Hey everyone,

Before I get into today's issue I want to say something I don't say enough: thank you.

When I started Mental Health 4 Men I was a counselor in Wichita with a with a conviction that we need better mental health resources, and unsure if anyone agreed. In under a year this newsletter reaches over a couple thousand followers every single week.

That is not a small thing to me. Every open, every reply, every person who forwarded it to a friend going through something hard; you built this with me.

And what we built together changed the direction of my life in ways I didn't see coming.

Today's issue is different. I want to talk about why mental health in Kansas is a policy problem as much as a personal one. And then I want to tell you what I've decided to do about it.

We Are in a Public Health Crisis. And It Is Getting Worse.

Most people still think of mental health as a personal issue. Something private. Something you manage, maybe with a therapist, maybe with medication, maybe alone?

The data has a different opinion.

970 million people globally carry a mental health diagnosis. In the United States, that's 1 in 5 adults, and the trend line is not flattening. It is climbing. Half of all mental health conditions take root before a child turns 14.

This is not a personal crisis playing out 970 million times. This is truly a public health emergency.

(And public health emergencies don't stay invisible forever. They show up somewhere... and they're not cheap to fix)

There's a combat veteran I think about. Tough guy. Wouldn't use the word "struggling" to describe himself if you paid him. But he told me once that he hasn't enjoyed the Fourth of July in over a decade.

He lives in a rural KS county. The nearest provider outside the VA who understood combat trauma was +90 miles away. He truly lives in a mental health desert... and he's not an outlier.

The crisis is real. It is growing. And in Kansas, the response has been to look the other way.

Most of Kansas Is a Mental Health Desert. Here's How It Got That Way.

​99 out of 105 Kansas counties are classified as mental health shortage areas. Almost the entire state is a desert.

That didn't happen by accident. It was built, decision by decision, over more than a decade. And the people paying the price are the same ones who finally worked up the courage, sometimes after years, to ask for help. Too often what's waiting on the other end is a waitlist, a voicemail, or a provider two counties away.

Here's how we got here:

• $56 million cut from Medicaid, gutting the community mental health centers that serve Kansans least able to pay
• 65% reduction in the Mental Health Reform Grant over five years, the funding designed to hold those centers together
• Nearly $20 million cut from Kansas' two state psychiatric hospitals
• 50% drop in children admitted to psychiatric residential treatment in a single three-month period. Not because fewer kids needed care, but because there was nowhere left to send them.

She was right. But the reason WHY she is right is what needs to be shared. When you defund a mental health system, people don't stop having crises. They just have them somewhere else, in emergency rooms, in county jails, on the streets. The cost doesn't disappear. It shifts into places that are harder to see and significantly harder to treat.

Real people paid for those decisions with their wellbeing. And in Kansas, like many other states, we are still paying the bill.

The Prayer That Kept Coming Back...

This past December changed something in me.

We (Mental Health 4 Men) hosted a fundraiser for the Kansas Coalition Against Sexual and Domestic Violence. I went in thinking I understood the landscape.

I did not.

I heard about survivors whose lives were rebuilt because the right resource existed at the right moment. And I heard about the ones who didn't make it because it didn't. I learned how razor-thin the margin is between a woman staying safe and a woman staying in danger, and how often that margin has nothing to do with her choices. It comes down to whether the right policy and the right funding were in place.

I left convicted. And I've been sitting with that conviction long enough to know it isn't going away.

I don't believe people suffer from domestic violence in heaven.

I don't believe children sit in emergency rooms waiting for psychiatric beds in heaven.

I don't believe men die by suicide in silence because they couldn't afford care in heaven.

If that's true, then the distance between that reality and this one is not someone else's problem to close. It is ours. It is mine.

I've spent years helping people survive a broken system. I'd rather fix the system.

I am announcing today that I am running for the Kansas House of Representatives.

This is exactly why I'm running...

As a board certified therapist I have listened to more Kansas families in than anyone currently serving in Topeka. That is not a boast. That is exactly the kind of experience this legislature is missing to shape mental health policy.

The best mental health policy isn't written by people who have read about suffering. It's written by people who have sat with it and work with it 9-5. Who have watched a family fracture in real time because the system had no room for them. Who understand, from experience, that a budget line is never just a number. It is someone's access to care. Someone's family member. Someone's chance at a different life.

The counseling office can reach one person at a time. The legislature shapes what's possible for every Kansan. I work with what's broken every day. I know where the gaps are. And I am done documenting them from the sidelines.

This is a grassroots campaign. No political machine. No major donors. Just a licensed therapist who thinks Kansas deserves better mental health policy and is willing to go fight for it.

If that resonates with you, I'd so appreciate if you would share the post that just went live this morning on our campaign Facebook page. In a race like this, every share, like or comment means everything to a campaign like ours cause we are going up against some career politicians who have quite a bit of funding dollars.

Also... If you are in District 83, I would be honored to earn your vote!

Let's keep building,

Zach Werhan

Mental Health 4 Men Founder & Candidate Kansas House of Representatives District 83

​www.werhanforhouse.com​

(There are other issues I feel just as strongly about — education, property taxes — but this is a mental health newsletter and I want to honor that. More on the full platform at www.werhanforhouse.com.)