SHERIDAN — This weekend, WyomingPBS will start broadcasting “A State of Thoughts: Confronting Our Psychological Well being Disaster,” a brand new documentary collection on Wyoming’s psychological well being disaster. The present is meant to extend consolation in conversations about psychological well being in communities throughout the state — together with Sheridan — by approaching the topic from a uniquely Wyoming perspective, mentioned WyomingPBS Government Director Joanna Kail.
Produced in collaboration with Texas-based manufacturing firm Alpheus Media and sponsored partly by Wyoming philanthropists Jack and Carole Nunn and Blue Cross Blue Defend of Wyoming, the six-part collection will weave collectively affected person expertise testimonials, skilled interviews and man-on-the-street commentary to look at Wyoming’s psychological well being disaster and the way to enhance the state’s psychological well being system.
Hopefully, Kail mentioned, seeing fellow Wyomingites discussing their psychological well being journeys on tv will unfold consciousness and luxury broaching the topic of psychological well being in Wyoming communities.
“This can be a very difficult topic, and I feel that’s a symptom of the issue,” Kail mentioned.
Kail defined the collection is meant to encourage viewers combating their psychological well being to hunt assist by encouraging dialogue and sharing alternative ways to hunt assist, together with digital psychological well being service choices. She hopes the present may also assist Wyoming residents establish family and friends members who is perhaps struggling and spur dialog and help-seeking.
“Step one is ensuring that individuals really feel comfy with speaking to somebody,” Kail mentioned.
Amy Albrecht, director of the Heart for a Very important Neighborhood at Sheridan School, mentioned she hopes the present will dovetail with the continued efforts from the CVC’s research circles in 2021. Just like the present, Albrecht mentioned the initiatives established by the research circles — together with a psychological well being consciousness marketing campaign, coalition, useful resource heart and native chapter of the Nationwide Alliance on Psychological Sickness — are supposed to normalize discussions and help-seeking round psychological well being and psychological sickness.
“It’s yet another factor to interrupt down that stigma,” Albrecht mentioned of WyomingPBS’s new present.
The primary episode of the collection, which premieres Friday at 7:30 p.m. with encores Saturday at 6:30 p.m. and Sunday at midday, discusses Wyoming’s “cowboy code,” or the methods wherein Wyoming values of rugged individualism, endurance and bootstrapping inhibit Wyoming residents from discussing psychological well being considerations.
In lots of conditions, Kail and Albrecht agreed, Wyoming’s frontiersman angle is a supply of pleasure and a helpful component of the state’s tradition. However that’s typically not the case when coping with psychological well being points, Kail mentioned, as a result of it could actually hamper efforts to hunt assist.
“I’m tremendous enthusiastic about [‘A State of Mind’] as a result of it talks about psychological well being from a Wyoming perspective,” Albrecht mentioned.