo­ple with very low incomes have no insur­ance to cov­er behav­ioral health treatment 

Teton Behav­ioral Health Alliance at Work

The Teton Behav­ioral Health Alliance applies the col­lec­tive impact mod­el to improve the behav­ioral health care sys­tem in Teton Coun­ty, Wyoming. Col­lec­tive impact is a frame­work that is used to solve com­plex prob­lems. It requires a high-lev­el of col­lab­o­ra­tion among cross-sec­toral stake­hold­ers who are com­mit­ted to a shared agen­da and the desired out­come of achiev­ing pop­u­la­tion and sys­tems-lev­el changes. As such, the Teton Behav­ioral Health Alliance facil­i­tates com­mu­ni­ty-wide actions that enhance pre­ven­tion, treat­ment, and cri­sis response efforts while address­ing the gaps and inequities in the sys­tem to ben­e­fit all who live and work in Teton County.