Mental Health Initiative
Stepping away from what are traditionally seen as "first lady" issues, Ritter chose to focus on mental health in Colorado because of its underexposure and its all-encompassing sphere of influence. "It touches everything," Ritter says. "You can't have a discussion about children, schools, families, employment, seniors, criminal justice, substance abuse, medical health, even global warming, without talking about the mental health connections."
Colorado ranks 49th in mental health care funding per capita.
In her first six months as Colorado's First Lady, Ritter has traveled more 2,000 miles around Colorado, learning about mental health needs from its urban, rural, and frontier communities. She has held more than 50 meetings with mental health providers, consumers, government officials, law enforcement officials, and community members to discuss the complexities of the mental health system and the gaps in it. She has met with U.S. Congressmen and incarcerated felons with serious and persistent mental illnesses to talk about how the system can be improved. While she acknowledges that change will not come overnight, Ritter is determined to move Colorado's mental health care system forward.
Ritter said that her perspective on mental health was influenced by her training as a teacher for emotionally disturbed children and having an older sister who suffers from bipolar disorder.
Ritter is a 1978 graduate from the University of Northern Colorado, in Greeley, CO. She completed a BA in Special Education.
Read more about this topic: Jeannie Ritter
Famous quotes containing the words mental, health and/or initiative:
“It is a monstrous thing to force a child to learn Latin or Greek or mathematics on the ground that they are an indispensable gymnastic for the mental powers. It would be monstrous even if it were true.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“I am astonished at the singular pertinacity and endurance of our lives. The miracle is, that what is is, when it is so difficult, if not impossible, for anything else to be; that we walk on in our particular paths so far, before we fall on death and fate, merely because we must walk in some path; that every man can get a living, and so few can do anything more. So much only can I accomplish ere health and strength are gone, and yet this suffices.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I am firmly opposed to the government entering into any business the major purpose of which is competition with our citizens ... for the Federal Government deliberately to go out to build up and expand ... a power and manufacturing business is to break down the initiative and enterprise of the American people; it is the destruction of equality of opportunity amongst our people, it is the negation of the ideals upon which our civilization has been based.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)