From the High Plains Public Radio I learned that we’re seeing an increase in suicide deaths in rural Kansas. In reaching out to community mental health centers, I learned that area hospitals shuttered adult and child psychiatric units to reassign staff to COVID patients. This means that if you lived in Garden City and your child needed crisis services, after screening, your child would have to endure a 3-4 hour drive to Wichita for admission. This is unacceptable, but we’re in a pandemic where nursing staff are overrun with COVID patients. I’m working on getting ARPA dollars out to these community mental health centers to help cover the costs for transport, whether it be with ambulance, or secured transport. I wish I could do more for my rural peers with mental illness.