The UW Interfraternity Council won a marketing competition with the pitch to create a unique and culturally differentiated plan to combat Wyoming’s suicide, depression and substance abuse and the communication problems that swirl throughout these difficult topics.
The group will be using funding, up to $15,000, to bring speakers, educators and learning opportunities to UW’s campus beginning in earnest Fall 2018. Members of the University of Wyoming Panhellenic Council saw an opportunity for meaningful community change.
“My interpretation is that there are a lot of taboos and stigmas about mental health, reaching out, looking inside and understanding,” UW College Panhellenic Vice President of Standards and junior in family and consumer sciences and marketing Courtney Fuller said. “There’s a problem with the ‘Cowboy Tough’ mentality being a sense of, ‘get bucked off the horse just get back on by yourself’ instead of stopping to care, thinking about others’ needs and creating a proactive understanding about how to make things better.”
Meanwhile, Wyoming’s legislature and executive bodies grapple with the state’s responsibility, if any, to help or provide basic affordable health insurance and care let alone options for mental health. Governor Matt Mead stars in a commercial that plainly identifies mental health, addiction, suicide and depression as an open wound for Wyoming’s residents, all genders and all social and economic groups.
“Mental health is a national conversation but like so many things we need to translate that conversation and make it relatable to Wyoming’s residents and our peers at UW in a functional way,” UW Vice President of Education for the Interfraternity Council Jared Leuquire said. “We want to market the information about mental health in a specifically Wyoming way because the words ‘Cowboy Tough,’ the brand are everywhere telling us, ‘you can be and you should be,’ but what does that mean when you’re afraid to care or unable to speak.”
Wyoming’s legislature recently restored funding to the Wyoming State Suicide Prevention Fund while budget shortfalls and poor fiscal strategies further threaten education, health and infrastructure. Also, the Wyoming Suicide Prevention conference was canceled this year due to low turnout for registration and scheduling problems.
According to the 2017-2021 State Suicide Prevention Plan, “Over the past three decades Wyoming has consistently had one of the highest per-capita suicide rates in the nation, currently ranking fourth with a suicide rate of 21.6 suicide deaths per a population of 100,000 people in 2014, compared to the national average of 12.93 (Wyoming Vital Statistics, 2016). Between 2011 and 2015, 705 Wyoming citizens died by suicide (Wyoming Vital Statistics, 2016), meaning, on average, one person dies by suicide every three days in Wyoming. For every individual who dies by suicide, several others attempt suicide. Suicide takes both an emotional and financial toll across the state. Suicide costs Wyoming a total of $155,148,000 of combined lifetime medical and work loss costs, or an average of $1,184,336 per suicide death in 2010 dollars (American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, 2016).”
“There’s a huge problem with the optics of how Wyoming actually handles mental health education and treatment versus the ideal of toughness and strength and the cultural inability to accept vulnerability and sensitivity,” Wyoming resident John Gundy said. “We all have pain, sadness and fatigue but not all of us have ways to cope with it or the tools to manage tough truths, for example, you’d take care of a worn tire but not your own worn out mental state, why one and not the other?”
In this state the focus is on giving Wyoming’s youth, the opportunity and the strength to open up and be part of the solution rather than part of the statistic that puts Wyoming at twice the national average for suicides.
