Mental health is a global crisis as one in four of us will experience a mental health condition in a given year. Gorham has not been spared this crisis and our community mental health challenges have been exacerbated by COVID and community tragedy over the recent years. As a result, four community members with backgrounds in mental health treatment and advocacy, Kristin Tugman, Anne Dionne, Carrie Bibens, and Nicole Richman, have come together to form a group called Community Action for Mental Health, a 501(c)(3) non-profit seeking to raise awareness, reduce stigma and improve access to care in the Gorham community. The group can be contacted through their website: communityaction4mh.org.

Tugman, a licensed clinician with a Ph.D. in psychology, said, “We have been talking with parents and teachers about these issues and trying to help them understand resources and fill gaps until care can be secured. The goal is to let people know they can go to the website to obtain information about mental health services as well as contact us with questions.”

Tugman has spent 23 years in corporate America focused on workplace mental health. She noted that “therapists are overloaded with only 12% accepting new patients.”

“There is a need to raise awareness of mental health and well-being and equalize it to physical health and well-being. We have to talk about mental health as we do about physical health.” Tugman hopes to reduce the stigma relating to mental health, provide gap care and advise what to do to access care and believes this program “can make a difference by providing comprehensive awareness, education, and peer support by training community members to be mental health champions. She hopes to expand to other communities in the future, “meeting people where they are. Helping those with no preventative mental health care to find resources.”

As Desmond Tutu said, “We have to stop being satisfied by just pulling people out of the river, we must go upstream and figure out why they are falling in.”