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, mental, health and/or initiative:
“Mental health depends upon the maintenance of a balance within the personality between the basic human urges and egocentric wishes on the one hand and the demands of conscience and society on the other hand.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)
“Apart from letters, it is the vulgar custom of the moment to deride the thinkers of the Victorian and Edwardian eras; yet there has not been, in all history, another age ... when so much sheer mental energy was directed toward creating a fairer social order.”
—Ellen Glasgow (1873–1945)
“I hold it that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.... It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
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—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)