What's Helping? These are the positive forces are work in our community and beyond that influence this issue in our community.

• Approximately 88% of adults reported that they remain hopeful, even in difficult times (WNC Health Network, 2021, point-in-time figure).
• Strong partnerships with mental health providers. 

What's Hurting? These are the negative forces are work in our community and beyond that influence this issue in our community.

• More adults reported having greater than seven days of poor mental health within the past month (WNCHN, 2021).
• 6.7% of individuals reported considering suicide in past year (WNCHN, 2021, point-in-time figure).
• Nearly 8% of adults were unable to get needed mental health counseling in the past year (WNCHN, 2021).

(A) Actions and Approaches Identified by Our Partners These are actions and approaches that our partners think can make a difference on mental health care access.  

• Action/Approach 1: Improving access to timely, quality care for the uninsured
• Action/Approach 2: Utilize Trauma-Informed Care, including a focus on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) 
• Action/Approach 3: Decrease stigma

(B) What is Currently Working in Our Community These are actions and approaches that are currently in place in our community to make a difference on mental health care access.  

• Question, Persuade, Refer training
• Trauma-Informed Systems of Care training
• Wellness Recovery Action Plan training

(C) Evidence-Based Strategies These are actions and approaches that have been shown to make a difference on overweight & obesity rate.

• Mental Health First Aid
• Crisis Intervention Teams

Process for Selecting Priority Strategies

Haywood County used a process planning tool refered to as the "Getting to Strategies: Process Plan" designed to move from health priorities to Community Health Improvement Plan strategies. This tool assisted in facilitation when discussing priorities and strategies with work groups. Seven questions were presented to idenifty: Our ideal vision of Haywood County; What in our community would require change to accomplish our vision; What are the most important measures to reflect positive change; Who plays a role in creating change; What past and current strategies work to make positive change; and What we propose to do this Community Health Improvement Plan cycle (questions below). Once all of our work groups, partners, and community members in attendance agreed on proposed strategies (keeping in mind feasibility, sustainability, level of impact in regard to current resources and capacity) the group voted for their top three substance use and mental health strategies.

• Questions:
  • What are the quality-of-life conditions we want for the people who live in our community?
  • How can we measure these conditions?
  • What would these conditions look like if we could see them?
  • How are we doing on the most important of these measures?
  • Who are the partners who have a role to play in doing better?
  • What works to do better?
  • What do we propose to do?

Partners With a Role in Helping Our Community Do Better on This Issue:

We are keeping an eye on access to care as a way of telling how we are doing as a community in mental health and build a community where we 'advance health and resilience by advocating for prevention, treatment, and recovery for people affected by mental health disorders,' We have also identified other data that is not currently available, but that we would like to develop to help us monitor progress on this result:

• Indicator 1: number of individuals who access mental health programs

• Indicator 2: the number of those individuals who accessed mental programs and remain in programs when indicated